Matter

1. Factory

The place had to be some sort of old factory or workshop or something. There were big toothed metal wheels half buried in the wooden floors or hanging by giant spindles from the network of iron beams overhead. Canvas belts were strung all over the dark spaces connecting smaller, smooth wheels and a host of long, complicated machines he thought might be something to do with weaving or knitting. It was all very dusty and grimy-looking. And yet this had been that modern thing; a factory! How quickly things decayed and became useless.

Normally he would never have considered going anywhere near some place so filthy. It might not even be safe, he thought, even with all the machinery stilled; one gable wall was partially collapsed, bricks tumbled, planks splintered, rafters hanging disjointed from above. He didn’t know if this was old damage from deterioration and lack of repair, or something that had happened today, during the battle. In the end, though, he hadn’t cared what the place was or had been; it was somewhere to escape to, a place to hide.

Well, to regroup, to recover and collect himself. That put a better gloss on it. Not running away, he told himself; just staging a strategical retreat, or whatever you called it.

Outside, the Rollstar Pentrl having passed over the horizon a few minutes earlier, it was slowly getting dark. Through the breach in the wall he could see sporadic flashes and hear the thunder of artillery, the crump and bellowing report of shells landing uncomfortably close by and the sharp, busy rattle of small arms fire. He wondered how the battle was going. They were supposed to be winning, but it was all so confusing. For all he knew they were on the brink of complete victory or utter defeat.

He didn’t understand warfare, and having now experienced its practice first hand, had no idea how people kept their wits about them in a battle. A big explosion nearby made the whole building tremble; he whimpered as he crouched down, pressing himself still further into the dark corner he had found on the first floor, drawing his thick cloak over his head. He heard himself make that pathetic, weak little sound and hated himself for it. Breathing under the cloak, he caught a faint odour of dried blood and faeces, and hated that too.

He was Ferbin otz Aelsh-Hausk’r, a prince of the House of Hausk, son of King Hausk the Conqueror. And while he was his father’s son, he had not been raised to be like him. His father gloried in war and battle and dispute, had spent his entire life aggressively expanding the influence of his throne and his people, always in the name of the WorldGod and with half an eye on history. The King had raised his eldest son to be like him, but that son had been killed by the very people they were fighting, perhaps for the last time, today. His second son, Ferbin, had been schooled in the arts not of war but of diplomacy; his natural place was supposed to be in the court, not the parade ground, fencing stage or firing range, still less the battlefield.

His father had known this and, even if he had never been as proud of Ferbin as he had of Elime, his murdered first son, he had accepted that Ferbin’s skill — you might even term it his calling, Ferbin had thought more than once — lay in the arts of politicking, not soldiering. It was, anyway, what his father had wanted. The King had been looking forward to a time when the martial heroics he had had to undertake to bring this new age about would be seen for the rude necessities they had been; he had wanted at least one of his sons to fit easily into a coming era of peace, prosperity and contentment, where the turning of a pretty phrase would have more telling effect than the twisting of a sword.

It was not his fault, Ferbin told himself, that he was not cut out for war. It was certainly not his fault that, realising he might be about to die at any moment, he had felt so terrified earlier. And even less to his discredit that he had lost control of his bowels when that Yilim chap — he had been a major or a general or something — had been obliterated by the cannon shot. Dear God, the man had been talking to him when he was just… gone! Cut in half!

Their small group had ridden up to a low rise for a better look at the battle. This was a modestly insane thing to do in the first place, Ferbin had thought at the time, exposing them to enemy spotters and hence to still greater risk than that from a random artillery shell. For one thing, he’d chosen a particularly outstanding mersicor charger as his mount that morning from the abroad-tents of the royal stables; a pure white beast with a high and proud aspect which he thought he would look well on. Only to discover that General-Major Yilim’s choice of mount obviously pitched in the same direction, for he rode a similar charger. Now he thought about it — and, oh! the number of times he’d had cause to use that phrase or one of its cousins at the start of some explanation in the aftermath of yet another embarrassment — Ferbin wondered at the wisdom of riding on to an exposed ridge with two such conspicuous beasts.

He had wanted to say this, but then decided he didn’t know enough about the procedures to be followed in such matters actually to speak his mind, and anyway he hadn’t wanted to sound like a coward. Perhaps Major-General or General-Major Yilim had felt insulted that he’d been left out of the front-line forces and asked instead to look after Ferbin, keeping him close enough to the action so that he’d later be able to claim that he’d been there at the battle, but not so close that he risked actually getting involved with any fighting.

From the rise, when they achieved it, they could see the whole sweep of the battleground, from the great Tower ahead in the distance, over the downland spreading out from the kilometres-wide cylinder and up towards their position on the first fold of the low hills that carried the road to Pourl itself. The Sarl capital city lay behind them, barely visible in the misty haze, a short-day’s ride away.

This was the ancient county of Xilisk and these were the old playgrounds of Ferbin and his siblings, long depopulated lands turned into royal parks and hunting grounds, filled with overgrown villages and thick forests. Now, all about, their crumpled, riven geography sparkled with the fire of uncounted thousands of guns, the land itself seemed to move and flow where troop concentrations and fleets of war craft manoeuvred, and great sloped stems of steam and smoke lifted into the air above it all, casting massive wedged shadows across the ground.

Here and there, beneath the spread of risen mists and lowering cloud, dots and small winged shapes moved above the great battle as caude and lyge — the great venerable warbeasts of the sky — spotted for artillery and carried intelligence and signals from place to place. None seemed mobbed by clouds of lesser avians, so most likely they were all friendly. Poor fare compared to the days of old, though, when flocks, squadrons, whole clouds of the great beasts had contended in the battles of the ancients. Well, if the old stories and ancient paintings were to be believed. Ferbin suspected they were exaggerated, and his younger half-brother, Oramen, who claimed to study such matters, had said well of course they were exaggerated, though, being Oramen, only after shaking his head at Ferbin’s ignorance.

Choubris Holse, his servant, had been to his left on the ridge, digging into a saddle bag and muttering about requiring some fresh supplies from the nearest village behind them. Major — or General — Yilim had been on his right, holding forth about the coming campaign on the next level down, taking the fight to their enemies in their own domain. Ferbin had ignored his servant and turned to Yilim out of politeness. Then, mid-word, with a sort of tearing rush of sound, the elderly officer — portly, a little flushed of face and inclined to wheeze when laughing — was gone, just gone. His legs and lower torso still sat in the saddle, but the rest of him was all ripped about and scattered; half of him seemed to have thrown itself over Ferbin, covering him in blood and greasily unknowable bits of body parts. Ferbin had stared at the remains still sitting in the saddle as he wiped some of the gore off his face, gagging with the stink and the warm, steaming feel of it. His lunch had left his belly and mouth like something was pursuing it. He’d coughed, then wiped his face with a gore-slicked hand.

“Fucking hell,” he’d heard Choubris Holse say, voice breaking.

Yilim’s mount — the tall, pale mersicor charger which Yilim had spoken to more kindly than to any of his men — as though suddenly realising what had just happened, screamed, reared and fled, dumping what was left of the man’s body on to the torn-up ground. Another shell or ball or whatever these ghastly things were landed nearby, felling another two of their group in a shrieking tangle of men and animals. His servant had gone too, now, Ferbin realised; mount toppled, falling on top of him. Choubris Holse yelled with fright and pain, pinned beneath the animal.

“Sir!” one of the junior officers shouted at him, suddenly in front of him, pulling his own mount round. “Ride! Away from here!”

He was still wiping blood from his face.

He’d filled his britches, he realised. He whipped his mount and followed the younger man, until the young officer and his mount disappeared in a sudden thick spray of dark earth. The air seemed to be full of screeches and fire; deafening, blinding. Ferbin heard himself whimper. He pressed himself against his mount, wrapping his arms round its neck and closing his eyes, letting the pounding animal find its own way over and around whatever obstacles were in its path, not daring to raise his head and look where they were going. The jarring, rattling, terrifying ride had seemed to last for ever. He heard himself whimpering again.

The panting, heaving mersicor slowed eventually.

Ferbin opened his eyes to see they were on a dark wooded track by the side of a small river; booms and flashes came from every side but sounded a little further away than they had. Something burned further up the stream, as though overhanging trees were on fire. A tall building, half ruined, loomed in the late afternoon light as the labouring, panting mount slowed still further. He pulled it to a stop outside the place, and dismounted. He’d let go of the reins. The animal startled at another loud explosion, then went wailing off down the track at a canter. He might have given chase if his pants hadn’t been full of his own excrement.

Instead he waddled into the building through a door wedged open by sagging hinges, looking for water and somewhere to clean himself. His servant would have known just what to do. Choubris Holse would have cleaned him up quick as you like, with much muttering and many grumblings, but efficiently, and without a sly sneer. And now, Ferbin realised, he was unarmed. The mersicor had made off with his rifle and ceremonial sword. Plus, the pistol he’d been given by his father, and which he had sworn would never leave his side while the war was waged, was no longer in its holster.

He found some water and ancient rags and cleaned himself as best he could. He still had his wine flask, though it was empty. He filled the flask from a long trough of deep, flowing water cut into the floor and rinsed his mouth, then drank. He tried to catch his reflection in the dark length of water but failed. He dipped his hands in the trough and pushed his fingers through his long fair hair, then washed his face. Appearances had to be maintained, after all. Of King Hausk’s three sons he had always been the one who most resembled their father; tall, fair and handsome, with a proud, manly bearing (so people said, apparently — he did not really trouble himself with such matters).

The battle raged on beyond the dark, abandoned building as the light of Pentrl faded from the sky. He found that he could not stop shaking. He still smelled of blood and shit. It was unthinkable that anyone should find him like this. And the noise! He’d been told the battle would be quick and they would win easily, but it was still going on. Maybe they were losing. If they were, it might be better that he hid. If his father had been killed in the fighting he would, he supposed, be the new king. That was too great a responsibility; he couldn’t risk showing himself until he knew they had won. He found a place on the floor above to lie down and tried to sleep, but could not; all he could see was General Yilim, bursting right in front of him, gobbets of flesh flying towards him. He retched once more, then drank from the flask.

Just lying there, then sitting, his cloak pulled tight around him, made him feel a little better. It would all be all right, he told himself. He’d take a little while away from things, just a moment or two, to collect his wits and calm down. Then he’d see how things were. They would have won, and his father would still be alive. He wasn’t ready to be king. He enjoyed being a prince. Being a prince was fun; being a king looked like hard work. Besides, his father had always entirely given everybody who’d ever met him the strong impression that he would most assuredly live for ever.

Ferbin must have nodded off. There was noise down below; clamour, voices. In his jangled, still half-drowsy state, he thought he recognised some of them. He was instantly terrified that he would be discovered, captured by the enemy or shamed in front of his father’s own troops. How low he had fallen in so short a time! To be as mortally afraid of his own side as of the enemy! Steel-shod feet clattered on the steps. He was going to be discovered!

“Nobody in the floors above,” a voice said.

“Good. There. Lay him there. Doctor…” (There was some speech that Ferbin didn’t catch. He was still working out that he’d escaped detection while he’d been asleep.) “Well, you must do whatever you can. Bleye! Tohonlo! Ride for help, as I’ve asked.”

“Sir.”

“At once.”

“Priest; attend.”

“The Exaltine, sir—”

“Will be with us in due course, I’m sure. For now the duty’s yours.”

“Of course, sir.”

“The rest of you, out. Give us some air to breathe here.”

He did know that voice. He was sure he did. The man giving the orders sounded like — in fact must be — tyl Loesp.

Mertis tyl Loesp was his father’s closest friend and most trusted adviser. What was going on? There was much movement. Lanterns cast shadows from below on to the dark ceiling above him. He shifted towards a chink of light coming from the floor nearby where a broad canvas belt, descending from a giant wheel above, disappeared through the planking to some machinery on the ground floor. Shifting, he could peer through the slit in the floor to see what was happening beneath.

Dear God of the World, it was his father!

King Hausk lay, face slack, eyes closed, on a broad wooden door resting on makeshift trestles immediately beneath. His armour was pierced and buckled over the left side of his chest, and blood was seeping through some flag or banner wrapped around him. He looked dead, or close to death.

Ferbin felt his eyes go wide.

Dr Gillews, the Royal Physician, was quickly opening bags and small portable cabinets. An assistant fussed beside him. A priest Ferbin recognised but did not know the name of stood by his father’s head, his white robes soiled with blood or mud. He was reading from some holy work. Mertis tyl Loesp — tall and partially stooped, still dressed in armour, his helmet held in one hand, his white hair matted — paced to and fro, armour glinting in the lanternlight. The only others present that he could see were a couple of knights, standing, rifles held ready, by the door. The angle was wrong to see further up than the chest of the tall knight on the right side of the door but Ferbin recognised the one whose face he could see; Bower or Brower or something.

He should reveal himself, he thought. He should let them know he was here. He might be about to become king, after all. It would be aberrant, perverse not to make himself known.

He would wait just a moment longer, all the same. He felt this like an instinct, he told himself, and his instinct had been right about not riding up on to the ridge, earlier.

His father’s eyes flickered open. He grimaced with pain, one arm moving towards his injured side. The doctor looked at his assistant, who went to hold the King’s hand, perhaps to comfort him, but certainly preventing him from probing his injury. The doctor joined his assistant, holding scissors and pliers. He cut cloth, pulled at armour.

“Mertis,” the King said weakly, ignoring the doctor and holding his other hand out. His voice, usually so stern and strong, sounded like a child’s.

“Here,” tyl Loesp said, coming to the King’s side. He took his hand.

“Do we prevail, Mertis?”

The other man looked round at the others present. Then he said, “We prevail, sir. The battle is won. The Deldeyn have surrendered and ask our terms. They conditioned only that their massacre cease and they be treated honourably. Which we have allowed, so far. The Ninth and all that it holds lies open to us.”

The King smiled. Ferbin felt relieved. It sounded like things had gone well. He supposed he really ought to make his entrance now. He took a breath to speak, let them know he was there.

“And Ferbin?” the King asked. Ferbin froze. What about him?

“Dead,” tyl Loesp said. It was said, Ferbin thought, with somewhat insufficient grief or pity. Almost, a chap less charitable than himself might have thought, with relish.

“Dead?” his father wailed, and Ferbin felt his eyes moisten. Now. Now he needed to let his father know that his eldest surviving son still lived, whether he smelled of shit or not.

“Yes,” tyl Loesp said, leaning over the King. “The vain, silly, spoiled little brat was blown to bits on Cherien ridge, some time after midday. A sad loss to his tailors, jewellers and creditors, I dare say. As to anyone of consequence, well…”

The King made a spluttering noise, then said, “Loesp? What are you—?”

“We are all of one mind here, are we not?” tyl Loesp said smoothly, ignoring the King — ignoring the King! — and looking round everybody present.

A chorus of low, muttered voices gave what must have been assent. “Not you, priest, but no matter,” tyl Loesp told the holy man. “Continue with the reading, if you would.” The priest did as he was instructed, eyes now wide. The doctor’s assistant stared at the King, then glanced at the doctor, who was looking back at him.

“Loesp!” the King cried, something of his old authority back in his voice. “What do you mean by this insult? And to my dead child? What monstrosity of—”

“Oh, do be quiet.” Tyl Loesp laid his helmet at his feet and leaned further forward, putting his knuckles to his cheeks and resting his mailed elbows on the King’s armoured chest; an act of such unprecedented disrespect that Ferbin found it almost more shocking than anything he’d heard. The King winced, breath wheezing out of him. Ferbin thought he heard something bubbling. The doctor had finished exposing the wound in the King’s side.

“I mean the cowardly little cunt is dead, you old cretin,” tyl Loesp said, addressing his only lord and master as though he was a beggar. “And if by some miracle he’s not, he soon will be. The younger boy I think I’ll keep alive for now, in my capacity as regent. Though — I’m afraid — poor, quiet, studious little Oramen may not live to the point of accession. They say the boy’s interested in mathematics. I am not — save, like yourself, for its trajectorial role in the fall of shot — however I’d compute his chances of seeing his next birthday and hence majority grow less substantial the closer the event creeps.”

“What?” the King gasped, labouring. “Loesp! Loesp, for all pity—”

“No,” tyl Loesp said, leaning more heavily on the blood-bright curve of armour, causing the King to moan. “No pity, my dear, dim old warrior. You’ve done your bit, you’ve won your war. That’s monument and epitaph enough and your time is past. But no pity, sir, no. I shall order all the prisoners of today killed with the utmost dispatch and the Ninth invaded with every possible severity, so that gutters, rivers — heavens, water wheels too, for all I care — run with blood, and the shrieking will, I dare say, be terrible to hear. All in your name, brave prince. For vengeance. For your idiot sons too, if you like.” Tyl Loesp put his face very close to that of the King and shouted at him, “The game is over, my old stump! It was always greater than you knew!” He pushed himself back off the King’s chest, making the prone man cry out again. Tyl Loesp nodded at the doctor, who, visibly gulping, reached out with some metal instrument, plunging it into the wound in the King’s side, making him shudder and scream.

“You traitors, you treacherous bastards!” the King wept, as the doctor took a step back, instrument dripping blood, face grey. “Will no one help me? Bastards all! You murder your king!”

Tyl Loesp shook his head, staring first at the writhing King, then at the doctor. “You ply your given trade too well, medic.” He moved round to the other side of the King, who flailed weakly at him. As tyl Loesp passed, the priest stuck out a hand, clutching at the nobleman’s sleeve. Tyl Loesp looked calmly down at the hand on his forearm. The priest said hoarsely, “Sir, this is too much, it’s — it’s wrong.”

Tyl Loesp looked at his eyes, then back at his clutching hand, until the priest released him. “You stray your brief, mumbler,” tyl Loesp told him. “Get back to your words.” The priest swallowed, then lowered his gaze to the book again. His lips began to move once more, though no sound issued from his mouth.

Tyl Loesp moved round the broken door, shoving the doctor back, until he stood by the King’s other flank. He crouched a little, inspecting. “A mortal wound indeed, my lord,” he said, shaking his head. “You should have accepted the magic potions our friend Hyrlis offered. I would have.” He plunged one hand into the King’s side, arm disappearing almost to the elbow. The King shrieked.

“Why,” tyl Loesp said, “here’s the very heart of it.” He grunted, twisting and pulling inside the man’s chest. The King gave one final scream, arched his back and then collapsed. The body jerked a few more times, and some sound came from his lips, but nothing intelligible, and soon they too were still.

Ferbin stared down. He felt frozen, immobilised, like something trapped in ice or baked to solidity. Nothing he had seen or heard or ever known had prepared him for this. Nothing.

There was a sharp crack. The priest fell like a sack of rocks. Tyl Loesp lowered his pistol. The hand holding it dripped blood.

The doctor cleared his throat, stepped away from his assistant. “Ah, the boy, too,” he told tyl Loesp, looking away from the lad. He shook his head and shrugged. “He worked for the King’s people as well as us, I’m sure.”

“Master! I—!” the youth had time to say, before tyl Loesp shot him as well; in the belly first, folding him, then in the head. The doctor looked quite convinced that tyl Loesp was about to shoot him, too, but tyl Loesp merely smiled at him and then at the two knights at the door. He stooped, took a towel from the waistband of the murdered assistant, wiped his pistol and his hand with it, then dabbed a little blood from his arm and sleeve.

He looked round the others. “This had to be done, as we all know,” he told them. He looked distastefully at the body of the King, as a surgeon might at a patient who has had the temerity to die on him. “Kings are usually the first to talk, and at some length, of overarching destiny and the necessity of fulfilling greater purposes,” he said, still wiping and dabbing. “So let’s take all that billowy rhetoric as heard, shall we? We are left with this: the King died of his wounds, most honourably incurred, but not before swearing bloody vengeance on his enemies. The prancing prince is dead and the younger one is in my charge. These two here fell prey to a sniper. And we’ll burn down this old place, just for good measure. Now, come; all our fine prizes await.”

He threw the bloodied towel down on to the face of the felled assistant and then said, with an encouraging smile, “I believe we are concluded here.”

2. Palace

Oramen was in a round room in the shade wing of the royal palace in Pourl when they came to tell him that his father and his elder brother were dead and he would, in time, be king. He had always liked this room because its walls described an almost perfect circle and, if you stood at its very centre, you could hear your own voice reflected back at you from the chamber’s circumference in a most singular and interesting fashion.

He looked up from his papers at the breathless earl who’d burst into the room and broken the news. The earl’s name was Droffo, from Shilda, if Oramen was not mistaken. Meanwhile a couple of the palace servants piled into the room behind the nobleman, also breathing hard and looking flushed. Oramen sat back in his seat. He noticed it was dark outside. A servant must have lit the room’s lamps.

“Dead?” he said. “Both of them? Are you sure?”

“If all reports are to be believed, sir. From the army command and from tyl Loesp himself. The King is — the King’s body is returning on a gun carriage, sir,” Droffo told him. “Sir, I’m sorry. It’s said poor Ferbin was cut in half by a shell. I am so sorry, sir, sorry beyond words. They are gone.”

Oramen nodded thoughtfully. “But I am not king?”

The earl, who to Oramen looked dressed half for court and half for war, looked confused for a moment. “No, sir. Not until your next birthday. Tyl Loesp will rule in your name. As I understand it.”

“I see.”

Oramen took a couple of deep breaths. Well, now. He had not prepared himself for this eventuality. He wasn’t sure what to think. He looked at Droffo. “What am I supposed to do? What is my duty?”

This, too, seemed to flummox the good earl, just for an instant. “Sir,” he said, “you might ride out to meet the King’s bier.”

Oramen nodded. “I might indeed.”

“It is safe, sir; the battle is won.”

“Yes,” Oramen said, “of course.” He rose, and looked beyond Droffo to one of the servants. “Puisil. The steam car, if you would.”

“Take a little while to get steam up,” Puisil said. “Sir.”

“Then don’t delay,” Oramen told him reasonably. The servant turned to go just as Fanthile, the palace secretary appeared. “A moment,” Fanthile told the servant, causing Puisil to hesitate, his gaze flicking between the young prince and the elderly palace secretary.

“A charger might be the better choice, sir,” Fanthile told Oramen. He smiled and bowed to Droffo, who nodded back at the older man. Fanthile was balding and his face was heavily lined, but he was still tall and carried his thin frame proudly.

“You think?” Oramen said. “The car will be quicker, surely.”

“The mount would be more immediate, sir,” Fanthile said. “And more fitting. One is more public on a mount. The people will need to see you.”

One can stand up in the back of my father’s steam car, Oramen considered saying. But he saw the sense in what was being proposed.

“Also,” Fanthile continued, seeing the prince hesitate and deciding to press, “the road may be crowded. A mount will slip through spaces—”

“Yes, of course,” Oramen said. “Very well. Puisil, if you would.”

“Sir.” The servant left.

Oramen sighed and boxed his papers. His day had largely been taken up with working on a novel form of musical notation. He had been kept, with the rest of the household, in the cellars of the palace during the early morning, when the Deldeyn had first been expected to break out from the nearby Tower, in case things went badly and they had to flee through subterranean tunnels to a fleet of steam vehicles waiting ready in the city’s lower reaches, but then they had been allowed out when, as expected, the enemy had been met with such prepared force they had soon ceased to be a threat to the city and their attention became focused instead on their own survival.

Mid-morning, he’d been persuaded to climb to a balustraded roof with Shir Rocasse, his tutor, to look out over the stepped palace grounds and the higher reaches of the hilltop city towards the Xiliskine Tower and the battleground that — telegraph reports now stated — stretched almost all around it.

But there had been little to see. Even the sky had appeared entirely devoid of action. The great battle-flocks of caude and lyge that had filled the ancient airs and made the battles of yesteryear seem so romantic were largely gone now; consigned — reduced — to scout patrols, messengering, artillery spotting, and raids that were little better than brigandry. Here on the Eighth such flying warbeasts were widely held to have no significant part to play in modern ground battles, largely due to the machinery and accompanying tactics King Hausk himself had introduced.

There had been rumours that the Deldeyn had steam-powered flying machines, but if these had been present today they must have been in small numbers or had little obvious effect. Oramen had been mildly disappointed, though he thought the better of saying so to his old tutor, who was as patriotic, race-conscious and WorldGodly as any might wish. They came down from the roof, for what were supposed to be lessons.

Shir Rocasse was nearing retirement but had anyway realised during the last short-year that he had little to teach Oramen now, unless it was by rote straight out of a book. These days, the prince preferred to use the palace library unmediated, though he still listened to the old scholar’s advice, not entirely out of sentimentality. He had left Rocasse in the library, wrapt by some dusty set of scrolls, and made his way here, to the round room, where he was even less likely to be disturbed. Well, until now.

“Oramen!” Renneque ran in, darting past Droffo and Fanthile and flinging herself at his feet in a derangement of torn clothing. “I just heard! It can’t be true!” Renneque, the lady Silbe, hooked her arms round his feet, hugging tight. She looked up, her young face livid with tears and grief, brown hair spilling. “Say it’s not? Please? Not both. Not the King and Ferbin too! Not both. Not both. For anything, not both!”

Oramen leant down gently and pulled her up until she knelt before him, her eyes wide, her brows pulled in, her jaw working. He had always thought her rather attractive, and been envious of his elder brother, but now he thought she looked almost ugly in this surfeit of grief. Her hands, having been deprived of the patent reassurance of his feet, now clutched at a plump little World symbol on a thin chain round her neck, twisting it round and round in her fingers, the filigree of smaller shells inside the spherical outer casing all revolving, sliding back and forth, continually adjusting.

Oramen felt quite mature, even old, all of a sudden. “Now, Renneque,” he said, taking her hands and patting them. “We all have to die.”

The girl wailed, throwing herself to the floor again.

“Madam,” Fanthile said, sounding kindly but embarrassed and reaching down to her, then turning to see Mallarh, one of the ladies of court — also looking tearful and distracted — appear in the doorway. Mallarh, perhaps twice Renneque’s age, face pitted with the tiny scars of a childhood infection, bit her lip when she saw the younger woman weeping on the wooden floor. “Please,” Fanthile said to Mallarh, indicating Renneque.

Mallarh persuaded Renneque to rise, then to exit.

“Now, sir…” Fanthile said, before turning to see Harne, the lady Aelsh, the King’s present consort and mother to Ferbin, standing in the doorway, her eyes red, fair hair straggled and unkempt but clothing untorn, her face set and stance steady. Fanthile sighed. “Madam—” he began.

“Just confirm it, Fanthile,” the lady said. “Is it true? The two? Both of mine?”

Fanthile looked at the floor for a moment. “Yes, my lady. Both gone. The King most certainly, the prince by all accounts.”

The lady Aelsh seemed to sag, then slowly drew herself up. She nodded, then made as though to turn away, before stopping to look at Oramen. He looked straight back at her. He rose from his seat, still held by that gaze.

Though they had both sought to conceal it, their mutual dislike was no secret in the palace. His was based on his own mother having been banished in Harne’s favour, while hers was generally assumed to be caused by Oramen’s mere existence. Still, he wanted to say that he was sorry; he wanted to say (at least when he thought more clearly and logically about it later), that he felt for her double loss, that this was an unlooked-for and an unwanted promotion of his status, and that she would suffer no diminution of her own rank by any action or inaction of his either during the coming regency or following his own ascension. But her expression seemed to forbid him from speech, and perhaps even dared him to find anything that might be said that she would not find in some way objectionable.

He struggled against this feeling for some moments, thinking that it was better to say something rather than seem to insult her with silence, but then gave up. There was a saying: Wisdom is Silence. In the end, he simply bowed his head to the lady, saying nothing. He sensed as much as saw her turn and leave.

Oramen looked up again. Well, at least that was over.

“Come, sir,” Fanthile said, holding out one arm. “I’ll ride with you.”

“Will I be all right like this?” Oramen asked. He was dressed most informally, in pants and shirt.

“Throw on a good cloak, sir,” Fanthile suggested. He looked steadily at the younger man as he hesitated, patting the papers he had been working on as though not sure whether to take them with him or not. “You must be distraught, sir,” the palace secretary said levelly.

Oramen nodded. “Yes,” he said, tapping the papers. The topmost sheet was nothing to do with musical notation. As a prince, Oramen had of course been educated in the ways of the aliens who existed beyond his home level and outwith Sursamen itself and, idling earlier, he’d been doodling his name and then attempting to express it as those aliens might:

Oramen lin Blisk-Hausk’r yun Pourl, yun Dich.

Oramen-man, Prince (3/2), Pourlinebrac, 8/Su.

Human Oramen, prince of Pourl, house of Hausk, domain of Sarl, of the Eighth, Sursamen.

Meseriphine-Sursamen/8sa Oramen lin Blisk-Hausk’r dam Pourl.

He reordered the pages, picked up a paperweight and placed it on the pile. “Yes, I must, mustn’t I?”

Just hoisting oneself aboard a mersicor, it appeared, had become rather more complicated than it had ever been before. Oramen had hardly tarried since hearing the news, but even so a considerable fuss had already accrued in the lantern-lit mounting yard by the time he got there.

Accompanied — harried might have been as fit a term — by Fanthile, Oramen had visited his apartments to grab a voluminous riding cloak, suffered Fanthile pulling a comb through his auburn hair and then been rushed down the steps towards the yard, taking care to nod at the various grave faces and sets of wringing hands en route. He had only been held up once, by the Oct ambassador.

The ambassador looked like some sort of giant crab. Its upright, ovoid body — about the size of a child’s torso — was coloured deep blue and covered with tiny bright green growths that were either thin spikes or thick hairs. Its thrice-segmented limbs — four hanging like legs, four seemingly taking the part of arms — were an almost incandescent red, and each terminated in small double claws which were the same blue as the main body. The limbs protruded, not quite symmetrically, in broken-looking Z-shapes from four black stubs which for some reason always reminded Oramen of fleshy cannon mouths.

The creature was supported from the rear and sides by a frame of mirror-finished metal, with bulkier additions behind it which apparently housed the means it used to hover soundlessly in mid-air, occasionally leaking small amounts of strangely scented liquid. A set of tubes led from another cylinder to what was assumed to be its face, set in the middle of its main body and covered with a sort of mask through which tiny bubbles could occasionally be seen to move. Its whole body glistened, and when you looked very closely — and Oramen had — you could see that a very thin membrane of liquid seemed to enclose every part of it, with the possible exception of its little green hairs and the blue claws. The Oct diplomatic mission was housed in an old ballroom in the palace’s sun wing, and was, apparently, completely full of water.

The ambassador and two escorting Oct, one slightly smaller and one a little larger than it, floated over the corridor tiles towards Oramen and Fanthile as they reached the final turn in the stairs. Fanthile stopped when he saw the creatures. Oramen thought better of not doing likewise. He heard the palace secretary sigh.

“Oramen-man, Prince,” Ambassador Kiu-to-Pourl said. Its voice was that of dry leaves rustling, or a small fire starting in tinder. “That who gave that you might be given unto life is no more, as our ancestors, the blessed Involucra, who are no more, to us are. Grief is to be experienced, thereto related emotions, and much. I am unable to share, being. Nevertheless. And forbearance I commend unto you. One assumes. Likely, too, assumption takes place. Fruitions. Energy transfers, like inheritance, and so we share. You; we. As though in the way of pressure, in subtle conduits we do not map well.”

Oramen stared at the thing, wondering what he was supposed to make of this apparent nonsense. In his experience the ambassador’s tangential utterances could be made to represent some sort of twisted sense if you thought about them long enough — preferably after writing them down — but he didn’t really have the time just now.

“Thank you for your kind words,” he blurted, nodding and backing towards the stairs.

The ambassador drew back a fraction, leaving a tiny pool of moisture glistening on the tiles. “Keep you. Go to that which you go to. Take that which I would give you. Knowing of alike-ness. Oct — Inheritors — descend from Veil, inherit. You, inherit. Also, is pity.”

“With your leave, sir,” Fanthile said to the ambassador, then he and Oramen bowed, turned and went clattering down the last flight of stairs towards ground level.

The fuss in the mounting yard mostly involved a whole blaring coven of dukes, earls and knights disputing loudly over who ought to ride with the Prince Regent on the short journey he was about to make to meet the body of the returning king.

Oramen hung back in the shadows, arms folded, waiting for his mount to be brought before him. He stepped backwards into a pile of dung near the yard’s tall rear wall and tutted, shaking some of the shit from his boot and attempting to scrape off the rest on the wall. The dung pile was still steaming. He wondered if you could tell what sort of animal had left the turd from its appearance and consistency. Probably, he imagined.

He looked straight up at the sky. There, still visible over the lanterns illuminating the mounting yard from the ensquaring walls, a dull red line marked the cooling course incised by the Rollstar Pentrl, many hours set and many days away from returning. He looked to the nearpole, where Domity would rise next, but this was a relatively long night, and even the Rollstar’s forelight was still some hours away. He thought he could see just a suggestion of the Keande-yiine Tower, stretching into the darkness above — the lower extent of the Xiliskine, though nearer, was hidden by a tall tower of the palace — but he was not sure. Xiliskine. Or 213tower52. That was the name their mentors, the Oct, would give it. He supposed he ought to prefer Xiliskine.

He returned his attention to the yard. So many nobles. He’d assumed they’d all be out fighting the Deldeyn. But then, his father had long since drawn a firm distinction between those nobles who brought grace and emollience to a court and those who were capable of successfully fighting a modern war. The levied troops, magnificently motley, led by their lords, still had their place, but the New Army was part full-time professional and part well-trained people’s militias, all of it commanded by captains, majors, colonels and generals, not knights, lords, earls and dukes. He spotted some senior priests and a few parliamentarians in the mixture too, pressing their suit for inclusion. He had fondly imagined riding out alone, or with one or two attendants. Instead it looked like he would be leading out a small army of his own.

Oramen had been advised not to have anything to do with the battle taking place out over the plains that day, and anyway had no real interest in it, given that they had all been most severely assured it was quite certain to go their way by Werreber, one of his father’s most forbidding generals, just the night before. It was a pity, in a way. Only a couple of years ago he’d have been fascinated with the machinery of war and all the careful dispositioning of forces involved. The intense numericality of its planning and the extreme functionality of its cruel workings would have consumed him.

Somehow, though, since then he’d lost interest in things martial. They seemed, even as they were in the process of securing it, profoundly inimical to the modern age they’d help usher in. War itself was becoming old-fashioned and outmoded. Inefficient, wasteful, fundamentally destructive, it would have no part in the glitteringly pragmatic future the greatest minds of the kingdom foresaw.

Only people like his father would mourn such a passing. He would celebrate it.

“My prince,” murmured a voice beside him.

Oramen turned. “Tove!” he said, clapping the other young man on the back. Tove Lomma had been his best friend almost since nursery. He was an army officer nowadays and wore the uniform of the old Flying Corps. “You’re here! I thought you’d be fighting! How good to see you!”

“They’ve had me in one of the lyge towers the last few days, with a squadron of the beasts. Light guns. In case there was an aerial attack. Listen.” He put one hand on Oramen’s arm. “This is so bad about your father and Ferbin. The stars would weep, Oramen. I can’t tell you. All the men of the flight… Well, we want you to know we’re at your command.”

“Rather, at Loesp’s.”

“He is your champion in this, Oramen. He’ll serve you well, I’m sure.”

“As am I.”

“Your father, though; our dear king, our every—” Tove’s voice broke. He shook his head and looked away, biting his lip and sniffing hard.

Oramen felt he had to comfort his old friend. “Well, he died happy, I imagine,” he said. “In battle, and victorious, as he’d have wished. As we’d all have wished. Anyway.” He took a quick look round the mêlée in the yard. The contesting nobles seemed to be gathering themselves into some sort of order but there was still no sign of his charger. He’d have been quicker in the steam car after all. “It is a shock,” he continued. Tove was still looking away. “I shall miss him. Miss him… well, terribly. Obviously.” Tove looked back at him. Oramen smiled broadly and blinked quickly. “Truth be told, I think I’m like a half-stunned beast, still walking around, but eyes crossed as wits. I fully expect to wake up at any moment. I’d do so now, if it was in my power.”

When Tove looked back, his eyes were bright. “I’ve heard that when the troops learned their beloved king was dead, they fell upon their captives and killed every one.”

“I hope not,” Oramen said. “That was not my father’s policy.”

“They killed him, Oramen! Those beasts! I wish I’d been there too, to take my own revenge.”

“Well, neither of us were. We must hope what’s been done in our name brings only honour.”

Tove nodded slowly, clutching Oramen’s arm once more. “You must be strong, Oramen,” he said.

Oramen gazed at his old friend. Strong, indeed. This was quite the most vapid thing Tove had ever said to him. Death obviously had an odd effect on people.

“So,” Tove said, with a sly, tentative smile, “do we call you sire or majesty or something yet?”

“Not yet…” Oramen began, then was led away by an earl and assisted to his mount by dukes.

On the Xilisk road, near the small town of Evingreath, the cortège bearing the body of King Nerieth Hausk back to his capital met with the barely smaller procession led by the prince Oramen. Immediately he saw the Prince Regent, lit by hissing travel lanterns and the slow-increasing forelight of the Rollstar Domity, still some hours from its dawn, Mertis tyl Loesp, who all the world knew had been like a third hand to the King for almost all his life, dismounted and, pulling himself with heavy steps to the prince’s charger, went down on one knee on the muddied road, head bowed, so that his silvery hair — spiked and wild from the tearings of grief — and his distraught face — still dark with powder smoke and streaked by hot, unceasing tears — were level with the stirruped foot of the prince. Then he raised his head and said these words:

“Sir, our beloved master, the King, who was your father and my friend, and was friend and father to all his people, comes back to his throne in triumph, but also in death. Our victory has been great, and complete, and our gain and new advantage immeasurable. Only our loss exceeds such vast accomplishment, but it does so by a ratio beyond calculation. Beside that hateful cost, for all its furious glory, our triumph these last hours now looks like nothing. Your father was full occasion for both; one would not have been but for his matchless leadership and steady purpose, the other was invoked by his untimely, unwanted, undeserved death.

“And so, it is fallen to me, and is my great, if ever-unlooked-for privilege, to rule for the short interval between this most loathsome day and the glorious one of your accession. I beseech you, sir; believe me that whatever I do in your name, my lord, will be for you and the people of Sarl, and always in the name of the WorldGod. Your father would expect no less, and in this cause, so great to us, I might begin to start some small repayment of the honour he did me. I honour you as I honoured him, sir — utterly, with all my being, with my every thought and every action, now and for as long as it is my duty so to do.

“I have today lost the best friend a man ever had, sir; a true light, a constant star whose fixity outshone, outstared any mere celestial lamp. The Sarl have lost the greatest commander they have ever known, a name fit to be clamoured down the aeons till time’s end and echo loud as that of any hero of the distant ancients amongst the unseen stars. We can never hope to be a tenth as great as he, but I take respite in only this: the truly great are strong beyond death itself, my lord, and, like the fading streak of light and heat a great star leaves behind it once its own true brilliance has been obscured, a legacy of power and wisdom remains from which we may draw strength, by its focus magnifying our own small allotment of fortitude and will.

“Sir, if I seem to express myself inelegantly, or without the due respect I would give your station and your self, forgive me. My eyes are blinded, my ears stopped and my mouth made numb by all that’s taken place today. To gain more than we thought possible, then lose an infinity more than even that, would have shattered any man, save only the one unmatched soul it is our sad, abhorrent duty to bring before you here.”

Tyl Loesp fell silent. Oramen knew he was expected to say something in return. He’d been doing his best to ignore the prattling dukes around him for the last half-hour, after Fanthile had briefly made it through the press of bodies, animal and human, surrounding him, to warn him he might need to give a speech. The palace secretary had barely had time to impart even this morsel of advice before he and his mount were nudged and jostled out of the way, back to what the more splendid nobles obviously regarded as his proper place amongst the minor nobility, the dutifully wailing priests and dour-looking parliamentarians. Since then Oramen had been trying to come up with something suitable. But what was he supposed to say, or do?

He glanced at the various resplendent nobles around him, all of whom, from their grave, almost exaggerated nods and mutterings, seemed to approve quite mightily of Mertis tyl Loesp’s speech. Oramen twisted briefly in his saddle to glimpse Fanthile — now still further back in the crush of junior nobles, priests and representatives — signalling, with jerks of his head and jagged flaps of his hand that he ought to dismount.

He did so. Already a small crowd of dismounted men and people presumably from the nearby town and countryside had gathered around them, filling the broad way and jostling for position on the roadside banks. The growing forelight, pre-dawn under a sky of scattered clouds, silhouetted some folk climbing nearby trees for a better view. He still had no idea what to say in return, though he suddenly thought what a fine subject for a painting such a scene might make. Oramen took tyl Loesp by one hand and got him to stand before him.

“Thank you for all you’ve said and done, dear tyl Loesp,” he told the older man. He was very aware of the contrast between the two of them; he the slight prince, barely out of childish clothes and dressed beneath his thrown-back cloak as though preparing for bed, the other the all-powerful conquering warrior, still in his battle armour — flecked here and there with all the marks of war — three times his age and barely any younger or less impressive than the lately killed king.

Harsh-breathing, stern-faced, still stinking of blood and smoke, bearing all the signs of mortal combat and unbearable grief, tyl Loesp towered over him. The drama of the scene was not lost on Oramen. This would make a good painting, he thought, especially by one of the old masters — say Dilucherre, or Sordic. Perhaps even Omoulldeo. And almost at the same moment, he knew what to do; he’d steal.

Not from a painting, of course, but from a play. There were enough old tragedies with like scenes and suitable speeches for him to welcome back a dozen dead dads and doughty combateers; the choice was more daunting than the task it might relieve. He’d recall, pick, edit, join and extemporise his way through the moment.

“This is indeed our saddest day,” Oramen said, raising his voice, and his head. “If any energies of yours could bring our father back, I know you’d devote them to that cause without stint. That vigour instead will be turned to the good interest of all our people. You bring us sorrow and joy at once, my good tyl Loesp, but for all the misery we feel now, and for all the time we must rightly hence devote to the mourning of our incomparable fallen, the satisfaction of this great victory will still shine brightly when that rite has been most fully observed, and my father would surely want it so.

“The sum of his most glorious life was cause for fervent celebration well before the great triumph of this day, and the weight of that result has grown only more majestic with the exploits of all who fought for him before the Xiliskine Tower.” Oramen looked round the gathered people for a moment at this point, and attempted to raise his voice still further. “My father took one son to war today, and left one, myself, at home. I have lost both a father and a brother, as well as my king and his loved and rightful heir. They outshine me in death as they did in life, and Mertis tyl Loesp, though having no lack of other responsibilities, must stand in place of both for me. I tell you, I can think of no one more fitted to the task.” Oramen nodded towards the grim-faced warrior in front of him, then he took a breath, and, still addressing the assembled mass, said, “I know I have no share of this day’s glory — I think my boyish shoulders would fail beneath the smallest part of such a load — but I am proud to stand with all the Sarl people, to celebrate and to honour the great deeds done and pay the fullest respect to one who taught us celebration, encouraged us to honour and exemplified respect.”

This fetched a cheer, which rose raggedly then with increasing strength from the congregation of people gathered around them. Oramen heard shields being struck by swords, mailed fists beating on armoured chests and, like a modern comment on such flowery antiquity, the loud crack of small arms fire, rounds spent into the air like some inverted hail.

Mertis tyl Loesp, who had kept a stony face during Oramen’s reply, looked very briefly surprised — even alarmed — at its end, but that briefest of impressions — which might so easily have been the result of the uncertain light cast by the carried travel lanterns and the wan glow of a still unrisen minor star — was close to uncapturably short-lived, and easily dismissible.

“May I see my father, sir?” Oramen asked. He found that his heart was beating hard and his breath was quick; still he did his best to maintain a calm and dignified demeanour, as he gathered was expected. Nevertheless, if he was expected to wail and scream and tear out his hair when he saw the body, this impromptu audience was going to be disappointed.

“He is here, sir,” tyl Loesp said, indicating the long carriage pulled by hefters behind him.

They walked to the carriage, the crowd of men, mostly armed, many with all the appearance of great distress, parting for them. Oramen saw the tall, spare frame of General Werreber, who’d briefed them at the palace about the battle just the night before, and the Exaltine Chasque, the chief of priests. Both nodded to him. Werreber looked old and tired and somehow — despite his height — shrunken inside his crumpled uniform. He nodded, then cast his gaze downwards. Chasque, resplendent in rich vestments over gleaming armour, formed the sort of clenched, encouraging half-smile people sometimes did when they wanted to tell you to be brave or strong.

They climbed on to the platform where Oramen’s father lay. The body was attended by a couple of priests in appropriately torn vestments and lit from above by a single hissing, sputtering travel lamp casting a white, caustic light over the bier. His father’s face looked grey and still and drawn-down somehow, as though he was pondering — eyes shut, jaws set — some overwhelmingly demanding problem. A silvery sheet embroidered with gold covered his body from the neck down.

Oramen stood looking at him for a while. In time he said, “In life, by choice, his deeds spoke for him. In death, I must be as mute as all his undone undertakings.” He clapped tyl Loesp on the arm. “I’ll sit with him while we return to the city.” He looked behind the gun carriage. A mersicor, a great charger, dis-armoured though in full regalia, was tied to its rear, saddle empty. “Is that…?” he began, then made a show of clearing his throat. “That’s my father’s mount,” he said.

“It is,” tyl Loesp confirmed.

“And my brother’s?”

“Unfound, sir.”

“Let my mount be tied to the end of the carriage too, behind my father’s.”

He went to sit at his father’s head, then, imagining Fanthile’s face, thought that might be held inappropriate, and repositioned himself at the foot of the bier.

He sat there at the trailing edge of the carriage, cross-legged, looking down, while the two mersicors loped along just behind, breath steaming in the increasingly misty air. The whole aggregated column of men, animals and wagons made the rest of the journey to the city in a silence broken only by the creak of wheel and axle, the snap of whip and the snort and clop of beast. The morning mists obscured the rising star of the new day almost until the walls of Pourl itself, then lifted slowly to become a layer of overcast that hid the higher city and the palace.

On the approaches to the Nearpole Gate, where a conglomeration of small factories and what was effectively a new town had sprung up within Oramen’s lifetime, the temporary sun shone only for a little while, then was gone again behind the clouds.

3. Folly

Choubris Holse found his master in the eighth of the distinct places where he thought he might actually be, which was, of course, a significant and most propitious location to discover somebody or something a person was looking for. It was also the last place he knew of to look with any purpose beyond simply wandering randomly; indeed, with this in mind, he had left it to the afternoon of his second day of searching specifically with the hope that this might finally be where Ferbin had fetched up.

The folly looked like a small castle poised on a low cliff overlooking a turn in the river Feyrla. It was just a hollow round of walls, really, with crenellations, and had been built, pre-ruined, as it were, to improve the view from a hunting lodge a little further down the valley. It had been a place, Choubris Holse knew, where the King’s children had played while their father — on one of his infrequent spells at home from his various Wars of Unity — went hunting.

Choubris tethered his rowel by the single low door to the ruin and left it noisily cropping moss from the wall. The mersicor trailing behind the rowel, brought in case he found his master mountless, nibbled daintily at some flowers. Holse preferred rowels to mersicors — they were less skittish and harder working. He might have taken a flying beast, he supposed, but he trusted those even less. Royal servants above a certain rank were expected to be able to fly, and he had suffered the instruction — and the instructors, who had not spared him their opinion that such honour was wasted upon one so coarse — but had not enjoyed the learning.

A proper searching, like so many things, was best done on foot, from the ground. Hurling oneself grandly across the sky was all very well and certainly gave the impression of lordly oversight and superiority, but what it really did was give you the opportunity to miss all details at once, rather than one at a time, which was the ration for decent folk. Plus, as a rule — a most fixed and strict rule, it had long struck Choubris — it was the people who had to make things work on the ground who ended up paying for such sweepingly overgeneralised judgementing. This principle seemed to apply to high-ups of all distinctions, whether their height was literal or metaphorical.

“Sir?” he called into the hollow round of stones. His voice echoed. The masonry was ill-dressed, worse within than without. The lower tier of piercings — much too wide for any real fortification — gave out on to pleasant views of hill and forest. The Xiliskine Tower rose pale and vast in the distance, disappearing beyond the clouds into the heavens. Plumes of smoke and wisps of steam were scattered across the landscape like missed stalks after a harvest, all leaning away from the backing wind.

He limped further into the folly. His left leg still hurt from where that seed-brained mersicor had fallen on him the day before. He was getting too old for such shenanigans; he was in his middle years now and starting to fill out nicely and become distinguished (or develop a paunch and become grey and grizzled, by his wife’s less forgiving measure). His whole side, every rib, pained him when he took a deep breath, or tried to laugh. Not that there’d been much laughing.

Choubris had seen many signs of battle while he’d been riding round the area: whole wastelands of torn-up fields and shattered forests, the land raddled with a pox of craters; entire woods and brush forests still on fire, smoke walling the sky, other fires only just exhausted or extinguished, leaving vast black tracts of razed ground, seeping wispy fumes; the wrecks of smashed war machines lying crippled like enormous broken insects with tracks unrolled behind them, a few still leaking steam; some great dead battle beasts, spread crumpled and forlorn — uoxantch, chunsels and ossesyi, plus a couple of types he didn’t recognise.

He’d seen bands of wounded troops, walking in lines or borne on carts and wagons, groups of soldiers dashing about importantly on mersicors, a few airborne men on caude, slowly crisscrossing, dipping and wheeling when searching for any still surviving enemy or stray fallen, or making straight and fast if bearing messages. He’d passed engineers rigging or repairing telegraph lines, and thrice he’d pulled off roads and tracks to let hissing, spitting, smoke-belching steam vehicles past. He’d patted and comforted the old rowel, even though she’d seemed unbothered.

He’d come, too, upon numerous details digging charnel pits for the enemy dead, of which there seemed a great many. The Deldeyn, Holse thought, looked much like normal folk. Perhaps a little darker, though that might have been the effect of death itself.

He’d stopped and talked to anybody willing to spare the time, pretty much regardless of rank, partly to enquire about missing nobles on white chargers, mostly because, as he would freely admit, he enjoyed flapping his jaw. He took a little crile root with the captain of one company, shared a pipe of unge with a sergeant from another and was grateful to a quartermaster-lieutenant for a bottle of strong wine. Most of the soldiers were more than happy to talk about their part in the battle, though not all. The mass-burial men, in particular, tended to the taciturn, even surly. He heard a few interesting things, as any fellow open to easy discourse was bound to.

“Prince?” he yelled, louder, voice echoing off the rough stones inside the folly. “Sir? Are you here?” He frowned and shook his head beneath the open crown of the empty tower. “Ferbin?” he shouted.

He ought not to call his master by his name like that, but then it looked like the prince wasn’t here after all, and there was a thrill to be had from such address. Roundly insulting one’s superiors behind their backs was one of the perks of being inferior, Choubris held. Besides, he’d been told often enough that he could use the familiar term, though such licence was only ever offered when Ferbin was very drunk. The offer was never renewed in sobriety so Choubris had thought the better of acting on the privilege.

He wasn’t here. Maybe he wasn’t anywhere, alive. Maybe the gaudy dope had accorded himself war hero status by mistake, riding neck-clutch like a terrified child wherever his idiot mount had taken him, to be shot by one side or other or fall off a cliff. Knowing Ferbin, he’d probably thought to raise his head again just as he went charging under an overhanging bough.

Choubris sighed. That was it, then. There was nowhere obvious left to look. He could wander the great battlefield pretending to search for his lost master, skipping through triage pens, inhabiting field hospitals and haunting morgue piles all he liked, but, unless the WorldGod took a most unlikely personal interest in his quest, he’d never find the blighter. At this rate he’d be forced to return to his wife and children, in the littler though hardly less savage battlefield that was their apartment in the palace barracks.

And now who’d have him? He’d lost a prince (if you wanted to take an uncharitable view of the matter, and he knew plenty that would); what were the chances he’d get to serve any other quality again, with that recorded against him? The King was dead and tyl Loesp was in charge, at least until the boy prince came of age. Choubris had a feeling in his gut that a lot of things — things that had seemed settled and comfortable and pleasantly just-so for honest, respectable, hard-working people — would change from here onwards. And the chances of a proven prince-misplacer bettering himself under any regime were unlikely to be good. He shook his head, sighed to himself. “What a sorry mess,” he muttered. He turned to go.

“Choubris? Is it you?”

He turned back. “Hello?” he said, unable to see where the voice had come from. A sudden feeling inside his belly informed him, somewhat to his surprise, that he must have a degree of genuine human fondness for Prince Ferbin after all. Or perhaps he was just glad not, in fact, to be a prince-loser.

There was movement up on one wall, at the base of one of the impractically wide windows on the second tier; a man, crawling out of a fissure in the rough stonework that was mostly hidden by a rustling tangle of wallcreep. Choubris hadn’t even noticed the hidey-hole. Ferbin completed his emergence, crawled to the edge of the window ledge, rubbed his eyes and looked down at his servant.

“Choubris!” he said, in a sort of loud whisper. He glanced around, as though afraid. “It is you! Thank God!”

“I already have, sir. And you might thank me, for such diligence in the looking.”

“Is there anybody with you?” the prince hissed.

“Only the aforesaid deity, sir, if the more insistent priests are to be believed.”

Ferbin looked most unkempt, and unslept, too. He glanced about the place again. “Nobody else?”

“An old though dependable rowel, sir. And for yourself—”

“Choubris! I am in the most terrible danger!”

Choubris scratched behind one ear. “Ah. With respect, sir, you might not be aware; we did win the battle.”

“I know that, Choubris! I’m not an idiot!”

Choubris frowned, but remained silent.

“You’re absolutely sure there’s nobody else about?”

Choubris looked back to the small door, then up at the sky. “Well, there are lots of people about, sir; half the Greater Army is tidying up or licking its wounds after our famous victory.” It was beginning to dawn on Choubris that he might have the ticklish job of telling the prince that his father was dead. This ought to mean, of course, that Ferbin was effectively king, but Choubris knew people could be funny regarding that whole good news/bad news business. “I am alone, sir,” he told Ferbin. “I don’t know what else to tell you. Perhaps you’d best get down from there.”

“Yes! I can’t stay here for ever.” The drop was easily jumpable, but Ferbin made to turn round and lower himself half way to the earthen floor of the folly. Choubris sighed and stood by the wall to help. “Choubris, have you anything to drink or eat?” Ferbin asked. “I’m parched and famished!”

“Wine, water, bread and saltmeat, sir,” Choubris said, forming a stirrup with his hands, back against the wall. “My saddle bags are like a travelling victualler’s.”

Ferbin lowered one boot to his servant’s hands, narrowly avoiding scarring him with his spur. “Wine? What sort?”

“Fortified, sir. Better so than this place.” Choubris took the prince’s weight in his cupped hands and grunted in pain as he lowered him.

“Are you all right?” Ferbin asked when he was on the ground. He looked frightened, grey with worry or shock or something or other. His clothes were filthy and his long fair hair all tangled and matted. Also, he smelled of smoke. Choubris had never seen him look so distressed. He was crouched, too; Choubris was used to looking up to his prince, but they were of a level now.

“No, sir, I’m not all right. I had a beast fall on me in the confusion yesterday.”

“Of course! Yes, I saw. Quick, let’s crouch down here.” Ferbin pulled Choubris to one side, by a tall bush. “No, wait; fetch me something to eat and drink. If you see anybody, don’t tell them I’m here!”

“Sir,” Choubris said, deciding to humour the fellow for now. Probably all he needed was something in his belly.

As the traitors and regicides set to burn the old building, having taken themselves and the bodies of the murdered outside, Ferbin had started looking for a way out.

He felt dazed, stunned, half dead himself. His vision seemed to have shrunk, or his eyes would not move properly in their orbits, because he seemed only able to see straight ahead. His ears appeared to think he was near a great waterfall or in a high tower in a storm, for he could hear a terrible roaring noise all about him that he knew was not really there, as if the WorldGod, even the World itself, was shrieking in horror at the foulness of what had been done in that awful ruin.

He’d waited for people loyal to the King to come rushing in when they heard the shots that killed the priest and the young medic, but nobody did. Others had appeared, but they seemed calm and unconcerned and merely helped move the bodies and bring some kindling and lampstone to start the fire. They were all traitors here, he thought; to reveal himself now would be to die like the others.

He’d crept away, sick and weak with the shock of it, barely able to stand. He climbed to the next highest floor by steps set against the building’s rear wall, as they lit the fires below. Smoke came up quickly, initially grey then turning black, filling the already shadowy spaces of the antique factory with still greater darkness and making him choke. At first most of the fumes made for the great hole in the gable wall, but then they thickened around him, stinging in his nose and throat. Had the sound of crackling and roaring below not been so loud, he’d have feared being heard outside as he hacked and coughed. He looked for windows on the side of the building where he’d crawled and climbed, but could see nothing.

He found more steps, leading him still further up, into what must be the building’s loft and felt along the wall with his fingers, coughing now with every breath, until he found what appeared to be a window. He pulled at a shutter, pushed at some already broken glass, and it gave. Smoke surged out around him. He stuck his head forward, gulping in cool clear air.

But he was too high up! Even if there was nobody on this side to see him, he’d never survive the fall uninjured. He looked out, dipping his head beneath the current of smoke and heat exiting around and above him. He expected to see a track or yard, four storeys below. Instead he stung himself on a rain-sticky brattle bush. He felt down and his hand closed on damp earth. In the vague red afterlight of a long-set sun, he saw that he was, incredibly, somehow back to ground level. The building was situated on a river bank so steep that one side was fully four floors high while the other, pressed against the valley’s steep side, was barely one.

He pulled himself out, still coughing, and crawled away across rain-wet, glutinously muddy ground to wait beneath some nearby bushes while the abandoned building burned.

“All due respect and such, sir, but have you gone mad?”

“Choubris, I swear on the WorldGod, on my dead father’s body, it’s just as I’ve said.”

Choubris Holse had noticed earlier, while his master was swallowing wine from the upended bottle and tearing off lumps of bread with his teeth — it seemed that take away the table and you took away the accompanying manners — that Prince Ferbin was unarmed while he, of course, still had his trusty short-knife on his belt, not to mention an army pistol issued a couple of days ago he seemed to have forgotten to return and which was tucked into his waistband by the small of his back. Not to mention — and he rarely did — a small but exceedingly sharp emergency knife reassuringly scabbarded down one boot. These facts had, he judged, just gone from being of barely passing interest to moderately important, given that it now appeared he was dealing with a bizarrely deluded madman.

Ferbin put the bottle down and let the end of the bread drop to his lap, setting his head back against the wall of the ruin, as though looking up through the foliage of the bush he’d insisted they hide beneath before he’d been prepared to break his fast. “Even you don’t believe me!” he cried, despairing. He put his head in his hands and wept.

Choubris was taken aback. He’d never seen the prince weep like this, not sober (everybody knew that to drink was to increase the hydrographical pressure within a body, thus expressing the relevant fluids from all available bodily orifices, so that didn’t count).

He ought to try to comfort him somehow. Perhaps he’d misunderstood. He’d try to get the matter clear.

“Sir, are you really saying that,” he began, then he too looked round as though afraid of being overheard, “that tyl Loesp, your father’s best friend; the glove to his hand, the very edge of his sword and all that, murdered your father?” He spoke the word in a whisper.

Ferbin looked at him with a face of such desperate fury and despair that Choubris felt himself flinch at the sight of it. “Plunged his filthy fist into my father’s chest and wrung the living force out of his beating heart!” Ferbin said, his voice sounding like it never had; all gasped and rough and wild. He sucked in a terrible, faltering breath, as though each atom of air hesitated in his mouth before being hauled howling to his lungs. “I saw it clear as I see you now, Choubris.” He shook his head, his eyes filling with tears and his lips curling back. “And if trying to think it away, if trying to persuade myself I was in any way mistaken, or drugged, or hallucinating, or dreaming could make it so, then by God I’d jump at that, I’d welcome that with both arms, both legs and a kiss. A million times over I’d rather be safely mad having imagined what I saw than know my only derangement is the grief of having seen what did take place!” That last phrase he roared into his servant’s face, one hand grasping the collar at Choubris’ throat.

Choubris put one hand behind his back, partly to steady himself so that he did not fall over backwards and partly to bring the army pistol within quick reach. Then his master’s face went slack and he seemed to crumple in on himself. He put one hand on each of Choubris’ shoulders and let his head fall to his servant’s chest, wailing, “Oh, Choubris! If you don’t believe me, who will?”

Choubris felt the heat of the other man’s face upon his breast, and a dampness spread across his shirt. He lifted his hand to pat the prince’s head, but that seemed too much like the action one would take with a woman or a child, and he let his hand fall back again. He felt shaken. Even at his most raucously or self-pityingly drunken, the prince had never seemed so moved, so affected, so distressed, by anything; not the death of his elder brother, not losing a beloved mount to a wager, not realising his father thought him a dolt and a wastrel — nothing.

“Sir,” Choubris said, taking the prince by his shoulders and setting him upright again. “This is too much for me to absorb at the single sitting. I too would rather think my own dear master mad than entertain the possibility that what he says is true, for if it’s so then — by God — we are all halfway to madness and the heavens themselves might fall upon us now and cause no increase in disaster or disbelief.” Ferbin was biting both his quivering lips together, like a child trying not to cry. Choubris reached out and patted one of his hands. “Let me tell you what I’ve heard, various but consistent from a mixture of guileless strapping military types, and seen on an army news sheet, too; what is the official and authorised version, as you might say. Perhaps hearing this will make a compromise in your poor head with the fever possessing you.”

Ferbin laughed bitterly, putting his head back again and sobbing even while he seemed to smile. He raised the wine bottle to his lips, then let it fall aside, dropping it to the bare ground. “Pass me the water; I’ll pray some dead cur upstream polluted it, so I may poison myself by mouth as you pour it in at my ear. A job worth doing!”

Choubris cleared his throat to hide his astonishment. This was unprecedented; Ferbin putting aside a bottle unfinished. He was mad with something all right. “Well, sir. They say the King died of his wound — a small-cannon shot to his right side.”

“So much half accurate. The wound was to his right.”

“His death was easy, if solemn, and witnessed, not an hour’s ride from here, in an old manufactury, since burned.”

“By them. They burned it.” Ferbin sniffed at one sleeve. “And nearly me.” He shook his head. “I almost would they had,” he finished, though this collided with:

“His death was witnessed by tyl Loesp, the Exaltine Chasque, the General—”

“What?” Ferbin protested angrily. “Chasque wasn’t there! A lowly road-priest was all he had — and even he tyl Loesp killed! Blew his brains out!”

“And also by the doctors Gillews and Tareah and—”

“Gillews,” Ferbin broke in. “Gillews alone, save for his assistant — another casualty of tyl Loesp’s pistol.”

“Also the General — begging your pardon, now the Field Marshal — Werreber and several of his sta—”

“Lies! Lies upon lies! They weren’t there!”

“It’s said they were, sir. And that the King ordered the killing of all the Deldeyn captured. Though, to admit the difference, others say the troops themselves embarked upon this sorry course on hearing of your father’s death, in a fury of deadly vengeance. I grant this does not seem settled yet.”

“And when it is, it will be to the advantage of tyl Loesp and his filthy accomplices.” Ferbin shook his head. “My father ordered no such crime. This does him no honour. This is made to sap his reputation before he’s even laid to rest. Lies, Choubris. Lies.” He shook his head again. “All lies.”

“The whole army believes it true, sir. As does the palace, I’d guess, and all who can read or hear, in Pourl and in the full throughoutness of the land, as fast as wire or beast or whatever other inferiority of messaging can carry the news.”

“Still,” Ferbin said bitterly, “even if I were alone in knowing what happened, I know it still.”

Choubris scratched behind one ear. “If the whole world thinks differently, sir, is that even wise?”

Ferbin looked at his servant with an unsettling straightness. “And you’d have me do what, Choubris?”

“Eh? Why — well — sir, come back with me to the palace, and be the King!”

“And not be shot as an imposter?”

“An imposter, sir?”

“Enlighten me; what is my status according to this established version of how things are?”

“Well, yes, you’re correct in that you have been ascribed dead, but — surely — on sight of your good self…”

“I’d not be killed on the instant of being seen?”

“Why killed at all?”

“Because I don’t know the all of who is and who is not part of this treachery! Those I saw at the death, yes; guilty beyond guilt. The others? Chasque? Werreber? Did they know? Did they just claim to be present at this fictitious, easy death, to help support whatever circumstance they were presented with by those who’d wrought the crime? Do they suspect nothing? Something? All? Were they part of it from the beginning, every one? Tyl Loesp is culprit, and no one was closer to my father. Who else might not be guilty? Tell me: have you not heard warnings against spies, snipers, saboteurs and guerrillas?”

“Some, sir.”

“Were there any orders of particular strictness you heard of regarding those who suddenly appeared, within the greater battlefield, resembling authority?”

“Well, just latterly, yes, sir, but—”

“Which means that I’ll be held, then shot. In the back, I don’t doubt, so they can say I was trying to escape. Or d’you think such things never happen, in army or militia?”

“They—”

“And if I did get as far as the palace, the same applies. How long might I survive? Long enough to tell the truth in front of a quorate sufficient to carry the day? I think not. Long enough to challenge tyl Loesp, or confront the wretch? Beyond doubt? Beyond the grave, I’d say.” He shook his head. “No, I have thought long about this over the last day, and can see quite clearly the merits of the contending courses, but also I know my instincts, and they have proved unfailingly trustworthy in the past.” This was true; Ferbin’s instincts had always told him to flee trouble or potential conflict — rowdies, creditors, angry fathers of shamed daughters — and, whether escaping to the shelter of an obscure bawdy house, a congenially distant hunting lodge or indeed the palace itself, this intuition had invariably proved itself sound.

“Either way, sir, you can’t hide here for ever.”

“I know that. And I am besides not the one to enter into any such contention with the tyl Loesps of this world. I know they have the guile on me, and the easy turn to brute.”

“Well, God knows, I’m not such a one either, sir.”

“I must escape, Choubris.”

“Escape, sir?”

“Oh, indeed; escape. Escape far, far away, and seek sanctuary with or find a champion in one of two people I never imagined I’d have to trouble for so demeaning a favour. I suppose I ought to be thankful I have any sort of choice, or just two chances.”

“And they would be, sir?”

“First we must get ourselves to a Tower fitted out for travel — I have an idea for obtaining the necessary documents,” Ferbin said, almost as though talking to himself. “Then we shall have ourselves transported to the Surface and take ship away across the stars, to Xide Hyrlis, who generals for the Nariscene now and who may take up our cause for the love of my dead father, and if he is unable to do so, then at least he might signpost the route… To Djan,” Ferbin told Holse with what sounded like sudden weariness. “Anaplia’s daughter. Who was raised to be fit to marry a prince and then found herself dowried to the mongrel alien empire that calls itself the Culture.”

4. In Transit

Utaltifuhl, the Grand Zamerin of Sursamen-Nariscene, in charge of all Nariscene interests on the planet and its accompanying solar system and therefore — by the terms of the mandate the Nariscene held under the auspices of the Galactic General Council — as close as one might get to overall ruler of both, was just beginning the long journey to the 3044th Great Spawning of the Everlasting Queen on the far-distant home planet of his kind when he met the director general of the Morthanveld Strategic Mission to the Tertiary Hulian Spine — paying a courtesy call to the modest but of course influential Morthanveld embassy on Sursamen — in the Third Equatorial Transit Facility high above Sursamen’s dark, green-blue pocked Surface.

The Nariscene were insectile; the Zamerin was six-limbed and keratin-covered. His dark, quintuply segmented body, a little under a metre and a half long (excluding stalks, mandibles retracted), was studded with implanted jewels, inlaid veins of precious metals, additional sensory apparatus, numerous tiny holo-projectors displaying the many medals, honours, distinctions and decorations that had come his way over the years and a smattering of light weaponry, mostly ceremonial.

The Grand Zamerin was accompanied by a bevy of his kind, all rather less impressively dressed and slightly smaller than he. They were, additionally, if that was the right word, neuters. They tended to move through the cavernous, web-filled spaces of the transit facility in an arrowhead formation, with the Grand Zamerin forming its tip.

The Morthanveld were spiniform waterworlders. The director general was a milky-looking sphere a metre or so in diameter surrounded by hundreds of spiny protrusions of varying thicknesses and in a broad spectrum of pastel colours. Her spines were mostly either curled up or gathered back at the moment, giving her a compact, streamlined appearance. She carried her environment around with her in a glistening wrap of silvery blue, membranes and fields containing her own little sample of oceanic fluids. She wore a few small spine torques, bracelets and rings. She was accompanied by a trio of more stoutly built assistants toting so much equipment they looked armoured.

The transit facility was a micro-gravity environment and lightly pressured with a gently warmed gaseous nitrogen-oxygen mix; the web of life-support strands that infested it were coded by colour, scent, texture and various other markers to make them obvious to those who might need to use them. One identified the right strand in the web and hooked into it to receive that which one needed to survive; oxygen, chlorine, salty water or whatever. The system couldn’t accommodate every known life form without requiring them to protect themselves in a suit or mask, but it represented the best compromise its Nariscene builders had been prepared to come up with.

“DG Shoum! My good friend! I am glad it was possible for our paths to cross!” The Grand Zamerin’s language consisted of mandible clicks and, occasionally, directed pheromones; the director general understood Nariscene reasonably well without artificial aids, but still relied on a neurologically hard-wired translator ring to be sure of what was being said. The Grand Zamerin, on the other hand, like most Nariscene, eschewed alien languages as a matter of both principle and convenience, and so would depend entirely on his own translation units to understand the director general’s reply.

“Grand Zamerin, always a pleasure.”

Formal squirts of scent and packeted water molecules were exchanged; members of their respective entourages carefully gathered the greeting messages, as much out of politeness as for archival purposes. “Utli,” Director General Shoum said, reverting to the familiar and floating up to the Nariscene. She extended a maniple spine.

The Grand Zamerin clicked his mandibles in delight and took the offered limb in his foreleg. He twisted his head and told his assistants, “Amuse yourselves, children.” He sprayed a little cloud of his scent towards them, mixed to indicate reassurance and affection. A flush of colour across Shoum’s spines gave a similar instruction to her escorts. She set her communications torque to privacy, though with a medium-level interrupt.

The two officials floated slowly away through the web of environmental support strands, heading for a massive circular window which looked out to the planet’s Surface.

“I find you well?” Shoum asked.

“Extraordinarily!” the Grand Zamerin replied. “We are filled with delight to be called to attend the Great Spawning of our dear Everlasting Queen.”

“How wonderful. Do you contend for mating rights?”

“Us? Me? Contend for mating rights?” The Grand Zamerin’s mandibles clicked so fast they nearly hummed, signalling hilarity. “Gracious! No! The preferred specification…” (glitch/sorry! signalled the translator, then hurried to catch up), “the preferred genotype-spread called for by the Imperial Procreational College was far outside our bias. I don’t believe our family even submitted a tender. And anyway, on this occasion there was generous lead-time; if we had been in the running we’d have bred some braw and brawny hunk especially for our dear Queen. No, no; the honour is in the witnessing.”

“And the lucky father dies, I understand.”

“Of course! Now that is a distinction.” They were drifting closer to a great porthole on the underside of the facility, showing Sursamen in all its dark glory. The Grand Zamerin bristled his antennae as though lost in wonder at the view, which he wasn’t. “We had such prominence once,” he said, and the translator, if not Shoum’s own processes, picked up a note of sadness in amongst the pride. Utli waved at one of his little holo-baubles. “This, you see? Indicates that our family contributed a species-Father sometime in the last thirty-six birth-generations. However, that was thirty-six birth-generations ago and, sadly, short of a miracle, I shall lose this decoration in less than a standard year from now, when the next generation is hatched.”

“You might still hope.”

“Hope is all. The tenor of the times drifts from my family’s mode of being. We are downwinded. Other scents outsmell ours.” The translator signalled an imperfect image.

“And you are compelled to attend?”

Utli’s head made a shrugging gesture. “Technically. We fail to accept the invitation on pain of death, but that is for form’s sake, really.” He paused. “Not that it is never carried out; it is. But on such occasions it is generally used as an excuse. Court politics; quite hideous.” The Grand Zamerin laughed.

“You will be gone long?” Shoum asked as they arrived at the great window. They were still politely holding limbs.

“Standard year or so. Better hang around the court for a while, lest they forget who we are. Let the family scent sink in, you know? Also, taking some consecutive leave to visit the old family warrens. Some boundaries needing redrawn; maybe an upstart toiler or two to fight and eat.”

“It sounds eventful.”

“Horribly boring! Only the Spawning thing dragging us back.”

“I suppose it is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

“End-of-a-lifetime experience for the father! Ha ha!”

“Well, you will be missed, I’m sure.”

“So am I. Some dully competent relations of mine will be in charge during our absence; the clan Girgetioni. I say dully competent; that may flatter them. My family has always been firmly of the opinion that if it is absolutely necessary to take leave of one’s responsibilities for a while, always be sure to leave surrogates in charge who will ensure your welcome on return will be both genuine and enthusiastic. Ha ha.” Utli’s eye stalks waggled as though in a strong wind, indicating humour. “But this is to jest. The Girgetioni clan are a credit to the Nariscene species. I have personally placed my least incompetent nephew in the position of acting Zamerin. I have the highest possible confidence in him and them.”

“And how are things?” Shoum asked. “Within Sursamen, I mean.”

“Quiet.”

“Just ‘quiet’?” Shoum asked, amused.

“Generally. Not a peep, not a molecule from the God-beast in the basement, for centuries.”

“Always reassuring.”

“Always reassuring,” Utli agreed. “Oh, the awful saga of the Third Level, Future Use Committee proceedings rumbles on like cosmic background, though at least that might be swept away in some future cataclysm or Big Concluding Event, whereas said committee might plausibly go on far, far beyond that and redefine the meaning of the term In Perpetuity for any entities having the ghastly misfortune still to be around at the time.” The Grand Zamerin’s body shape and scents signalled exasperation. “The Baskers still wish it to be theirs, the Cumuloforms still claim it as already long promised to them. Each side has come heartily to despise the other, though not, we’d life-stake, a sixth as much as we have come to despise both of them.

“The L12 Swimmers, perhaps inspired by the japes the Cumuloforms and Baskers are having with their dispute, have waved a scent-trace to the wide winds regarding the vague possibility of one day, perhaps, if we wouldn’t mind, if nobody else would object, taking over Fourteen.

“The Vesiculars of…” Utli paused as he checked elsewhere, “Eleven announced some time ago that they wished to migrate, en masse, to Jiluence, which is somewhere in the Kuertile Pinch and, they allege, an ancestral homeworld of theirs. That was some gross of days ago, though, and we’ve heard nothing since. A passing fancy, probably. Or art. They confuse such terms. They confuse us, too. It may be deliberate. Possibly too long an association with the Oct, who are most adept at lateral thinking but seemingly incapable of anything but lateral expression, too; were there a prize for least-translatable galactic species, the Oct would win every cycle, though of course their acceptance speeches would be pure gibberish. What else?” Utli’s demeanour indicated resignation and amusement, then went back to exasperation again, mixed with annoyance.

“Oh yes, talking of the Oct, who call themselves the Inheritors; they have managed to antagonise the Aultridia — of ill repute, et cetera — through some inebriate machination or other. We listened to their petitions before leaving, but it all sounds lamentably trivial. Tribal wars amongst the natives of some cuspid wastelevels. The Oct may well have been interfering; it has been my curse to command the one world where the local Oct seem unable to leave well, ill or indeed indifferent alone. However, as they don’t appear actually to have transferred any technology to the protégé barbarians concerned, we are without immediate excuse to step in. Ineffably tiresome. They — meaning the Oct and the ghastly squirmiforms — wouldn’t listen to our initial attempts to mediate and frankly we were too taken up with our leaving preparations to have the patience to persist. Storm in an egg sac. If you’d like to take a sniff at the problem, do feel free. They might listen to you. Emphasis ‘might’, though. Be prepared fully to deploy your masochistic tendencies.”

The director general allowed a flush of amusement to spread across her body. “So, then; you will miss Sursamen?”

“Like a lost limb,” the Grand Zamerin agreed. He pointed his eye stalks at the porthole. They both looked down at the planet for some moments, then he said, “And you? You and your family, group, whatever — are they well?”

“All well.”

“And are you staying long here?”

“As long as I can without unduly upsetting our embassy here,” the director general replied. “I keep telling them I just enjoy visiting Sursamen but I believe they think I have an ulterior motive, and their preferred candidate is a determination on my part to find something wrong in their conduct.” She indicated amusement, then formality. “This is a courtesy call, no more, Utli. However, I shall certainly seek whatever excuses I can to stay longer than the polite minimum, simply to enjoy being in this wonderful place.”

“It has its own sort of blotchy, deeply buried beauty, we might be persuaded to concede,” Utli said grudgingly, with a small cloud of scent that indicated guarded affection.

Director General Morthanveld Shoum, free-child of Meast, nest of Zuevelous, domain of T’leish, of Gavantille Prime, Pliyr, looked out over the mighty, mostly dark, still slightly mysterious world filling the view beneath the transit facility.

Sursamen was a Shellworld.

Shellworld. It was a name that even now brought a thrill to the very core of her being.

“Sursamen — an Arithmetic Shellworld orbiting the star Meseriphine in the Tertiary Hulian Spine.” She could still see the glyphs rippling across the surface of her school teaching mat.

She had worked hard to be here, dedicated her life — through study, application, diligence and no small amount of applied psychology — to one day making Sursamen an important part of her existence. In a sense, any Shellworld would have done, but this was the place that had initiated her enchantment, and so for her it had a significance beyond itself. Ironically, the very force of that drive somehow to make herself part of Sursamen’s fate had caused her to overshoot her mark; her ambition had carried her too far, so that now she had oversight of Morthanveld interests within the whole long river-system of stars called the Tertiary Hulian Spine, rather than just the Meseriphine system containing the enigmatic wonder that was Sursamen, with the result that she spent less time here than she would have considered ideal.

The dim green glow of the Gazan-g’ya Crater lit up her body and that of the Grand Zamerin, the gentle light slowly increasing as Sursamen turned and presented more of the vast pockmark of the crater to the rays of the star Meseriphine.

Sursamen collected adjectives the way ordinary planets collected moons. It was Arithmetic, it was Mottled, it was Disputed, it was Multiply Inhabited, it was Multi-million-year Safe, and it was Godded.

Shellworlds themselves had accreted alternative names over the aeons: Shield Worlds, Hollow Worlds, Machine Worlds, Veil Worlds. Slaughter Worlds.

The Shellworlds had been built by a species called the Involucra, or Veil, the best part of a billion years earlier. All were in orbits around stable main-series suns, at varying distances from their star according to the disposition of the system’s naturally formed planets, though usually lying between two and five hundred million kilometres out. Long disused and fallen into disrepair, they had, with their stars, drifted out of their long-ago allotted positions. There had been about four thousand Shellworlds originally; 4096 was the commonly assumed exact number as it was a power of two and therefore — by general though not universal assent — as round a figure as figures ever got. No one really knew for sure, though. You couldn’t ask the builders, the Involucra, as they had disappeared less than a million years after they’d completed the last of the Shellworlds.

The colossal artificial planets had been spaced regularly about the outskirts of the galaxy, forming a dotted net round the great whirlpool of stars. Almost a billion years of gravitational swirling had scattered them seemingly randomly across and through the skies ever since: some had been ejected from the galaxy altogether while others had swung into the centre, some to stay there, some to be flung back out again and some to be swallowed by black holes, but using a decent dynamic star chart, you could feed in the current positions of those which were still extant, backtrack eight hundred million years and see where they had all started out.

That four-thousand-plus figure had been reduced to a little over twelve hundred now, mostly because a species called the Iln had spent several million years destroying the Shellworlds wherever they could find them and nobody had been willing or able to prevent them. Exactly why, nobody was entirely sure and, again, the Iln were not around to ask; they too had vanished from the galactic stage, their only lasting monument a set of vast, slowly expanding debris clouds scattered throughout the galaxy and — where their devastation had been less than complete — Shellworlds that had been shattered and collapsed into barbed and fractured wrecks, shrunken compressed husks of what they had once been.

The Shellworlds were mostly hollow. Each had a solid metallic core fourteen hundred kilometres in diameter. Beyond that, a concentric succession of spherical shells, supported by over a million massive, gently tapering towers never less than fourteen hundred metres in diameter, layered out to the final Surface. Even the material they were made from had remained an enigma — to many of the galaxy’s Involved civilisations at least — for over half a billion years, before its properties were fully worked out. From the start, though, it had been obvious that it was immensely strong and completely opaque to all radiation.

In an Arithmetic Shellworld, the levels were regularly spaced at fourteen-hundred-kilometre intervals. Exponential or Incremental Shellworlds had more levels close to the core and fewer further out as the distance between each successive shell increased according to one of a handful of logarithm-based ratios. Arithmetic Shellworlds invariably held fifteen interior surfaces and were forty-five thousand kilometres in external diameter. Incremental Shellworlds, forming about twelve per cent of the surviving population, varied. The largest class was nearly eighty thousand kilometres across.

They had been machines. In fact, they had all been part of the same vast mechanism. Their hollowness had been filled, or perhaps had been going to be filled (again, nobody could be certain this had actually been done), with some sort of exotic superfluid, turning each of them into a colossal field projector, with the aim, when they were all working in concert, of throwing a force field or shield round the entire galaxy.

Precisely why this had been thought necessary or even desirable was also unknown, though speculation on the matter had preoccupied scholars and experts over the aeons.

With their original builders gone, the people who had attacked the worlds seemingly also permanently missing and the fabled superfluid equally absent, leaving those vast internal spaces linked by the supporting Towers — themselves mostly hollow, though containing twisted webs of structurally reinforcing material, and punctured with portals of various sizes giving access to each of the levels — it had taken almost no time at all for a variety of enterprising species to work out that a derelict Shellworld would make a vast, ready-made and near-invulnerable habitat, after just a few relatively minor modifications.

Gases, fluids — especially water — and solids could be pumped or carried in to fill all or some of the spaces between the levels, and artificial interior ‘stars’ might be fashioned to hang from the ceilings of each level like gigantic lamps. The various venturesome species set about exploring the Shellworlds closest to them, and almost immediately encountered the problem that would bedevil, frustrate and delay the development of the worlds profoundly for the next few million years and, intermittently, beyond; the Shellworlds could be deadly.

It remained unclear to this day whether the defence mechanisms that kept killing the explorers and destroying their ships had been left behind by the worlds’ original builders or those who appeared to have dedicated their entire existence to the task of destroying the great artefacts, but whether it had been the Veil or the Iln — or, as it was now generally agreed, both — who had left this lethal legacy behind, the principal factor limiting the use of the Shellworlds as living spaces was simply the difficulty of making them safe.

Many people died developing the techniques by which a Shellworld might be so secured, and the same lessons generally had to be learned afresh by each competing civilisation, because the power and influence which accrued to a grouping capable of successful Shellworld exploitation meant that such techniques remained fiercely guarded secrets. It had taken an Altruist civilisation — exasperated and appalled at such a selfish waste of life — to come along, develop some of the techniques, steal others and then broadcast the whole to everybody else.

They had, of course, been roundly vilified for such unsporting behaviour. Nevertheless, their actions and stance had, in time, been ratified and even rewarded by various galactic bodies, and the Culture, although far remote in time from these now long-Sublimed people, had always claimed a sort of kinship by example with them.

The civilisations which specialised in making Shellworlds safe and who effectively took part-ownership of their interiors became known as Conducers. Sursamen was unusual in that two species — the Oct (who claimed direct descent from the long-departed Involucra and so also called themselves the Inheritors) and the Aultridia (a species with what might be termed a poorly perceived provenance) — had arrived at the same time and begun their work. It had also been unusual in that neither species ever got a decisive upper hand in the ensuing conflict which, in the only positive aspect of the dispute, at least remained localised to Sursamen. In time the situation within the world had been formalised when the two species were awarded joint protective custody of Sursamen’s access Towers by the then newly formed Galactic General Council, though, importantly, without any stipulation that the two could not contend for increased influence in the future.

The Nariscene were granted full inhabitory rights to the planet’s Surface and overall control of the world, formalising their long-held claim to it, though even they had to defer ultimately to the Morthanveld, in whose volume of influence the system and the world lay.

So Sursamen had been colonised, making it Inhabited, and by a variety of species, hence the Multiply- prefix. The holes in the supporting Towers that might have let gases or liquids vent to lower levels were sealed; some effectively permanently, others with lock complexes that permitted safe entry and exit, while transport mechanisms were installed inside the great hollow Towers to allow movement between the various levels and to and from the Surface. Material in gaseous, liquid and solid form had been moved in over the many millions of years of the planet’s occupation, and beings, peoples, species, species groups and whole ecosystems had been imported by the Oct and the Aultridia, usually for a consideration of some sort or another, sometimes at the behest of the peoples concerned, more often at the request of others.

Interior stars had been emplaced; these were thermonuclear power sources like tiny suns, but with the useful distinction of being anti-gravitative, so that they pressed upwards against the ceiling above any given level. They subdivided into Fixstars and Rollstars, the former stationary, the latter moving across the skies on predetermined routes and on regular, if sometimes — when there were many, of different periodicities — complicated schedules.

The deaths continued, too; long after a given Shellworld had been apparently de-weaponed and made safe, hidden defence systems could wake up centuries, millennia and decieons later, resulting in gigadeaths, teradeaths, effective civicides and near-extinctions as interior stars fell, levels were flooded from above or drained — often with the result that oceans met interior stars, resulting in clouds of plasma and superheated steam — atmospheres were infested by unknown wide-species-spectra pathogens or were turned inexorably into poisonous environments by unseen mechanisms nobody could stop, or intense bursts of gamma radiation emanating from the floor/ceiling structure itself flooded either individual levels or the whole world.

These were the events that gave them the name Slaughter Worlds. At the point that Director General Shoum gazed down upon the dark, colour-spotted face of Sursamen, no mass deaths had been caused by the Shellworlds themselves for nearly four million years, so the term Slaughter World had long since slipped into disuse, save amongst those cultures with exceptionally long memories.

Nevertheless, on a grand enough scale the morbidity of any habitat type could be roughly judged by the proportion that had become Dra’Azon Planets of the Dead over time. Planets of the Dead were preserved, forbidden monuments to globe-encompassing carnage and destruction which were overseen — and usually kept in a pristine, just post-catastrophe state — by the Dra’Azon, one of the galactic community’s more reclusive semi-Sublimed Elder civilisations with attributes and powers sufficiently close to god-like for the distinction to be irrelevant. Out of the four-thousand-plus Shellworlds originally existing and the 1332 unequivocally remaining — 110 in a collapsed state — fully eighty-six were Planets of the Dead. This was generally agreed to be an alarmingly high proportion, all things considered.

Even some of the Shellworlds lacking the morbid interest of the Dra’Azon had a kind of semi-divine investment. There was a species called the Xinthian Tensile Aeronathaurs, an Airworld people of enormous antiquity and — according to fable — once of enormous power. They were the second or third largest airborne species in the galaxy and, for reasons known solely to themselves, sometimes one of them would take up solitary residence in the machine core of a Shellworld. Though once widespread and common, the Xinthia had become a rare species and were regarded as Developmentally Inherently, Pervasively and Permanently Senile — in the unforgiving language of Galactic taxonomy — by those who bothered to concern themselves with such anachronisms at all.

For as long as anybody could remember, almost all the Xinthia had been gathered together in one place; a necklace of Airworlds ringing the star Chone in the Lesser Yattlian Spray. Only a dozen or so were known to exist anywhere else, and seemingly they were all at the cores of individual Shellworlds. These Xinthians were presumed to have been exiled for some transgression, or to be solitude-craving hermits. Presumption was all anybody had to go on here too, as even though the Xinthia, unlike the long-departed Veil or Iln, were still around to ask, they were, even by the standards of the galaxy’s Taciturn cultures, quite determinedly uncommunicative.

Hence the Godded part of Sursamen’s full description; there was a Xinthian Tensile Aeronathaur at its core, called by some of the world’s inhabitants the WorldGod.

Invariably inside the great worlds and sometimes on their exteriors, the shells were adorned with massive vanes, whorls, ridges, bulges and bowls of the same material that made up both the levels themselves and the supporting Towers. Where such structures appeared on the Surface of a Shellworld, the bowl-shaped features had usually been filled with mixtures of atmospheres, oceans and/or terrain suitable for one or more of the many Involved species; the shallower examples of these — somewhat perversely called Craters — were roofed, the deeper usually not.

Sursamen was one such example of a Mottled Shellworld. Most of its Surface was smooth, dark grey and dusty — all the result of being lightly covered with nearly an aeon’s worth of impact debris after systemic and galactic bodies of various compositions, sizes and relative velocities had impacted with that unforgiving, adamantine skin. About fifteen per cent of its external shell was pocked with the covered and open bowls people called Craters and it was the greeny-blue reflected light of one of those, the Gazan-g’ya Crater, that shone through the porthole in the transit facility and gently lit up the bodies of the Grand Zamerin and the director general.

“You are always glad to arrive, to see Sursamen, or any Shellworld, are you not?” Utli asked Shoum.

“Of course,” she said, turning to him a little.

“Whereas, personally,” the Grand Zamerin said, swivelling away from the view, “it’s only duty keeps me here; I’m always relieved to see the back of the place.” There was a tiny warble and one of his eye stalks flicked briefly over to look at what appeared to be a jewel embedded in his thorax. “Which we’re informed occurs very shortly; our ship is ready.”

Shoum’s comms torque woke to tell her the same thing, then went back to its privacy setting.

“Relieved? Really?” the director general asked as they floated back through the web towards their respective entourages and the docking chutes that gave access to the ships.

“We shall never understand why you are not, Shoum. These are still dangerous places.”

“It’s been a very long time since any Shellworld turned on its inhabitants, Utli.”

“Ah, but still; the intervals, dear DG.”

The Grand Zamerin was referring to the distribution of Shellworld-induced mass die-offs through time. Plotted out, they implied only a slow dying away of such titanic murderousness, not yet a final end. The graphed shape of attacks approached zero, but did so along a curve that implied there might be one or two more yet to come, probably some time in the next few thousand years. If, of course, that was really the way these things worked. The implied threat of future cataclysms might be the result of coincidence, nothing more.

“Well then,” Shoum said, “to be blunt, we would have to hope it does not happen during our tenure, or if does, it does not happen in Sursamen.”

“It’s just a matter of time,” the Grand Zamerin told her gloomily. “These things turn killer, or disappear. And nobody knows why.”

“Yet, Utli,” the director general said, signalling mischievousness, “do you not find it in any sense romantic somehow — even in a sense reassuring — that there are still such mysteries and imponderables in our polished, cultivated times?”

“No,” the Grand Zamerin said emphatically, expelling an emission named Doubting the sanity of one’s companion, with barely a trace of humour.

“Not even in the abstract?”

“Not even in the abstract.”

“Oh, well. Still, I wouldn’t worry, if I were you,” Shoum told Utaltifuhl as they approached their attendants. “I suspect Sursamen will still be here when you get back.”

“You think its disappearance is unlikely?” Utli said, now expressing mock seriousness.

“Vanishingly,” Shoum said, but the joke didn’t translate.

“Indeed. And of course. However, it has struck us that so wonderful and enjoyable is the life we lead that a disaster of equal but opposite proportions must always be a threat. The higher you build your Tower, the more tempting a target for fate it becomes.”

“Well, at least you are vacating your Tower for the next year. I trust the trip home is rewarding and I shall look forward with pleasure to seeing you again, Grand Zamerin.”

“And I you, Director General,” Utaltifuhl told her, and performed the most respectful and delicate of formal mandible-nips on her outstretched maniple spine. Shoum blushed appropriately.

They had reached their respective entourages and a giant window that looked out the other side of the transit facility, to a small fleet of docked ships. Utaltifuhl looked out at the star craft and emoted dubiety. “Hmm,” he said. “And interstellar travel is also not without its risks.”

5. Platform

Djan Seriy Anaplian, who had been born a princess of the house of Hausk, a dynasty from a wide-spectrum pan-human species lately from a median level of the Shellworld Sursamen and whose middle name basically meant fit-to-be-married-to-a-prince, stood alone on a tall cliff looking out over a rust desert deep within the continent of Lalance on the planet Prasadal. A strong wind lashed at her long coat and tore at her clothes. She still wore her dark, wide-brimmed hat and its stiff material was caught and tugged at by the gusting wind as though it was trying to tear it off her head. The hat, secured by well-tied ribbons, was unlikely to come off, but it meant that the wind made her head shake and nod and jerk as though with palsy. The wind carried dust and sand in small dry flurries that came beating up from the desert floor beneath and curling over the serrated edge of the cliff, stinging her cheeks where they were exposed between the scarf that covered her mouth and nose and the goggles that protected her eyes.

She put one gloved hand to the goggles, pulling them away from her face a fraction to let a little moisture out from the base of the frames. The sparse liquid ran down her cheeks, leaving streaks, but soon dried in the dusty force of air. She took a deep breath through the protecting scarf as the clouds of dust parted like a dry mist, allowing her an uninterrupted view of the distant city and the forces that had been besieging it.

The city was burning. Siege engines taller than its own towers buttressed its walls like gigantic calipers. The desert around it, until recently dark with the besieging army, was clearing as they poured into the stricken city, exposing sand the colour of drying blood. Smoke tried to rise from the wreckage of the shattered buildings in great curling bundles of darkness but was struck down by the force of the gale, flattened and whirled away from the various conflagrations, dipping down and back towards the desert to come rearing up again as it met the cliff so that it went billowing over Anaplian’s head in a ragged, fast-moving overcast.

The wind increased in strength. Out over the plain, a wall of dust was forming between her and the city as half the desert seemed to lift into the air, gradually dimming and wiping away the view, silhouetting a series of rocky outcrops for a few moments until they too were swept under the hem of the advancing dust storm. She turned and walked a little way back to where a contraption like a cross between a skeleton and a sculpture sat poised on all fours on the exposed rock. She gathered the coat about her and stepped backwards on to the feet of the strange machine. The seatrider came alive instantly, swinging up fluidly and fitting itself about her, clasps closing round ankles, thighs, waist, neck and upper arms, nestling its thin form around her like a lover. She took the offered control grip as it swung out to her hand and pulled it upwards, sending the machine and her flying into the sky, then pushed forward so that she went racing through the storm of dust and smoke to the beleaguered city.

She rose through the haze into clearer air as she built up speed, leaving the fields down at first and letting the slipstream buffet her, the wind making her coat tails snap like whips and forcing the hat’s brim to fold itself away, then she clicked the streamline field on and rode in a delta-shaped bubble of quiet air towards the city.

She dropped and slowed as she crossed over the walls and turned the streamline field off again. She flew between wind-twisted columns of smoke, watching the besieging forces as they swept into the spaces of the city, saw defenders falling back and inhabitants fleeing, observed arrows fly and a last few rocks and fire barrels land in the city’s upper reaches. She smelled the smoke and heard the clash of blades and the crack and rattle of burning and the rumble of falling masonry and the ululating battle cries and war trumpets of the victorious invaders and the wails and screams of the defeated. She saw a few tiny figures pointing at her, and a couple of arrows arced towards her then fell away again. She was knocked to one side and almost thought herself hit with the violence of the action as the seatrider dodged a fire barrel; it went past with a great roar and a stench of burning oil, looping downwards to crash into the roof of a temple in the upper city, splashing flame.

She turned the full panoply of fields back on, hiding her and the machine and enclosing herself in the still bubble of protected air again. She had been heading for the centre of the city, for what she assumed would be the citadel and the palace, but then changed her mind and flew around one side of the city, level with its middle reaches, watching the general influx of invaders and the chaotic retreat of defenders and civilians while also trying to observe the slighter struggles of small groups and individuals.

Eventually she alighted on the flat, low-walled roof of a modest building where a rape was in progress and a small child cowered in a corner. The four soldiers waiting their turn gazed at her with annoyance when she appeared seemingly from thin air, stepping off the seatrider. Their frowns were beginning to turn into appreciative if unpleasant smiles when she drew a sleek chunk of a gun from a shoulder holster and, smiling thinly back, set about punching head-sized holes in each of their torsos. The first three men went flying backwards off the roof to the street below in frothy detonations of blood and tissue. The fourth man had time to react and — as he ducked and started to dive away — a tiny part of Anaplian’s combat wiring kicked in, flicking the gun more quickly than her conscious mind could have ordered the action and simultaneously communicating with the weapon itself to adjust its emission pattern and beam-spread. The fourth soldier erupted across the roof in a long slithering torrent of guts. A sort of bubbling gasp escaped his lips as he died.

The man raping the woman was looking up at Anaplian, mouth open. She walked round a few paces to get a clear shot at him without endangering the woman, then blew his head off. She glanced at the child, who was staring at the dead soldier and the form lying underneath the spasming, blood-spouting body. She made what she hoped was a calming motion with her hand. “Just wait,” she said in what ought to be the child’s own language. She kicked the soldier’s body off the woman, but she was already dead. They’d stuffed a rag into her mouth, perhaps to stop her screams, and she had choked on it.

Djan Seriy Anaplian let her head down for a moment, and cursed quickly in a selection of languages, at least one of which had its home many thousands of light years away, then turned back to the child. It was a boy. His eyes were wide and his dirty face was streaked with tears. He was naked except for a cloth and she wondered if he had been due to be next, or just marked to be thrown from the roof. Maybe they’d have left him. Maybe they hadn’t meant to kill the woman.

She felt she ought to be shaking. Doubtless without the combat wiring she would be. She glanded quickcalm to take the edge off the internal shock.

She put the gun away — though even now the boy probably didn’t understand it was a weapon — and walked over to him, crouching down and hunkering as she got up close to him. She tried to look friendly and encouraging, but did not know what to say. The sound of running footsteps rang from the open stairwell on the opposite corner of the roof.

She lifted the boy by both armpits. He didn’t struggle, though he tried to keep his legs up and his arms round his knees, retaining the ball shape she’d first seen him in. He was very light and smelled of sweat and urine. She turned him round and held him to her chest as she stepped into the seatrider. It closed around her again, offering the control grip as its sliding, clicking components fastened her and it together.

A soldier wielding a crossbow arrived clattering at the top of the steps. She took the gun out and pointed it at him as he took aim at her, but then shook her head, breathed, “Oh, just fuck off,” flicked the controls and zoomed into the air, still holding the child. The bolt made a thunking noise as it skittered off the machine’s lower field enclosure.

“And what exactly do you intend to do with it?” the drone Turminder Xuss asked. They were on a tall stump of rock at least as far downwind from Anaplian’s earlier clifftop vantage point as that had been from the city. The child — he was called Toark — had been told not to go near the edge of the great rock column, but was anyway being watched by a scout missile. Turminder Xuss had, in addition, given the boy its oldest and least capable knife missile to play with because the weapon was articulated; its stubby sections snicked and turned in the child’s hands. He was making delighted, cooing noises. So far, the knife missile had suffered this treatment without complaint.

“I have no idea,” Anaplian admitted.

“Release him into the wild?” the drone suggested. “Send him back to the city?”

“No,” Anaplian said, sighing. “He keeps asking when Mummy’s going to wake up,” she added, voice barely above a whisper.

“You have introduced a Special Circumstances apprenticeship scheme on your own initiative,” the drone suggested.

Anaplian ignored this. “We’ll look for somewhere safe to leave him, find a family that can raise him,” she told the machine. She was sitting on her haunches, her coat spread around her.

“You should have left him where he was,” the drone said above the still strong wind, lowering the tone of its voice and slowing its delivery as it tried to sound reasonable rather than sarcastic.

“I know. That didn’t feel like an option at the time.”

“Your seatrider tells me you — how shall I put this? — appeared to the attackers and defenders of the city like some demented if largely ineffectual angel before you swooped in and carried little Toark away.”

Anaplian glared at the seatrider, not that the obedient but utterly unintelligent machine would have had any choice but to surrender its memories to the drone when it had been asked.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” she asked Xuss.

She’d asked to be left alone for the day to watch the fall of the city. It had been her fault, after all; it had come about due to actions she had taken and indeed helped plan, and though it was by no means what had been desired, its sacking represented a risk that she, amongst others, had judged worth taking. It was demonstrably not the worst that might have happened, but it was still an abomination, an atrocity, and she had had a hand in it. That had been enough for her to feel that she could not just ignore it, that she needed to bear witness to such horror. The next time — if there was a next time, if she wasn’t thrown out for her irrational, overly sentimental actions — she would weigh the potential for massacre a deal more heavily.

“We have been summoned,” the machine said. “We need to get to the Quonber; Jerle Batra awaits.” Its fields flashed a frosty blue. “I brought the module.”

Anaplian looked confused. “That was quick.”

“Not to slap your wrist for disturbing the war or rescuing adorable waifs. The summons pre-dates such eccentricities.”

“Batra wants to see me personally?” Anaplian frowned.

“I know. Not like him.” It dipped left-right in its equivalent of a shrug. “It.”

Anaplian rose, dusting her hands. “Let’s go then.” She called to the boy, who was still trying to twist the uncomplaining knife missile apart. The module shimmered into view at the cliff edge.

“Do you know what his name means?” the drone asked as the child came walking shyly towards them.

“No,” the woman said. She lifted her head a little. She thought she’d caught a hint of the smell of distant burning.

“‘Toark’,” the drone said as the boy came up to them, politely handing back the knife missile. “In what they call the Old Tongue—”

“Lady, when does my mother wake?” the boy asked.

Anaplian gave what she was sure was a not particularly convincing smile. “I can’t tell you,” she admitted. She held out one hand to guide the child into the module’s softly gleaming interior.

“It means ‘Lucky’,” the drone finished.

The module trajectoried itself from the warm winds of the desert through thinning gases into space, then fell back into the atmosphere half a world away before Toark had finished marvelling at how clean he had become, and how quickly. Anaplian had told him to stand still, close his eyes and ignore any tickling sensation, then plonked a blob of cleaner gel on his head. It torused down over him, unrolling like liquid and making him squirm when a couple of smaller circles formed round his fingers and rolled back up to his armpits and back down. She’d cleaned his little loincloth with another blob but he wanted that gone and chose a sort of baggy shirt from a holo-display instead. He was most impressed when this immediately popped out of a drawer.

Meanwhile the woman and the drone argued about the degree of eye-averting that ought to be applied to her rule-breaking flight over the city. She was not quite yet at the level where the Minds that oversaw this sort of mission just gave her an objective and let her get on with it. She was still in the last stages of training and so her behaviour was more managed, her strategy and tactics more circumscribed and her initiative given less free rein than that of the most experienced and skilled practitioners of that ultimately dark art of always well-meaning, sometimes risky and just occasionally catastrophic interference in the affairs of other civilisations.

They agreed the drone wouldn’t volunteer any information or opinion. It would all come out in the end — everything came out in the end — but by then, hopefully, it wouldn’t seem so important. Part of the training of a Special Circumstances agent was learning a) that the rules were supposed to be broken sometimes, b) just how to go about breaking the rules, and c) how to get away with it, whether the rule-breaking had led to a successful outcome or not.

They landed on the platform Quonber, a flat slab of hangar space and accommodation units that looked like a small, squashed cruise liner, albeit one perfectly disguised by a camoufield. It floated smoothly in the warm air just over the altitude where a few puffy clouds drifted, their shadows spotting the surface of the pale green ocean a couple of thousand metres below. Directly beneath the platform lay the salt lagoons of an uninhabited island near the planet’s equator.

The platform was home to another eleven SC human staff, all charged with attempting to alter the development of the various species on Prasadal. The planet was unusual in having five quite different sentient expansionist/aggressive species all hitting their civilisational stride at the same time. In all recorded history, every other time this had happened without some outside influence taking a hand in matters, at least three and usually four of the contending species were simply destroyed by the victorious grouping. The Culture’s notoriously highly detailed and allegedly extremely reliable simulations confirmed that this was just the way things worked out for your average aggressive species, unless you interfered.

When the module arrived everybody else was either on the ground or busy, so they saw nobody else as one of the Quonber’s own slaved drones escorted them along the open side-deck towards the rear of the platform. Toark stared goggle-eyed through the drop of air towards the salt lagoons far below.

“Shouldn’t you at least hide the boy?” the drone suggested.

“What would be the point?” Anaplian asked it.

The slave-drone showed them into the presence of Anaplian’s control and mentor, Jerle Batra, who was taking the air on the wide balcony that curved round the rear portion of the module’s third deck.

Jerle Batra had been born male. He had, as was common in the Culture, changed sex a while, and had borne a child. Later, for his own reasons, he had spent some time in Storage, passing a dreamless millennium and more in the closest thing the Culture knew to death from which it was still possible to wake.

And when he had awoken, and still felt the pain of being a human in human form, he had had his brain and central nervous system transferred sequentially into a variety of different forms, ending, for now at least, with the body type he now inhabited and which he had retained for the last hundred years or so — certainly for the decade or more that Anaplian had known him, that of an Aciculate; his shape was bush-like.

His still human brain, plus its accompanying biological but non-human support systems, was housed in a small central pod from which sixteen thick limbs protruded; these quickly branched and rebranched to form smaller and smaller limblets, maniples and sensor stalks, the most delicate of which were hair-thin. In his normal, everyday state he looked just like a small, rootless, spherical bush made from tubes and wires. Compressed, he was little larger than the helmet of an old-fashioned human spacesuit. Fully extended, he could stretch for twenty metres in any given direction, which gave him what he liked to term a high contortionality factor. He had, in all his forms, always worshipped order, efficiency and fitness, and in the Aciculate form felt he had found something that epitomised such values.

Aciculacy was not the furthest one could stray from what the Culture regarded as human basic. Other ex-humans who looked superficially a lot like Jerle Batra had had their entire consciousness transcribed from the biological substrate that was their brain into a purely non-biological form, so that, usually, an Aciculate of that type would have its intelligence and being distributed throughout its physical structure rather than having a central hub. Their contortionality factor could be off the scale compared to Batra’s.

Other people had assumed the shapes of almost anything mobile imaginable, from the relatively ordinary (fish, birds, other oxygen-breathing animals) to the more exotic, via alien life-forms — again, including those which were not normally in the habit of supporting a conscious mind — all the way to the truly unusual, such as taking the form of the cooling and circulatory fluid within a Tueriellian Maieutic seed-sail, or the spore-wisp of a stellar field-liner. These last two, though, were both extreme and one-way; there was a whole category of Amendations that were hard to do and impossible to undo. Nothing sanely transcribable had ever been shifted back from something resembling a stellar field-liner into a human brain.

A few genuine eccentrics had even taken the form of drones and knife missiles, though this was generally considered to be somewhat insulting to both machine- and human-kind.

“Djan Seriy Anaplian,” Batra said in a very human-sounding voice. “Good day. Oh. Do I congratulate?”

“This is Toark,” Anaplian said. “He is not mine.”

“Indeed. I thought I might have heard.”

Anaplian glanced at the drone. “I’m sure you would have.”

“And Handrataler Turminder Xuss. Good day to you too.”

“Delightful as ever,” muttered the drone.

“Turminder, this does not involve you initially. Would you excuse Djan Seriy and me? You might entertain our young friend.”

“I am becoming an accomplished child-minder. My skills grow with every passing hour. I shall hone them.”

The drone escorted the boy from the balcony. Anaplian glanced up at the overhanging bulk of the accommodation deck and took her hat off, throwing it into one suspended seat and herself into another. A drinks tray floated up.

Batra drifted nearer, a greyly skeletal bush about head-height. “You are at home here,” he stated.

Anaplian suspected she was being gently rebuked. Had she been overcasual in her hat-throwing and her seat-collapsing-into? Perhaps Batra was chiding her for not showing him sufficient deference. He was her superior, to the extent that this wilfully unhierarchic civilisation understood the idea of superiors and inferiors. He could have her thrown out of SC if he wanted to — or at the very least, make her restart the whole process — however, he wasn’t usually so sensitive regarding matters of etiquette.

“It serves,” she said.

Batra floated across the deck and settled into another of the seats hanging from the ceiling, resting in it like a sort of fuzzy, vaguely metallic ball. He had formed part of the side facing Anaplian into a kind of simulated face, so that his visual sensors were where the eyes should be and his voice came from where a human mouth would have been. It was disconcerting. Just having a fuzzy ball talking to you would have been much less alarming, Anaplian thought.

“I understand that events have not ended as well as they might with the Zeloy/Nuersotise situation.”

“A year ago we disabled and turned back an army on its way to sack a city,” Anaplian said wearily. “Today the would-be attackers became the attacked. The more progressive tendency, as we would put it, ought now to prevail. Though at a cost.” She pursed her lips briefly. “Part of which I have just witnessed.”

“I have seen some of this.” The image of the face suggested by Batra’s mass of steely-looking tendrils expressed a frown, then closed its eyes, politely indicating that he was reviewing data from elsewhere. Anaplian wondered if he was watching general views of the siege and sacking of the city, or something that included her unwarranted excursion on the seatrider.

Batra’s eyes opened again. “The knowledge that so much worse happens where we do nothing, and always has, long before we came along — and that so much worse might happen here were we to do nothing — seems of very little significance when one is confronted with the grisly reality of aggression we have failed to prevent. All the more so when we had a hand in allowing or even enabling it.” He sounded genuinely affected. Anaplian, who was innately suspicious of perfectly one hundred per cent natural, utterly unamended human-basic humans, wondered whether Batra — this bizarre, many-times-alien, two-thousand-year-old creature that still thought of itself as “he” — was expressing sincere emotion, or simply acting. She wondered this very briefly, having realised long ago the exercise was pointless.

“Well,” she said, “it is done.”

“And much more remains to be done,” Batra said.

“That’ll get done too,” Anaplian said, beginning to lose patience. She was short on patience. She had been told this was a fault. “I imagine,” she added.

The metallic bush rolled back a little, and the face on its surface seemed to nod. “Djan Seriy, I have news,” Batra said.

Something about the way the creature said this made her quail. “Really?” she said, feeling herself battening down, shrinking inward.

“Djan Seriy, I have to tell you that your father is dead and your brother Ferbin may also be deceased. I am sorry. Both for the news itself and to be the one who bears it.”

She sat back. She drew her feet up so that she was quite enclosed in the gently swinging egg of the suspended seat. She took a deep breath and then unfolded herself deliberately. “Well,” she said. “Well.” She looked away.

It was, of course, something she had tried to prepare herself for. Her father was a warrior. He had lived with war and battle all his adult life and he usually led from the front. He was also a politician, though that was a trade he’d had to train himself to do well rather than one that he had taken to entirely naturally and excelled at. She had always known he was likely to die before old age took him. Throughout the first year when she had come to live amongst these strange people that called themselves the Culture she had half expected to hear he was dead and she was required to return for his funeral.

Gradually, as the years had passed, she had stopped worrying about this. And, also gradually, she had started to believe that even when she did hear he was dead it would mean relatively little to her.

You had to study a lot of history before you could become part of Contact, and even more before you were allowed to join Special Circumstances. The more she’d learned of the ways that societies and civilisations tended to develop, and the more examples of other great leaders were presented to her, the less, in many ways, she had thought of her father.

She had realised that he was just another strong man, in one of those societies, at one of those stages, in which it was easier to be the strong man than it was to be truly courageous. Might, fury, decisive force, the willingness to smite; how her father had loved such terms and ideas, and how shallow they began to look when you saw them played out time and time again over the centuries and millennia by a thousand different species.

This is how power works, how force and authority assert themselves, this is how people are persuaded to behave in ways that are not objectively in their best interests, this is the kind of thing you need to make people believe in, this is how the unequal distribution of scarcity comes into play, at this moment and this, and this…

These were lessons anybody born into the Culture grew up with and accepted as being as natural and obvious as the progression of a star along the Main Sequence, or evolution itself. For somebody like her, coming in from outside, with a set of assumptions built up in a society that was both profoundly different and frankly inferior, such understanding arrived in a more compressed time frame, and with the impact of a blow.

And Ferbin dead too, perhaps. That she had not expected. They had joked before she’d left that he might die before his father, in a knife fight over a gambling game or at the hand of a cuckolded husband, but that had been the sort of thing one said superstitiously, inoculating the future with a weakened strain of afflictive fate.

Poor Ferbin, who had never wanted to be king.

“Do you need time to grieve?” Batra asked.

“No,” she said, shaking her head fiercely.

“Are you sure?”

“Positive,” she said. “My father. Did he die in battle?”

“Apparently so. Not on the battlefield, but of his wounds, shortly after, before he could receive full medical attention.”

“He’d rather have died on the field itself,” she told Batra. “He must have hated having to settle for second best.” She found that she was both crying a little, and smiling. “When did it happen?” she asked.

“Eleven days ago.” Batra made a bristling motion. “Even news of such importance travels slowly out of a Shellworld.”

“I suppose,” Anaplian said, her expression thoughtful. “And Ferbin?”

“Missing, on the same battlefield.”

Anaplian knew what that meant. The vast majority of those labelled missing in battles either never reappeared at all, or turned up dead. And what had Ferbin being doing anywhere near a battle in the first place? “Do you know where?” she asked. “Exactly how far-flung a province was it?”

“Near the Xiliskine Tower.”

She stared at him. “What?”

“Near the Xiliskine Tower,” Batra repeated. “Within sight of Pourl — that is the capital, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Anaplian said. Her mouth was suddenly quite dry. Dear God, it had all fallen away, then. It had all crumbled and gone. She felt a sorrow she barely understood.

“So was this some… Excuse me.” She cleared her throat. “Was this a final stand, in that case?”

And why hadn’t she heard? Why had no one told her things had reached a point of such awful desperation? Were they afraid she’d try to return and use her new-found skills and powers to intercede? Were they worried she’d try to join the fray, was that it? How could they?

“Now, Djan Seriy,” Batra said, “while I have been briefed in this, I cannot claim to have immediate access to an expert database. However, I understand that it was the result of what was expected to be a surprise attack by the Deldeyn.”

“What? From where?” Anaplian said, not even trying to hide her alarm.

“From this Xiliskine Tower.”

“But there’s no way out of…” she began, then put one hand to her mouth, pursing her lips and frowning as she stared at the floor. “They must have opened a new…” she said, more to herself than to Batra. She looked up again. “So, is the Xiliskine controlled by the Aultridia now, or…?”

“First, let me assure you that as I understand it, Pourl and your father’s people are not under threat. The Deldeyn are the ones facing disaster.”

Anaplian’s frown deepened, even as the rest of her body showed signs of relaxing. “How so?”

“Your father had effectively completed his Wars of Unity, as he termed them.”

“Really?” She felt a surge of relief and a perverse urge to laugh. “He did keep busy.”

“The Deldeyn would appear to have assumed that they’d be his next target. They therefore staged what they hoped would be a decisive, pre-emptive surprise attack on your father’s capital city, having been convinced by the — Oct? Inheritors?”

“Synonyms.” Anaplian flapped one hand again. “Either.”

“That they, the Oct, would deliver the Deldeyn forces in secret to where a new portal would be opened in the Xiliskine Tower through which they might effect such an attack, taking the city. This was a ruse, and one which the Sarl were party to. Your father’s forces were waiting for the Deldeyn and destroyed them.”

Anaplian looked confused. “Why were the Oct deceiving the Deldeyn?”

“This is still a matter for conjecture, apparently.”

“And the Aultridia?”

“The other Conducer species. They have backed the Deldeyn in the past. They are believed to be considering military and diplomatic action against the Oct.”

“Hmm. So why…?” Anaplian shook her head once more. “What is going on back there?” she asked. Again, Jerle Batra suspected this question was not really directed at him. He let her continue. “So, Ferbin’s in charge — no, of course, he’s probably dead too. Oramen, then?” she asked, looking worried and sceptical at once.

“No; your younger brother is deemed too young to inherit all your father’s power immediately. A man called Mertis tyl Loesp is regent until your brother’s next birthday.”

“Tyl Loesp,” Anaplian said thoughtfully. She nodded. “At least he’s still around. He should be all right.”

“Your younger brother won’t be in any danger, will he?”

“Danger?”

Batra’s impersonated face configured a weak smile. “It has been my understanding that, like wicked stepmothers, ambitious regents do not usually come out well from such contexts. Perhaps that is only in tales.”

“No,” Anaplian said with what sounded like relief. She wiped her eyes. “Tyl Loesp’s been my father’s best friend since they were children. He’s always been loyal, fastened his ambitions to my father’s. God knows, they were grand enough for two. Grand enough for a host.” Anaplian looked away to one side, where the bright, tropic air of this place that she had almost come to think of as home over the last two years now seemed as far away as it had when she’d first arrived. “Though what do I know? It’s been fifteen years.”

She wondered how much Ferbin had changed in that time, and Oramen. Her father, she strongly suspected, would hardly have changed at all — he had been the same forbidding, occasionally sentimental, rarely tender, utterly focused individual for as long as she’d known him. Utterly focused, yet with one eye always on history, on his legacy.

Had she ever known him? Most of the time he wasn’t there to be known in the first place, always away fighting his distant wars. But even when he had returned to Pourl, his palace, concubines and children, he had been more interested in the three boys, especially Elime, the eldest and by far the most like him in character. Second in age, her gender and the circumstances of her birth had fixed the King’s only daughter firmly last in his affections.

“Should I leave you, Djan Seriy?” Batra asked.

“Hmm?” She looked back at him.

“I thought you may need time alone. Or do you need to talk? Either is—”

“I need you to talk to me,” she told him. “What is the situation now?”

“On what is called the Eighth? Stable. The King is mourned with all due—”

“Has he been buried?”

“He was due to be, seven days ago. My information is eight or nine days old.”

“I see. Sorry. Go on.”

“The great victory is celebrated. Preparations for the invasion of the Deldeyn continue apace. The invasion is widely expected to take place between ten and twenty days from now. The Oct have been censured by their Nariscene mentors, though they have blamed everybody else for what has happened, including elements within their own people. The Aultridia have, as I have said, threatened retaliation. The Nariscene are trying to keep the peace. The Morthanveld are so far not involved, though they have been kept informed.”

She pinched her lower lip with her fingers. She took a breath and said, “How long would it take for me to get back to Sursamen?”

“A moment, please,” Batra said, falling silent for a moment while, she imagined, he consulted the course schedules of whole networks of distant ships. She had time to wonder why he hadn’t already memorised or at least accessed this information, and whether this possibly deliberate hesitation implied a criticism of her for even thinking of abandoning her post here.

“Between one hundred and thirty and one hundred and sixty days,” Batra told her. “The uncertainty comes from the changeover to Morthanveld space.”

Morthanveld space. The Morthanveld were the highest-level Involved species around Sursamen. As part of her training Anaplian had studied, and been suitably stunned by, the full three-dimensional map of all the various species that inhabited the galaxy and had spread sufficiently far from their homes to discover that they were profoundly Not Alone.

The standard star chart detailing the influence of the better-travelled players was fabulously complex and even it only showed major civilisations; those with just a few solar systems to their name didn’t really show up, even with the holo-map filling one’s entire field of vision. Generally overlapping, often deeply interconnected, slowly shifting, subject to continual gradual and very occasionally quite sudden change, the result looked like something committed by a madman let loose in a paint factory.

The Morthanveld held sway over vast regions of space, one tiny pocket of which happened to include the star around which her home planet orbited. They had been there, or spreading slowly out in that direction, for longer than the Culture had existed, and the two civilisations had long since settled into a comfortable and peaceful co-existence, though the Morthanveld did expect all but the most pressing business crossing their sphere of influence to be conducted using their own spacecraft.

Having immersed herself in the politics, geography, technology and mythology of Prasadal for over two intense, demanding years, and having almost ignored outside events for the same amount of time, Anaplian realised she had half forgotten that the Culture was not somehow the totality of the galactic community — that it was, indeed, a relatively small part, even if it was a powerful and almost defiantly widespread one.

“Would I be excused here?” she asked Batra.

“Djan Seriy,” the metallic bush said, and for the first time something other than its pretended face moved, its sides expanding in a gesture that looked a lot like a human spreading their arms, “you are a free agent. Nothing keeps you here but you. You may go at any time.”

“But would I be welcome back? Would I still have a place in SC if I did return home? Could I come back here, to Prasadal?”

“None of that is for me finally to decide.”

The creature was being evasive. It would have a say, even if the final decision might be made by some tiny clique of ship Minds spread throughout the Culture and across the galaxy.

Anaplian arched one eyebrow. “Take a guess.”

“SC, I’d imagine, yes. Here? I can only imagine. How long would you be going for, do you think?”

“I don’t know,” Anaplian admitted.

“And neither would we. It is unlikely you would start any return journey within a few days of arriving. You might be gone a standard year, all told. Perhaps longer; who can say? We would have to replace you here.”

There was a degree of margin in the system here, of course. Her colleagues could fill in for her, for a while at least. Leeb Scoperin especially knew what Anaplian had been doing in her part of the planet and seemed to have the sort of natural understanding of her aims and techniques that would let him take over her role with as little turbulence as possible, plus he was one of those training an assistant, so the overall burden wouldn’t be too great. But that sort of arrangement would not do for ever. A little slack was one thing, but leaving people feeling useless for extended amounts of time was pointless and wasteful, so the platform was not overstaffed for the task in hand. Batra was right; they’d have to replace her.

“You could give me a ship,” Anaplian said. That would get her there and back quicker.

“Ah,” Batra said. “That is problematical.” This was one of his several ways of saying no.

The Culture was being especially careful not to offend the Morthanveld at the moment. The reason was officially moot, though there had been some interesting suggestions and one in particular that had become the default explanation.

Anaplian sighed. “I see.”

Or she could just stay here, she supposed. What good, after all, could she do back home? Avenge her father? That was not a daughter’s duty, the way the Sarl saw things, and anyway it sounded like the Deldeyn were about to have more than sufficient vengeance visited upon them long before she would be able to get there. Her father would have been the aggressor in all this, anyway; she had no doubt that the pre-emptive attack the Deldeyn had launched was anything other than just that — an attempt to stop the Sarl under King Hausk invading them.

Perhaps she would just make a bad situation worse if she went back; things would be in turmoil enough without her suddenly reappearing. She had been away too long, she thought. People would have forgotten about her, and everything would have changed. Anyway, she was female. After fifteen years living in the Culture, it was sometimes hard to recall just how misogynist her birth-society had been. She might go back and try to affect things only to be laughed at, scorned, ignored. Oramen was clever if still young. He’d be all right, wouldn’t he? Tyl Loesp would take care of him.

Her duty, arguably, lay here. This was what she had taken on, this was what she had to do, what she was expected to finish. She knew that could affect the course of history on Prasadal. It might not always go as she’d wish, and it could be bloody, but her influence was in no doubt and she knew that she was good at what she did. On the Eighth — and the Ninth, given that the Deldeyn had been forced into the matter — she might effect nothing, or only harm.

That was not what she was being trained to do.

Her father had sent her to the Culture as payment, if you wished to be brutal about it. She was here as the result of a debt of honour. She had not been banked far away from Sursamen as some sort of insurance, neither was it assumed she would be educated further and returned an even more fit bride for some foreign prince, to cement an alliance or tie-in a far away conquerance. Her duty, in perpetuity, was to serve the Culture to repay it for the help — through the man called Xide Hyrlis — it had given her father and the Sarl people. King Hausk had made it perfectly clear that he did not expect ever to see his only daughter again.

Well, he had been right about that.

When this bargain had first been suggested, she had struggled with the competing emotions of pride at being asked to play such an important role, and anguish at experiencing a rejection even more final and complete than all the other rejections her father had made her suffer. At the same time there had been a kind of triumph coursing through her that had been stronger still than either feeling.

At last! At last she would be free of this idiot backwater, at last she could develop as she wished, not as her father and this female-fearing, woman-demeaning society demanded. She was accepting an obligation she might spend the rest of her life fulfilling, but it was one that would take her away from the Eighth, away from the Sarl and the constrictions of the life she had gradually realised — with increasing dismay through her girlhood — she would otherwise have been expected to lead. She would still be going into service, but it was service in faraway exotic places, service in a greater cause and perhaps even one that actually involved action, not simply the requirement to please a man and produce a litter of petty royals.

Her father had thought the Culture representatives effeminate fools for being more interested in her than in her brothers when he’d insisted on sending one of his children into their employ. Even his respect for Xide Hyrlis had suffered, when he too had suggested little Djan should be the one to go, and Anaplian didn’t know of anyone, save perhaps tyl Loesp, that her father had thought as highly of as Hyrlis.

Her father had barely pretended to be sorry that they had chosen his troublesome, discontented, discounted daughter rather than one of his precious sons. If, of course, she wished to go; the Culture’s representatives made it very clear that they had no desire to coerce her into their employ. Naturally, as soon as they’d asked she’d had no choice — her father had been convinced he’d been presented with an absolute bargain, and hurried her departure before the Culture could see sense and change its mind — but it was precisely what she would have chosen anyway.

She had pretended. She had pretended — to her father and the rest of the court — to be reluctant to go to the Culture, in just the way that a girl chosen to be a bride was expected to pretend to be reluctant to go to her new home and husband, and she had trusted that the Culture people would see that this was an act, for appearances’ sake, to observe the niceties. They had, and she’d duly gone with them when the time came. She had never regretted it for a moment.

There had been times, many of them, when she’d missed her home and her brothers and even her father, times when she’d cried herself to sleep for many nights at a time, but not once, not even for an instant, had she thought that she might have made the wrong choice.

Her duty was here, then. Her father had said so. The Culture — Special Circumstances, no less — assumed so, and was relying on her to remain here. No one on the Eighth would expect her to return. And if she did, there was probably nothing useful she could do.

Yet what was duty? What was obligation?

She had to go, and knew it in her bones.

She had been silent just a few moments. She did something she only ever did with reluctance, and clicked into her neural lace and through it into the vast, bludgeoningly vivid meta-existence that was the SC version of the Culture’s dataverse.

A clamorous, phantasmagoric scape opened instantly in front of her and flicked all around. Confronting, pervading Anaplian in this mind-dazzling, seemingly frozen blink of time was a collection of inputs using every amended-range sense available; this barely graspable riot of sensory overload presented itself initially as a sort of implied surrounding sphere, along with the bizarre but perfectly convincing sensation that you could see every part of it at once, and in more colours than even the augmented eye possessed. The immediately appreciable surface of this vast enclosing globe was less than tissue thin, yet seemed to connect with senses deep inside her as the colossal but intricate simulation suffused into what felt like every fragment of her being. You thought through to an apparent infinitude of further membranes, each with its own sensory harmonics, like a lens adjusting to bring different depths within its field of vision into focus.

It was a given that this perceptual frenzy was as close as a human, or anything like a human, could get to knowing what it was like to be a Mind. Only politeness prevented most Minds pointing out that this was the drastically coarsened, savagely cut-down, vastly inferior, well-below-nursery-level version of what they themselves were immersed within throughout every moment of their existence.

Even without consciously thinking about it, she was there with a diagrammatic and data-ended representation of this section of the galaxy. The stars were shown as exaggerated points of their true colour, their solar systems implied in log-scaled plunge-foci and their civilisational flavour defined by musical note-groups (the influence of the Culture was signalled by a chord sequence constructed from mathematically pure whole-tone scales reaching forever down and up). An overlay showed the course schedules of all relevant ships and a choice of routes was already laid out for her, colour-coded in order of speed, strand thickness standing for ship size and schedule certainty shown by hue intensity, with comfort and general amenability characterised as sets of smells. Patterns on the strands — making them look braided, like rope — indicated to whom the ships belonged.

Circles and ellipses, mostly, confronted her. A few supplementally more complicated shapes squiggled through the view where ships anticipated describing more eccentric courses between the stars over the next few tens and hundreds of standard days.

Seemingly unbidden, another line formed in the overlay, almost perfectly straight, showing her how quickly the nearest available unit of the Culture’s fleet of Very Fast Pickets could get her there. Crude flight time was a little over a dozen days, though it would take almost as long for the ship to get to Prasadal to pick her up in the first place. Other ships could have made the journey in even less time, though they were too far away. There was a degree of favourable uncertainty in the projection; it applied only to Culture vessels that were currently making their whereabouts known. It was entirely possible that another ship of the Rapid Asset fleet not currently bothering to circulate its location was even closer and would respond positively to a broadcast request.

But that wasn’t going to happen — Batra had made that clear. She wiped the offending overlay from the view. She would have to take the prescribed route, and be passed like a baton from ship to ship. It looked complicated.

A lot of very clever processing had already gone on in her neural lace to predict what she’d want to look at effectively before she knew herself, and — fabulously convenient and highly technically impressive though this might be — it was this aspect of lace-use that most disturbed Anaplian and caused her to keep its application to a minimum. In the end, she didn’t even need to pull out any data-ends to check the raw figures; there was one fairly obvious route through this tangled scribble from Prasadal to Sursamen, and it would indeed take at least one hundred and twenty-nine and a bit days if she left any time within the next two days, assuming that the Morthanveld end of things went as fortuitously as it might. A lot seemed to depend on whether the Morthanveld Great Ship Inspiral, Coalescence, Ringdown decided to take in the Nestworld Syaung-un on its way from one globular cluster to another.

She was about to click out when a barely formed thought regarding exactly what a Morthanveld Great Ship and a Nestworld actually were started to blossom into a whole hierarchy of increasingly complicated explanations as the lace raced to retrieve and present the relevant information with all the desperate enthusiasm of an overenthusiastic child asked to perform a party piece. She shut it down with a sort of inward slam and clicked out again with the usual sense of relief and vague guilt. The last vestige of the lace’s presence informed her that her heart was still completing the beat it had been beginning when she’d first clicked in.

It was like waking up, though from a dream world where everything was more detailed, vivid, splendid and even plausible than reality, not less. That was another reason she didn’t like using the lace. She wondered briefly how Jerle Batra’s normality compared to hers.

“I’m sorry. I think I have to go,” she told him.

“Think, Djan Seriy?” Batra asked, sounding sad.

“I am going,” she said. “I must.”

“I see.” Now the man who looked like a fuzzy little bush sounded apologetic. “There will be a cost, Djan Seriy.”

“I know.”

6. Scholastery

Ferbin otz Aelsh-Hausk’r and his servant Choubris Holse were riding along an ill-kept road through a forest of cloud trees towards the Xiliskine-Anjrinh Scholastery. They had chosen to travel through the long half-night of the Rollstar Guime, which showed as a sullen red glow spread like a rosy bruise across the farpole horizon. They had pulled off the road only twice so far, once to avoid a troop of mounted Ichteuen and once when a steam truck had appeared in the far distance. The prince no longer looked like himself; Holse had close-cut his scalp, his facial hair was growing quickly (darker than his head hair; nearly brown, which peeved him disproportionately), he had removed all his rings and other regal jewellery and he was dressed in clothes Holse had obtained from the battlefield.

“From a corpse?” Ferbin had spluttered, staring down at himself wide-eyed. Holse had thought to inform the prince of the provenance of his new-to-him civvies only after he’d put them on.

“One with no obvious wounds, sir,” Holse had assured him reasonably. “Just a little bleeding from the ears and nose. Dead a good two or three days, too, so any fleas would assuredly have caught cold and jumped ship. And he was a gentleman, too, I might add. An army private provisioner, unless I’m mistaken.”

“That’s not a gentleman,” Ferbin had told his servant patiently. “That’s a merchant.” He’d pulled at his sleeves, held out his hands and shaken his head.

If there had been any aerial activity — unlikely in the near darkness — they didn’t see it. At any rate, nobody came swooping down to inspect them as they trudged on, Holse on his rowel and Ferbin on the mersicor his servant had brought to the folly overlooking the river four days earlier. Holse had dug a couple of wads of crile root from a saddle bag to help keep them awake as they rode, and they chewed on this while they talked. It gave their conversation what Holse felt was a rather comical, munchy sort of quality, though he thought better of mentioning this to Ferbin.

“Choubris Holse, it is your duty to accompany me to wherever I might choose to go.”

“I’d beg to differ, sir.”

“There’s no differing involved. Duty is duty. Yours is to me.”

“Within the kingdom, and within the rule of the king’s law, I’d not argue with you, sir. It is my duty beyond that reach I might think to question.”

“Holse! You are a servant! I am a prince! You’d be best advised to do as you’re damn well told even were I some lowly gent with no more than a tumbledown fort, a flea-bitten nag and too many children to his name. As servant to a prince — the senior prince, I might add — of the royal house of Hausk…” Ferbin broke off, choking on his own amazement and disgust at encountering such obduracy in a servant. “My father would have you thrashed for this, Holse, I tell you! Or worse! Damn it, man, I am the rightful king!”

“Sir, I am with you now, and intend to stay with you until the varsity and thence to whatever conveyance you might find beyond that which they are able to recommend you to. To that very point I shall be at your side, as faithful as ever.”

“And there you damn well have to stay! Wherever I go!”

“Sir, pleasing your pardon, my allegiance — at the bottom of the pot, after all reduction, as it were — is to the throne rather than to your good self. Once you remove yourself from the furthest extent of your father’s conquests, it is my understanding that I am bound to return to the seat of authority — which I would take to be the royal palace in Pourl, all other matters being in normal balance — there to take fresh instruction from, well, whomsoever—”

“Holse! Are you a lawyer?”

“Dear God forbid, sir!”

“Then shut up. Your duty is to stay with me. That’s the all and end of it.”

“My duty, begging your pardon, sir, is to the king.”

“But I am the king! Haven’t you been telling me for the last four days that I’m the rightful heir to the throne?”

“Sir, excuse my bluntness, but you are an uncrowned king who is riding most determinedly away from his throne.”

“Yes! Yes, to save my life! To seek help so that I may return to claim that throne, if the WorldGod lets. And, I would point out, in doing so I am following the highest precedents; does not the WorldGod find its own sanctuary from cares here at the core of our blessed world? Did not the Sarl people themselves flee persecution on their homeworld, escaping here to our own dear Sursamen?”

“Still, sir. Being a king has its expectations. One is letting people know you’re alive.”

“Is it really? Well, well,” Ferbin said, deciding to be witheringly sarcastic. “Do you tell me that now? And what else, might one ask?”

“Well, sir, acting in a kingly manner regarding the taking up of the reins of power, by dispute if needs be, rather than leaving them to fall to—”

“Choubris Holse, you will not lecture me in the art of kingcraft or my regal obligations and responsibilities!”

“Indeed not, sir. I agree most completely. Lecturing is the province of the scholastic monk types towards which we make our way. No argument there from me, sir.”

Holse’s rowel snored as though in agreement. Their animals were bred to night-walk and could literally walk in their sleep, though they needed the odd prod to keep them on the road.

“I decide my duty, Holse, not you! And my duty is not to let myself be murdered by those who have already killed one king and would not flinch from adding another — that is, me — to their score!”

Holse looked up at the near-unGodly vastness of the Hicturean Tower, rising to their left like fate. The sky-supporting stem was skirted with grassed and forested slopes, their steepness increasing as they approached the topmost edge where, piled up against the smooth, uncanny surface of the Tower, the ground and foliage broke like a dark green wave against the trunk’s vast pale roundness, glowing in the low red light like the bone of some long-dead god.

Holse cleared his throat. “These documents we go in search of, sir. They don’t work the other way, do they?”

“The other way? What do you mean, Holse?”

“Well, would they let you travel downwards, to the Core, to see the WorldGod, sir?” Holse had no idea how these things worked; he had never really bothered with religion, though he had always paid lip-service to the church for the sake of an easy life. He had long suspected that the WorldGod was just another convenient semi-fiction supporting the whole structure that sustained the rich and powerful in their privilege. “To see if its Divineness might help you?” He shrugged. “It would save all the bother of travelling to the Surface and then to the external stars, sir.”

“That is impossible, Holse,” Ferbin said patiently, trying not to lose his temper at such childish drivel. “The Oct and — thank God — the Aultridia are forbidden from interfering with the WorldGod; they may not descend to the Core. Therefore neither may we.” He might have replied at greater length, but — following an inopportune partial inhaling of a well-chewed wad of crile root — he was struck by an attack of coughing, and spent much of the next few minutes wheezing and spluttering and refusing Holse’s repeated offers to administer a forceful slap on the back.

The Hicturean-Anjrinh Scholastery sat on a low hill a day’s ride from the Hicturean Tower in the direction of nearpole, so that the great column was almost directly between it and Pourl. Like most Scholasteries, the place was forbidding-looking, even if technically it was unfortified. It looked like a long, low castle with its curtain wall removed. It had two turrets, but they housed telescopes rather than guns. The visible walls actually looked quite jolly, painted in all sorts of different colours, but it still appeared somehow grim to Ferbin. He had always been rather in awe of such places and the people who inhabited them. To give yourself up to a life of study, thought and contemplation seemed like, well, such a waste. He tipped continually between contempt for anyone who could cut themself off from so much that made life fun just to pursue this abstraction they called learning, and something close to reverence, deeply impressed that seriously clever people would willingly choose such an abstemious existence.

It was to one of these places that he knew Djan Seriy would have wanted to go, had she been free to choose. She hadn’t been, of course, and anyway the Culture had made off with her. Some of her letters home to her family after she had gone with them had spoken of places of learning that sounded a lot like Scholasteries. Ferbin had formed the impression that she’d learned a great deal. (Far too much, in the snorting estimation of their father.) Later letters seemed to hint that she had become some sort of warrior, almost a champion. They had worried about her sanity at first, but woman warriors were not unknown. Everybody had thought they belonged firmly in the past, but — well — who knew? The ways of the aliens — the superior, mentor and Optimae races, and who could say what others — were beyond knowing. So much of life went in great circles, in wheels of good and ill fortune; maybe woman warriors were part of some utterly strange and incomprehensible future.

Ferbin hoped she was a warrior. If he could get to her, or at least get word to her, Djan Seriy might be able to help him.

The Rollstar Obor was spreading a slow, reluctant dawn to their right as they approached. They passed apprentice scholars leaving the Scholastery compound to work in the fields, orchards and streams around the jumble of gaily painted buildings. They nodded, helloed, waved hats. Ferbin thought they looked almost happy.

An increasing number of the cities of the Sarl were becoming host to something like a Scholastery, though these urban institutions offered more practical instruction than the ancient, usually remote and rural Scholasteries. Many merchants and even some nobles were starting to send their sons to such modern varsities, and Ferbin had heard of one in Reshigue that accepted only girls. (Though that was Reshigue, and everybody knew the people of that thankfully distant city were mad.)

“No telegraph connection that I can see,” Holse pointed out, casting his gaze about the jumble of buildings. “That may be to the good. We’ll see.”

“Hmm?” Ferbin said.

Ferbin rarely prayed. It was a failing, he knew, but then a noble one, he’d always told himself. Even Gods, he felt sure, must have limited patience and even attention. By not praying he was leaving the floor of the divine court that little bit less crowded and so free for more deserving, less fortunate people whose own prayers would therefore stand by that same increment more likely to be heard above whatever hubbub must surely fill said assembly. In fact, he took comfort in the fact that, being a prince, his entreaties would of course have been given priority in the WorldGod’s petitionary court — he would have had a naturally louder voice, as it were — and so by his modest, self-effacing absence, he did far more good than a fellow of more limited importance would have done by such an act of self-sacrifice.

Still, the WorldGod was there, and — while going to see it, as Holse had suggested, was patently ridiculous — prayers were assuredly listened to. Sometimes, indeed, the WorldGod was said to intervene in the affairs of people, taking up the cause of the good and just and punishing those who had sinned. It would, therefore, positively be dereliction of princely duty not to entreat the deity. Even if it did — as it surely would — already know of the terrible events that had befallen Ferbin and which might be about to befall the Sarl people as a whole with a usurper in their midst and indeed in charge, the WorldGod might not feel able to act until it had received a sort of formal request from him, the rightful king. He wasn’t sure exactly how these things worked, never having paid attention in Divinity classes, but he had a feeling it might be something like that.

“Dear God, God of the World. Support me in my cause, let me escape my pursuers, if, ah, assuming there are pursuers. If not, then let there continue not to be any. Aid my getting out of the World and finding Xide Hyrlis and my dear sister Djan, that she may succour me. Let her be not turned away from her brother by the luxuries and, umm, luxuriances of the Culture people. Please, God, visit the most terrible and disgusting tribulations and humiliations upon the filthy usurper tyl Loesp, who killed my father. There is a foul fiend indeed, God! There is a monster in the form of man! You must have seen what happened, God, and if not, look into my memory and see it seared in there like a brand, burned and fixed for ever — what more awful crime has there ever been? What ghastliness committed between your skies can outdo that atrocity?”

Ferbin found he was growing breathless, and had to stop to collect himself. “God, if you punish him most severely, I shall rejoice. If not, then I shall take it as a sure and certain sign that you grant him not even the honour of divine retribution but leave his punishment for human hand. That hand may not be my own — I am, as your good self knows, more of a man of peace than of action — but it will be at my instigation, I swear, and it will be a sorry tower of anguish and despair that bastard suffers beneath. And the others, all who helped him; all them too. I do swear this, on the violated body of my own dearly loved father!” Ferbin swallowed, coughed. “You know I ask this for my people, not for myself, God; I never wanted to be king, though I will accept this burden when it falls to me. Elime; he should have been the king. Or Oramen might make a good king one day. I… I’m not sure I’d be very good at it. I never have been sure. But, sir, duty is duty.”

Ferbin wiped some tears away from his tightly closed eyes. “Thank you for this, my God. Oh; also, I would ask you to make my idiot servant see where his true duty lies and get him to stay with me. I have no skill negotiating the base vulgarities of life, whereas he has and, argumentative wretch though he may be, he makes progress the smoother for me. I’ve hardly dared let him out of my sight since I began to worry he might run off and I cannot think how daunting my way would be without him. Please also let the Head Scholar here, one Seltis, be well disposed to me and not remember that it was I who put the tack on his seat that time, or the maggot into his pie on that other occasion. Actually, twice, come to think of it. Anyway, let him have a Tower travel warrant thing that he doesn’t mind letting me have so that I can get away from here. Grant me all of this, WorldGod, and on my father’s life I swear I shall build a temple to your greatness, mercy and wisdom that will challenge the Towers themselves! Umm… Right. With all my — ah, well, that’s all.” Ferbin sat back, opening his eyes, then closed them and went on one knee again. “Oh, and ah, thank you.”

He had been given a small cell in the Scholastery after they’d arrived and announced themselves as a gentleman traveller and his assistant (a title — a promotion, even — that Holse had insisted upon) who had need of an audience with the Head Scholar. Ferbin found it strange to be treated like an ordinary person. In a way it was almost fun, but it was also a little shaming and even annoying, despite the fact it was this disguise of ordinariness that might well be all that was keeping him alive. Being asked to wait while anybody other than his father found time to see him was a novel experience, too. Well, not that novel, perhaps; certain ladies of his knowledge were prone to such tactics too. But that was a delicious sort of waiting, even if, at the time, seemingly intolerable. This was not delicious at all, this was frustrating.

He sat on the small sleeping platform in the little room, looked round the bare, sparsely furnished space and briefly took in the view towards the Hicturean Tower — most Scholastery windows looked towards Towers if they could. He looked down at his clothes, stolen from a dead man. He shivered, and was hugging himself when the door was struck loudly and almost before he could say, “Enter,” Choubris Holse had swung into the room, looking unsteady, his face flushed.

“Sir!” Holse said, then seemed to collect himself, drawing himself up and producing a nod that might have been the remnants of a bow. He smelled of smoke. “The Head Scholar will see you now, sir.”

“I shall be there directly, Holse,” Ferbin said, then, recalling that the WorldGod allegedly helped those most given to helping themselves — a treatise Holse himself most obviously lived by — he added, “Thank you.”

Holse frowned and looked confused.

“Seltis! My dear old friend! It is I!” Ferbin entered the office of the Head Scholar of Hicturean-Anjrinh Scholastery and held his arms open. The elderly man in slightly worn-looking scholastic robes sat on the far side of a broad, paper-littered desk, blinking behind small round glasses.

“That you are you, sir, is one of life’s great undeniables,” he replied. “Do you apply for position by stating such truisms and claiming them profound?”

Ferbin looked round to make sure the door had been closed from outside by the serving scholar who had let him in. He smiled and approached the Head Scholar’s desk, arms still outspread. “No, Seltis, I mean, it is I!” He lowered his voice. “Ferbin. Who once was your most exasperating yet still I hope most loved pupil. You must pardon my disguise, and I am glad that it is so effective, but it is most assuredly me. Hello, old friend and most wise tutor!”

Seltis rose, an expression of some wonder and uncertainty on his withered face. He made a small bow. “By God, I do believe it might be, too.” His gaze searched Ferbin’s face. “How are you, boy?”

“No longer a boy, Seltis,” Ferbin said, taking a comfortable seat to one side of the desk, in a small bay window. Seltis remained at his desk, looking over a small cart full of books at his former pupil. Ferbin let a serious, even tormented expression take over his features. “Rather a young man, old friend, and a happy, carefree one at that, until a few days ago. Dear Seltis, I saw my own father murdered in the most obscene circumstance—”

Seltis looked alarmed and held up one hand. He turned away from Ferbin and said, “Munhreo, leave us, please.”

“Yes, Head Scholar,” said another voice, and, somewhat to Ferbin’s horror, a young man dressed in the robes of a junior scholar rose from a small, paper-piled desk set in one alcove of the room and — with a fascinated glance at Ferbin — went to leave the room.

“Munhreo,” the Head Scholar said to the youth as he was opening the door. The young scholar turned round. “You heard nothing, do you understand?”

The young scholar made a small bow. “Indeed, sir.”

“Ah. He must study the art of hiding, that one, eh?” Ferbin said awkwardly after the door had closed.

“He is trustworthy, I believe,” Seltis said. He drew his own seat over and sat by Ferbin, still studying his face. “Remind me; my assistant at the palace — who would that have been?”

Ferbin frowned, blew out his cheeks. “Oh. I don’t know. Youngish chap. Can’t recall his name.” He grinned. “Sorry.”

“And did I ever implant the name of the capital of Voette sufficiently well for it to take root?”

“Ah. Voette. Knew an ambassador’s daughter from there once. Lovely girl. She was from… Nottle? Gottle? Dottle? Something like that. That right?”

“The capital of Voette is Wiriniti, Ferbin,” Seltis said wearily. “And I truly do believe you are who you say.”

“Excellent!”

“Welcome, sir. I have to say, though, we had been informed that you were killed, prince.”

“And if the wishes of that murderous, scheming turd tyl Loesp made such things so, I would be, old friend.”

Seltis looked alarmed. “The new regent? What’s the cause of this hatred?”

Ferbin related the fundamentals of his story since the moment he and his party had crested the Cherien ridge and looked out over the great battlefield. Seltis sighed, polished his glasses twice, sat back, sat forward again, stood up at one point, walked round his seat, looked out through the window and sat back down again. He shook his head a few times.

“And so myself and my unreliable servant are here to ask for your help, dear Seltis, firstly in getting a message to Oramen and also in getting me away from the Eighth and from the great World itself. I have to warn my brother and seek my sister. I am that reduced. My sister has been with these Optimae the Culture for many years and has, by her own account, learned such things that even you might find impressive. She may even have become a sort of female warrior, as I understand it. In any event, she might have — or can call upon — powers and influences that I myself cannot. Help me make my way to her, Seltis, and help me warn my brother, and my gratitude, I swear, will be great. I am the rightful king even if I am not the anointed monarch; my formal ascension lies in the future, as must your reward. Even so, one as wise and learned as yourself no doubt understands even better than I the duty a subject owes to their sovereign. I trust you see that I ask for no more than I have every right to expect.”

“Well, Ferbin,” the old scholar said, sitting back in his seat and taking his glasses off again to inspect them, “I don’t know which would be the more confounding; that all you say is true, or that your skills in fictive composition have suddenly improved a million-fold.” He placed his glasses back on his nose. “Truthfully, I would rather that what you say is not so. I would rather believe that you did not have to witness what you did, that your father was not murdered, and our regent is not a monster, but I think I have to believe that all you claim is true. I am sorry for your loss, Ferbin, beyond words. But in any case, I hope you see that it is as well I attempt to restrict your stay here to a minimum. I will certainly do all I can to assist you on your way and I shall depute one of my senior tutors to take a message to your brother.”

“Thank you, old friend,” Ferbin said, relieved.

“However. You should know that there are rumours against you, Ferbin. They say that you deserted the battlefield shortly before your death, and that many other crimes, large and small, domestic and social, are being piled against you, now that you are thought safely dead.”

“What?” Ferbin shouted.

“As I say,” Seltis said. “They seek, by the sound of it, to make you ill-missed and, perhaps — if they suspect you are not dead — to make it the more likely that you will be betrayed by anyone you reveal yourself to. Take all care, young man that was boy, and prince that hopes to be king.”

“Inequity upon infamy,” Ferbin breathed, his mouth drying as he spoke. “Injustice piled upon outrage. Intolerable. Intolerable.” A terrible anger built within him, causing his hands to shake. He stared at his trembling fingers, marvelling at such a physical effect. He swallowed, looking at his old tutor with tears in his eyes. “I tell you, Seltis, at every point at which I feel my rage cannot conceivably grow any further, having reached the outermost extremity of that possible for a man to bear, I am propelled further into indecent fury by the next action of that unspeakable puddle of excrement tyl Loesp.”

“Taking account of all you say,” Seltis said, rising, “that is hardly to be wondered at.” He went to a sash hanging by the wall behind his desk. “Will you have something to drink?”

“Some respectable wine would not go amiss,” Ferbin said, brightening. “My servant favours stuff you’d hesitate to rinse a rowel’s arse with.”

Seltis pulled on the sash. A gong rang distantly. He came and sat down with the prince again.

“I take it you wish me to recommend you to the Oct, for enTowerment, for transportation to the Surface.”

“Whatever you call it,” Ferbin said eagerly, sitting forward. “Yes. Naturally there are, in theory, royal prerogatives I might use, but that would amount to suicide. With a pass from you, I might hope to evade tyl Loesp’s spies and informants.”

“Rather more than just spies and informants; in potential, at least, the whole of the army, and even all of the people,” Seltis said. “Everyone, thinking themselves loyal, will be turned against the one they ought to be loyal to.”

“Indeed,” Ferbin said. “I must trust to my own wits and those of my irritating but wily servant.”

Seltis looked concerned, Ferbin thought.

A servant came to the door and wine was ordered. When the door was closed again, Ferbin leant forward and said solemnly, “I have prayed to the WorldGod, good Seltis.”

“That can do no harm,” the Head Scholar said, looking no less concerned.

Someone rapped loudly on the door. “Enter!” Seltis called. “The kitchens are not usually so—”

Choubris Holse lunged into the room, nodded briefly at the Head Scholar and to Ferbin said, “Sir; I fear we are discovered.”

Ferbin leapt to his feet. “What? How?”

Holse looked uncertainly at Seltis. “Little scholar fellow on the roof, sir; heliographed a passing patrol. Three knights on caude just coming in to land.”

“Munhreo,” the Head Scholar said, also standing.

“Maybe they’re just… visiting?” Ferbin suggested.

“In the circumstances, assume the worst,” Seltis told him, moving to his desk. “You’d best get going. I’ll try to detain them as long as I can.”

“We’ll never outrun them on mounts!” Ferbin protested. “Seltis, do you have any flying beasts?”

“No, Ferbin. We do not.” He took a small key from a drawer, kicked a rug behind his desk against the wall and, grunting, knelt on the boards, opening a small hatch in the floor and taking out two thick, heavy grey envelopes stoutly secured with thin metal bands. He opened a flap in each package and quickly wrote their names, then stamped the Scholastery seal on them. “Here,” he said, handing the envelopes to Ferbin. “The D’neng-oal Tower. The Towermaster is one Aiaik.”

“Ake,” Ferbin said.

Seltis tutted and spelled the name for him.

“Aiaik,” Ferbin said. “Thank you, Seltis.” He turned to his servant. “Holse, what are we going to do?”

Holse looked pained. “I have, reluctantly, had an idea, sir.”

The three caude were tied to a hitching ring on the flat roof of the Scholastery’s main building. A small crowd of mostly young scholars and servants had gathered to gape at the great air beasts, which had settled on their haunches on the roof and were munching on whatever was in their nose bags, giving every impression of ignoring the crowd around them with a degree of disdain. A warm, gusting wind ruffled their crests and made the gaudy coverings under their saddles flap. Ferbin and Holse hurried up the steps and crossed the roof.

“Make way!” Holse shouted, striding through the crowd. Ferbin drew himself up to his full height and strode manfully too, affecting an expression of hauteur.

“Yes! Out of my way!” he yelled.

Holse moved a couple of youthful scholars aside with the flat of his hand and then pointed at another. “You! Untie the beasts. Just two. Now!”

“I was told to guard them, by their riders,” the youth protested.

“And I’m telling you to untie them,” Holse said drawing his short-sword.

What a sheltered life they must lead here, Ferbin thought as the youngster’s eyes went wide and he started fumbling with the reins of one of the beasts. Amazed at the sight of caude and impressed by a drawn sword!

“You!” Holse shouted at another youth. “Help him.”

Ferbin felt rather proud of Holse, if a little envious too. Even resentful, he admitted to himself. He wished he could do something dynamic, or at least useful. He looked at the twenty or so faces confronting him, trying to remember what the scholar called Munhreo had looked like.

“Is Munhreo here?” he said loudly, cutting through a dozen muttered conversations.

“Sir, he went with the knights,” said one voice. The various conversations resumed. Ferbin glanced back at the stairs that led to the roof. “Who’s most senior here?” he barked.

Looks were exchanged. In a moment, one tall scholar stepped forward. “I am.”

“You are aware what these are?” Ferbin asked, pulling the two fat envelopes from his jacket. More wide eyes, and some nodding. “If you are loyal to your Head Scholar and your rightful king, guard that stairway with your life. Make sure nobody else comes up it, and stop anybody from leaving the roof too, until we’ve gone.”

“Sir.” The tall scholar looked initially doubtful, but he took a couple of his peers and went to stand by the steps.

“The rest of you, kindly stand over there,” Ferbin said, indicating the far corner of the roof. There was some muttering, but the scholars complied. He turned back. Holse was removing the nose bag from one of the caude. He emptied the bag with a flick while the creature was mewling in protest, turned the caude round to face towards the nearest edge of the roof and then quickly threw the emptied bag over the beast’s head. “Do the same with the other one, would you, sir?” he asked Ferbin, and moved to the caude which was still tied up. “Make sure it points the same way as that one.”

Ferbin did as he’d been asked, starting to understand why. He felt sick. The two caude with the nose bags over their heads laid their heads obediently on the surface of the roof and might already have been asleep.

Holse gentled the third caude, patting its nose and murmuring to it even as he brought the short-sword to its long neck. He slashed its throat, deep and hard, and the creature jerked back, snapped its tied reins and fell over backwards, wings half extending then folding back again, long legs kicking, then — to the shocked cries of several of the scholars — it went still, dark blood pooling on the roof’s dusty paving.

Holse flicked blood from his sword, sheathed it and strode past Ferbin. He whipped the nose bags off the two surviving caude; their heads rose and deep grumbling noises issued from their wide mouths. “Jump on, sir,” he said. “Try and keep it from seeing the dead one.”

Ferbin mounted the nearest caude, fitting himself into the deep saddle and drawing its belt over while Holse was doing the same. Ferbin was buttoning his jacket tight when his caude bent its long leathery neck back and looked at him with what might have been a puzzled expression, possibly registering the fact that it had a rider different from the one it was used to.

Caude were fabulously stupid animals; the intelligence had been bred out of them as obedience and stamina had been bred in. Ferbin had never heard of one being trained to accept just one rider. He patted the beast’s face and sorted its reins, then kicked its sides and got it to rise on its great long legs and half open its wings with a dry, rustling sound. Suddenly he was towering over the collection of startled, shocked-looking scholars.

“Ready?” Holse shouted.

“Ready!” Ferbin yelled.

They kicked the caude forward to the edge of the roof; the animals jumped on to the parapet and in the same heart-stopping movement launched themselves into the air just as shouts from the stairway end of the roof rang out. Ferbin whooped, half in fear and half in excitement, as the great wings opened with a snap and he and the caude started to fall towards a flagstoned courtyard half a dozen storeys below, the air roaring in his ears. The caude began pulling out of its dive, heavying him into the saddle; the wind screamed about him and he caught a glimpse of Holse to his side, grim-faced, hands clenched round the reins as they levelled out and the giant beasts took their first flap at the air. Distant popping noises behind them might have been gunfire. Something whizzed past between his caude and Holse’s, but then they were beating out away from the Scholastery over the fields and streams.

7. Reception

A reception was held in a grand drawing room of the palace after the state funeral of the late king and his internment in the Hausk family mausoleum, which lay some distance outside the farpole edge of the city walls. It had rained since morning and the day was still dark beyond the tall windows of the great room. Hundreds of candles burned by mirrored walls; the King had recently had installed lights which consumed lampstone, and others which arced electricity to make light, but both had proved problematic in operation and Oramen was glad to see the candles. They gave a softer light and the room didn’t stink of the noxious gases the other types of lamp gave off.

“Fanthile!” Oramen said, seeing the palace secretary.

“Sir.” Fanthile, in his most formal court clothes, all trimmed with mourning red, bowed deeply to the prince. “This is the sorriest of days, sir. We must hope it marks the end of the very sorriest of times.”

“My father would have wanted it no other way.” Oramen saw a couple of Fanthile’s assistants waiting behind him, as good as hopping from foot to foot like children in need of the toilet. He smiled. “I believe you’re needed, Fanthile.”

“With your leave, sir.”

“Of course,” Oramen said, and let Fanthile go to arrange whatever needed to be arranged. He supposed it was a busy time for the fellow. Personally he was quite content to stand and watch.

The atmosphere in the echoing great space, it seemed to Oramen, was one almost of relief. He had only recently developed a feeling for things like the atmosphere of a room. Amazingly, this was something Ferbin had purposefully taught him. Before, Oramen had tended to dismiss talk of such abstracts as ‘atmosphere’ as somehow unimportant; stuff adults talked about for want of anything actually worth discussing. Now he knew better and, by measuring his own submerged mood, he could attempt to gauge the emotional tenor of a gathering like this.

Over the years, Oramen had learned much from his older brother — mostly things like how to behave so as to avoid beatings, tutors tearing their hair out, scandalised lenders petitioning one’s father for funds to pay gambling debts, outraged fathers and husbands demanding satisfaction, that sort of thing — but this was an instance when Ferbin had had a proper lesson he could actually teach his younger brother, rather than simply exemplifying the bad example.

Ferbin had taught Oramen to listen to his own feelings in such situations. This had not been so easy; Oramen often felt overwhelmed in complicated social environments and had come to believe that he felt every emotion there was to feel at such times (so that they all cancelled each other out), or none at all. Eitherly, the result was that he would just stand there, or sit there, or at rate just be there, at whatever ceremony or gathering he was present at, seemingly near catatonic, feeling thoroughly detached and declutched, a waste to himself and an embarrassment to others. He had never suffered especially as a result of this mild social disability — one could get away with almost anything being the son of the King, as Ferbin seemed to have spent most of his life attempting to prove — however, such incidents had come to annoy him, and he’d known that they would only increase as he grew older and — even as the younger prince — he’d be expected to start taking a fuller part in the ceremonial and social workings of the court.

Gradually, under Ferbin’s admittedly casual tutelage, he had learned to seek a sort of calmness in himself and then amplify what feeling was still there, and use that as his marker. So that if, after a little immersion in a social grouping, he still felt tense when he had no particular reason to, then the shared feeling amongst that group must be something similar. If he felt at ease, then that meant the general atmosphere was also placid.

There was, here, he thought — standing looking out over the people collecting in the great drawing room — genuine sadness as well as an undercurrent of apprehension regarding what would happen now with the great king gone (his father’s stature had risen all the higher with his death, as if he was already passing into legend), but there was too a kind of excitement; everyone knew that the preparations for the attack on what was thought to be the now near-defenceless Deldeyn were being stepped up and the war — perhaps, as the late king had believed, the last ever war — was therefore approaching its conclusion.

The Sarl would achieve a goal they had been pursuing for almost all the life of their departed king, the Deldeyn would be defeated, the loathsome and hated Aultridia would be confounded, the WorldGod would be protected — who knew? even saved — and the Oct, the long-term allies of the Sarl, would be grateful, one might even say beholden. The New Age of peace, contentment and progress that King Hausk had talked so much about would finally come to pass. The Sarl would have proved themselves as a people and would, as they grew in power and influence within the greater World and eventually within the alien-inhabited skies beyond, take their rightful place as one of the In-Play, as an Involved species and civilisation, a people fit — perhaps, one day, no doubt still some long way in the future — to treat even the Optimae of the galaxy (the Morthanvelds, the Cultures, and who knew what alien others) as their equals.

That had always been his father’s ultimate aim, Oramen knew, though Hausk had known that he’d never see that day — neither would Oramen, or any children he would ever have — but it was enough to know that one had done one’s bit to further that albeit distant goal, that one’s efforts had formed some sturdy part of the foundations for that great tower of ambition and achievement.

The stage is small but the audience is great, had been one of King Hausk’s favourite sayings. To some degree he meant that the WorldGod watched and hopefully somehow appreciated what they were doing on its behalf, but there was also the implication that although the Sarl were primitive and their civilisation almost comically undeveloped by the standards of, say, the Oct (never mind the Nariscene, still less the Morthanveld and the other Optimae), nevertheless, greatness lay in doing the best you could with what you were given, and that greatness, that fixity of purpose, strength of resolve and decisiveness of action would be watched and noted by those far more powerful peoples and judged not on an absolute scale (on which it would barely register) but on one relative to the comparatively primitive resources the Sarl had available to them.

In a sense, his father had told him once — his contemplative moods were rare, so memorable — the Sarl and people like them had more power than the ungraspably supreme Optimae peoples with their millions of artificial worlds circling in the sky, their thinking machines that put mere mortals to shame and their billions of starships that sailed the spaces between the stars the way an iron warship cruised the waves. Oramen had found this claim remarkable, to put it kindly.

His father had explained that the very sophistication the Optimae and their like enjoyed acted as binds upon them. For all the legendary size of the great island of stars that existed beyond their own world of Sursamen, the galaxy was a crowded, settled, much-lived-in place. The Optimae — the Morthanveld, the Culture and so on — were self-consciously well-behaved and civilised peoples, and existed hip-by-hip with their fellow inhabitants of the great lens. Their realms and fields of influence — and to a degree their histories, cultures and achievements — tended to intermingle and overlap, reducing their cohesiveness as societies and making a defensive war difficult.

Similarly, there was little or nothing they ever needed to compete for and so might come to arms over. Instead, they were bound by numerous treaties, agreements, accords, conventions and even never fully articulated understandings, all designed to keep the peace, to avoid friction between those who were entirely alien in form to one another, but entirely alike in having reached the plateau of civilisational development where further progress could only take one away from the real life of the galaxy altogether.

The result was that while their individuals had what appeared to be complete freedom within their societies, the societies themselves had very little freedom of movement at all, certainly not that seemingly implied by their colossal martial potential. There was simply not much left for them to do on any grand scale. There were no — or at least very few — great wars at this level, no vast tusslings for position and power except by the slowest and most subtle of manoeuvrings. The last great, or at least fairly substantial conflict had been a millennium of Eighth short-years ago, when the Culture had fought the Idirans, and that had been, bizarrely, over principle, at least on the Culture side. (Oramen suspected that if it had not been Xide Hyrlis himself who had confirmed the truth of this, his father would never have believed anything that seemed to him so decadently preposterous.)

The Optimae had no kings to move a whole people to a single purpose at once, they had no real enemies they felt they had no choice but to fight, and they had nothing they valued that they could not somehow produce, seemingly at will, cheaply and in whatever quantities they chose, so there were no resources to fight over either.

But they, the Sarl, the people of the Eighth, this little race of men, they and their like were free to pander to their natures and indulge in their disputes untrammelled. They could do, in effect, and within the limits of their technologies, as they liked! Was that not a fine feeling? Some of the treaties the Optimae indulged in amongst themselves were framed so as to allow people like the Sarl to behave like this, unfettered, in the name of non-interference and resisting cultural imperialism. Was this not rich? Their licence to fight and lie and cheat their way to power and influence was guaranteed by space-alien statute!

The King had found this thoroughly amusing. The stage is small but the audience is great, he had repeated. But never forget, he had told Oramen, that you might be in more of a theatre than you thought. The abilities of the Optimae easily encompassed watching all that was going on amongst people as defenceless to such technologies as the Sarl. It was one of the ways that the Optimae refreshed their jaded palates and reminded themselves what a more barbarous life was like; they watched, for all the world like gods, and while various agreements and treaties were supposed to control and restrict such spying, they were not always observed.

Decadent it might be, but it was the price a people like the Sarl had to pay, perhaps, for their sanction to behave in ways that the Optimae might otherwise find too distasteful to allow. But never mind; maybe one day the descendants of the Sarl would spend their time flying between the stars and watching their own mentored primitives dispute! Happily, by then, his father had informed the youthful Oramen, they would both be long and safely dead.

Who knew to what extent the Sarl were observed? Oramen looked about the great room and wondered. Maybe alien eyes were watching this great mass of people all dressed in their deep red clothes. Maybe they were watching him, right now.

“Oramen, my sweet young prince,” the lady Renneque said, suddenly at his side. “You must not just stand there! People will think you a statue! Come, be my escort to the grieving widow, we’ll pay what respects are due together. What do you say?”

Oramen smiled and took the lady’s offered hand. Renneque was radiantly beautiful in her crimson gown. Her night-dark hair was not quite perfectly contained in a scarlet mourning cap; ringlets and curls had sprung out here and there, framing her perfectly smooth and flawless face.

“You are right,” Oramen said. “I should go to see that lady, and say the right things.”

They walked together through the crowd, which had greatly increased in size since Oramen had last paid proper attention to it as more mourners had been delivered by their carriages. There were hundreds of people here now, all dressed in a hundred shades of red. Only the Urletine mercenaries’ emissary and the knight commander of the Ichteuen Godwarriors seemed to have been excused, and even they had made an effort; the emissary had removed almost all the dried enemy body-parts from his clothing and donned a brown cap that no doubt appeared red to him, while the knight commander had concealed his most shocking facial scars with a crimson veil. And not just humanity was represented; he could smell the presence of the Oct ambassador, Kiu.

In amongst this, the animals of the court: ynt, like ankle-high furry waves slinking sinuously across the floor, always sniffing, happily trailing vermilion ribbons; ryre, tiptoeing decorously, usually by walls, thinly knee-high, ever-charmed by their own reflection, watchful, barely tolerating crimson collars; choups, bouncing and skittering on the polished-to-a-gleam wood tiles, bumping into people’s thighs and waists, alarmed at any alienness, proudly sporting little saddles for children, flanks tied-over with red to indicate mourning like full-size mounts throughout the kingdom on this day, all caparisoned in scarlet.

Moving through the crowd in Renneque’s rustlingly red wake, Oramen gave many small smiles to many slightly anxious faces trying to hit on the right combination of regretful grief and encouraging friendliness. Renneque kept her face modestly down, yet seemed to appreciate every glance cast her way and to be energised by the attention. “You have grown, Oramen,” she told him, slipping back to his side. “It seems that only yesterday I could look down on you, but no more. You’re taller than me now, practically a man.”

“I trust I grow rather than you shrink.”

“What? Oh!” Renneque said, and squeezed his hand with every appearance of bashfulness. She glanced up. “So many people, Oramen! All would be your friends now.”

“I did not think I lacked for friends before, but I suppose I must accept I was wrong.”

“Will you go with the army, Oramen, down into the Ninth, to fight the dreadful Deldeyn?”

“I don’t know. It’s not really for me to decide.”

Renneque looked down at her fine red gown being kicked out ahead of her with every step. “Perhaps it should be.”

“Perhaps.”

“I hope the victory is quick! I want to see the great Falls at Hyeng-zhar and the Nameless City.”

“I have heard they are most spectacular.”

“My friend Xidia — she’s older than me, of course, but still — she saw them once, in more peaceful times. Her father was ambassador to the Deldeyn. He took her. She says they are like nothing else. A whole city! Imagine that! I should like to see them.”

“I’m sure you shall.”

They arrived at where Harne, the lady Aelsh, was seated, surrounded by her own ladies, many clutching handkerchiefs and still dabbing at their eyes. Harne herself looked dry-eyed, though grim.

Oramen’s late father had never taken any lady to be his queen, thinking it best to leave that position free in case he needed to use it as a method of securing a troublesome or much-required territory. It was said that King Hausk had come close to marrying several times; certainly the subject had been raised amongst the ambassadors and diplomats of the court often enough, and if you believed every rumour he had been nearly married to almost every eligible princess of the Eighth and at least one from the Ninth. In the event his feats of arms had done all the securing required without recourse to a diplomatic or strategic marriage and instead he had chosen to make a series of more tactical alliances within the nobility of his own kingdom through a judicious choice of honoured concubines.

Oramen’s own mother, Aclyn, the lady Blisk — who had also birthed his elder brother, the late and still sorely lamented Elime — had been banished shortly after Oramen had been born, allegedly at the insistence of Harne, who, being older, it was said had felt threatened. Or perhaps there had been a falling-out between the two women — versions varied according to whom within the palace you listened to. Oramen had no memories of his mother, only of nurses and servants and an occasionally visiting father who somehow contrived to seem more remote than his utterly absent mother. She had been banished to a place called Kheretesuhr, an archipelagic province in the Vilamian Ocean, towards the far side of the world from Pourl. One of Oramen’s goals, now that he was at least approaching the true seat of power, was to secure her return to the court. He had never expressed this desire to anyone, yet he had always felt that somehow Harne must know this.

The final link in this unhappily expansive family had been Vaime, the lady Anaplia. Always frail, she had collapsed when heavily pregnant. The doctors had told the King he could save the mother or the child, but not both. He chose to save the child, expecting a boy. Instead he was presented with a tiny premature dot of a girl. He was so appalled at this disaster that the infant wasn’t even named for a month. Eventually she was called Djan. Over the years, the King had made no secret, least of all towards Djan herself, that had he known her gender before birth, she would have been sacrificed for the good of her mother. His only solace had been that he might marry the girl off one day for diplomatic profit.

The King had lately taken another couple of junior concubines, though these were kept in a smaller palace in another part of the city — again, at the insistence of Harne, according to palace gossip — however, it was Harne that was recognised as his widow in all but name. The two younger concubines had not even been present at the service or internment, nor had they been invited here.

“Madam, good lady,” Oramen said, bowing deeply to Harne. “It is only in you that I feel my sense of loss is matched, even outweighed. I beg you accept my most sincere condolences. If we may take one ray of light from this dark time, let it be that you and I grow closer than we have been; my father’s death, and that of your son, giving birth to a more affectionate relationship between us than that which has existed in the past. The King always sought harmony, even if through initial conflict, and Ferbin was the very soul of sociability. We might honour both their memories by seeking our own concord.”

He’d had this little speech, this careful formed set of words, prepared for some days now. He had meant to say “the King’s death”, but it had come out otherwise; he had no idea why. He felt annoyed at himself.

The lady Aelsh kept her strict expression, but made a small inclination of her head. “Thank you for your words, prince. I’m sure they would both be pleased if all could be in agreement within the court. We might all take pains to celebrate them so.”

And that, Oramen thought — as Renneque fell to Harne’s side and took the older woman’s hands in hers and shook them as she told her how awful was her own grief — will just have to do. It was not outright rejection, but neither was it quite what he’d been hoping for. He caught Harne’s gaze briefly while Renneque talked on. He bowed and turned away.

“How go our preparations, Field Marshal?” Oramen asked the gauntly forbidding form of the army’s newly promoted chief. Werreber was standing, drink in hand, gazing out at the rain falling over the city. He turned and looked down at Oramen.

“Satisfactorily, sir,” he said gravely.

“The rumours say we attack within ten days.”

“I have heard as much myself, sir.”

Oramen smiled. “My father would have loved to have been at the head of our forces.”

“He would indeed, sir.”

“We will not suffer by his lack? I mean, sufficiently for there to be any doubting the outcome.”

“He is a great loss, sir,” Werreber said. “However, he left the army in its best deportment. And there is, of course, an urge amongst the men to avenge his death.”

“Hmm,” Oramen said, frowning. “I heard that the Deldeyn prisoners were slaughtered after his death.”

“There was killing, sir. It was a battle.”

“After the battle, though. When by every other standard and practice of my father, prisoners are meant to be treated as we would want any of our own taken.”

“There was killing then too, sir. It is to be regretted. Doubtless the men were blinded by grief.”

“I have heard it said that my father ordered the slaughter.”

“I am sorry you have heard that, sir.”

“You were there with him when he died, dear Werreber. Do you remember such an order?”

The field marshal drew back and up a little, and appeared positively discomfited. “Prince,” he said, looking down his great long nose at him, “it is sad, but there are times when the less that is said about certain matters the better it is for all. A clean wound’s best left. Only pain comes from poking and prodding at it.”

“Oh, Werreber, I could not be there at my father’s death. I have a need — natural to any son — to know quite how it was. Can you not help fix it in my mind so that, secured, it’s easier to leave it finally alone? Otherwise I must imagine the scene, the words, the actions, and all these things shift because they are not established for me. So it becomes a wound I cannot help but return to.”

The field marshal looked as uncomfortable as Oramen had ever seen him. “I was not present throughout the incident of your father’s dying,” he said. “I was with the Exaltine, on our way having been summoned, or for some long time outside the building, not wishing to make a crowd while efforts to save the King’s life continued. I heard no such order given by your father regarding the prisoners, but that does not mean it was not given. It hardly matters, sir. Done to order or in an excess of grief, the enemy concerned remain dead.”

“So I’d not dispute,” Oramen said. “It was more the reputation of my father I was thinking of.”

“He must have been in great pain and distress, sir. A fever can afflict men in such circumstances. They become other than themselves and say things they would never say otherwise. Even the bravest. It is often not an edifying spectacle. I repeat, sir; it is all best left alone.”

“Are you saying that at the very end he did not die as he had lived? He would think that a severe charge.”

“No, sir, I am not. In any event, I did not see the very end.” Werreber paused, as if unsure quite how to express himself. “Your father was the bravest man I ever knew. I cannot imagine he met death with anything other than the fierce composure with which he faced its threat so many times during life. Also, though, he was never one to dwell excessively on the past. Even having made a mistake, he took what he might learn from it and then dismissed it. We must do as he would have done, and turn our attention to the future. Now, sir, might I be excused? I believe I am needed at Headquarters. There is much still to be planned.”

“Of course, Werreber,” Oramen said, sipping his drink. “I did not mean to detain you, or unduly press on any wound.”

“Sir.” The field marshal bowed and departed.

Oramen counted himself privileged to have got so much from Werreber, who was known as a man of few words. This was a description unsuited to the Exaltine Chasque, the next figure he approached seeking detail of his father’s death. The Exaltine was rotund in body and face and his dark red robes bulked him out still further. He blustered over his own part in the deathbed scene, claiming his eyes had been too full of tears and his ears brimming with the lamentations of all around to recall much clearly.

“And so, do your studies progress, young prince?” the Exaltine asked, as though returning to the more important subject. “Eh? Do you continue to sup at the well of learning? Hmm?”

Oramen smiled. He was used to adults asking about favourite school subjects when they could think of nothing else to talk of or wished to get off an awkward subject, so he replied perfunctorily and made his escape.

“They say the dead look back at us from mirrors, don’t they, Gillews?”

The royal physician turned round with a startled expression on his face, and then staggered and nearly fell over. “Your — that is, Prince Oramen.”

The doctor was a small, tense, nervous-looking man at the best of times. He seemed now positively abuzz with energy. Also, from his continued swaying and the glassy look about his eyes, quite drunk too. He had been staring at his reflection in one of the mirrors that covered half the walls of the drawing room. Oramen had been looking for him, moving amongst the throng, accepting sympathies, dispensing solemn pleasantries and trying to look — and be — grieving, brave, calm and dignified all at once.

“Did you see my father, Gillews?” Oramen asked, nodding to the mirror. “Was he in there, looking down on us?”

“What’s that?” the doctor asked. His breath smelled of wine and some unsluiced foodstuff. Then he seemed to catch up with what was going on and turned, swaying again, to look into the tall mirror. “What? The dead? No, I see no one, saw nobody. Indeed not, prince, no.”

“My father’s death must have affected you deeply, good doctor.”

“How could it not?” the little fellow asked. He wore a doctor’s skullcap, but it had slipped to one side and come forward, too, so that it was starting to droop over his right eye. Wispy white hairs protruded. He looked down into his near-empty glass and said, “How could it not?” again.

“I’m glad I found you, Gillews,” Oramen told him. “I have wanted to talk to you since my father was killed.”

The doctor closed one eye and squinted at him. “Uh?” he said.

Oramen had grown up with adults getting drunk around him. He didn’t really enjoy drinking — the sensation of being dizzy, as though you were about to be sick, seemed an odd state to pursue with such determination — but he quite liked being with drunk people, having learned that they often gave away the true natures they otherwise contrived to hide, or just let slip some item of information or gossip they would not have parted with so casually when sober. He already suspected he had got to Dr Gillews too late, but he’d give it a try anyway. “You were with my father when he died, obviously.”

“It was a most obvious death, sir, true,” the doctor said, and, strangely, attempted a smile. This dissolved quickly into an expression of some despair, then he dropped his head so that his expression was unreadable and started muttering what sounded like, “Well, not obvious, why obvious? Gillews, you idiot…”

“Doctor. I’d know how my father was in those last minutes. This is a matter of some importance to me. I feel I can’t put him fully to rest in my mind until I know. Please — can you recall?”

“To rest?” Gillews said. “What rest? What rest is there? Rest is… rest is beneficial. Renews the frame, redefines the nerves, resupplies the muscles and allows the mechanical stresses on the greater bodily organs to abate. Yes, that is rest, and crave it we might. Death is not rest, no; death is the end of rest. Death is decay and rotting down, not building up! Don’t talk to me of rest! What rest is there? Tell me that! What rest? Where, when our king lies heavy in his grave? For whom? Eh? I thought not!”

Oramen had taken a step back as the doctor raved at him. He could only wonder at the depths of emotion the poor man must be feeling. How he must have loved his king, and how devastating it must have been for him to lose him, to be unable to save him. The doctor’s two principal assistants moved in on either side to take Gillews’ arms, supporting him. One took his glass and pushed it into a pocket. The other looked at Oramen, smiled nervously and shrugged. He mumbled something apologetic-sounding that ended in “sir”.

“What?” Gillews said, head tipping from side to side as though his neck was half broken, eyes rolling as he tried to focus on the two young men. “My pall-bearers, already? Is it to a council of my peers? An arraignment before the shades of physicians past? Throw me in the mirror. Let me reflect…” He pitched his head back and wailed, “Oh, my king, my king!” then slumped in the grip of the two men, weeping.

The assistants took Gillews stumbling away.

“Dear Oramen,” tyl Loesp said, appearing at Oramen’s side. He looked after the departing figures of Gillews and his two helpers. “The doctor may have enjoyed his drink too much.”

“He enjoys nothing else,” Oramen said. “I feel outdone in unkiltered grief.”

“There is appropriate grief, and inappropriate grief, don’t you think?” tyl Loesp said, standing close to Oramen, towering over him, white hair shining in the candlelight. His dark red trous and long jacket contrived to make him look no less massive than he’d looked in full armour, the evening he’d brought the King’s body back from the battlefield. Oramen was growing tired of being polite.

“Did my father die well, in the end, tyl Loesp?” he asked. “Tell me. Please.”

Tyl Loesp had been bending over Oramen a little. Now he drew himself back and up. “Like a king should, sir. I was never more proud of him, nor held him in greater esteem, as at that moment.”

Oramen put his hand on the tall warrior’s arm. “Thank you, Loesp.”

“It is my pleasure and my duty, young prince. I am but the stake to support a sapling.”

“You have supported me well in this, and I am in your debt.”

“Never so, sir. Never so.” Tyl Loesp smiled at Oramen for a moment or two, then his gaze flicked to somewhere behind the prince and he said, “Here, sir. Look; a more welcome face.”

“My prince,” said a voice behind Oramen.

He turned to find his old friend Tove Lomma standing there, smiling.

“Tove!” Oramen said.

“Equerry Tove, if you’ll have me, Prince Regent.”

“Equerry?” Oramen asked. “To me? Of mine?”

“I’d hope! Nobody else would have me.”

“In fact, a most able young man,” tyl Loesp said, clapping both Lomma and Oramen on the shoulders. “Remember merely that he is meant to keep you out of mischief, not lay a course towards it.” Tyl Loesp smiled at Oramen. “I’ll leave you two to plot much good behaviour.” He bowed shortly and left.

Tove looked rueful. “Not a day for mischief, prince. Not this one. But we must hope there will be many in the future.”

“We’ll share none if you don’t call me by my name, Tove.”

“Tyl Loesp instructed me most strictly that you were the Prince Regent, nothing more familiar,” Tove said, and pretended to frown.

“Consider that order rescinded, by me.”

“Duly agreed, Oramen. Let’s have a drink.”

8. Tower

“Fate, I tell you, if not the hand of the WorldGod itself… or whatever manipulatory appendage WorldGods possess. Anyway, the hand, metaphorically, of the WorldGod. Possibly.”

“I think you underguess the workings of blind chance, sir.”

“Blind chance that took me to that dreadful place?”

“Unarguably, sir: your startled mount ran cross-country until it found a track; naturally it then took the levelled road rather than the coarse ground and of course it took the easier, downhill route. Then that old mill appeared, on the first place where the road widens and levels out. Natural place for it to stop.”

Ferbin looked across at the prone form of his servant, lying on the ground a couple of strides away across the leaf-littered ground with a large blue leaf poised over his head. Choubris Holse looked calmly back.

They had flown straight out from the Scholastery until hidden from it by a line of low hills, then set down on a sloped heath above the limit of cultivated land.

“I think I’ve heard of the D’neng-oal Tower,” Ferbin said, while they inspected the two grumbling, huffing caude, “but I’m damned if I know which way it is.”

“Same here, sir,” said Holse. He opened up one of the saddle bags on his beast. “Though with any luck there’ll be a map in here. Let me just have a quick furtle.” He dug his hand elbow-deep into the bag.

The saddle bags yielded maps, some food, a little water, a telescope, a heliograph, two hefty pocket chronometers, one barometer/altimeter, some rifle and pistol ammunition but no weapons, four small bomblets like smooth hand grenades with cruciform flights, padded jackets, gauntlets, one small blanket each and the usual paraphernalia of tack associated with caude, including a good supply of the krisk nuts they found so stimulating. Holse popped one in the mouth of each animal; they mewed and whinnied appreciatively. “Ever tried these things, sir?” Holse asked, holding up the bag of krisk.

“No,” Ferbin lied. “Of course not.”

“Bloody horrible. Bitter as a scold’s piss.” He put the bag away, fastened the saddle bags and adjusted his saddle. “And these bastard knights that came to the Scholastery must be ascetics or something, for there’s no sign of any of the little niceties that make life bearable for the common man, sir. Like wine, or unge, or crile. Bloody fliers.” Holse shook his head at such lack of consideration.

“No goggles or masks either,” Ferbin pointed out.

“Must have carried them with them.”

Holse was checking one of the pistol rounds they’d discovered in the saddle bags against one from his own gun. “Let’s have a quick look, and then be off, eh, sir?” he said, then shook his head and dumped all the ammunition on the heath.

They consulted the maps, one of which was of sufficient scale to show the land for nearly ten days’ flying around Pourl, depicting hundreds upon hundreds of the great Towers as well as the shade limits and periods of the various Rollstars.

“There it is,” Ferbin said, tapping on the map.

“What would you say, sir? Four short-days’ flying?”

“More like three,” Ferbin said, glad to have found a practical subject he knew so much more of than his servant. “Five Towers along and one down, four times over, then three and one. Away from Pourl, which is to the good.” He glanced up at Obor. Its red-tinged bulk was still barely above the horizon as it rose upon its slow and settled course. “It’s a long-day today. We shall have to let the beasts day-sleep, but we should achieve the tower before dusk.”

“Could do with a snooze myself,” Holse yawned. He looked disparagingly at his mount, which had tucked its long neck under its massive body to lick its genitals. “Rather hoped I’d seen the last of these things this close, I do confess, sir.” Holse’s caude removed its head from between its legs, though only long enough for it to fart long and loud, as though to confirm its new rider’s poor opinion.

“You are not enamoured of the beasts of the air, Holse?”

“Indeed not, sir. If the gods had meant us to fly they’d have given us the wings and the caude the pox.”

“If they hadn’t meant us to fly, gravity would be stronger,” Ferbin replied.

“I wasn’t aware it was adjustable, sir.”

Ferbin smiled tolerantly. He realised that his servant might not be versed in the kind of alien lore that would insist that what he and Holse had known all their lives as normal gravity was about half Standard, whatever that really meant.

“However,” Holse said. “Let’s get moving, eh?” They both went to saddle up.

“Best put these jackets on,” Ferbin said. “It’ll be cold up there.” He gestured upwards. “Clouds are clearing so we’ll be able to go high.”

Holse sighed. “If we must, sir.”

“I’ll work the clock, shall I?” Ferbin held up the chronometer.

“That necessary, sir?”

Ferbin, who had got lost while flying too many times, mistakenly thinking that you could never miscount things as big as Towers — or fall asleep in the saddle, for that matter — said, “I think it advisable.”

They had flown without incident at the altitude best for caude cruising stamina. They had seen other fliers far in the distance, but had not been approached. The landscape moved slowly beneath them, changing from tiny fields to stretches of waste and heath that were low hills, then back to fields, small towns, and great glaring areas of bright green that marked the roasoaril plantations whose fruits went to feed the refineries which produced the fuel to power the steam engines of the modern age.

Slowly over the horizon appeared a handful of long fingers of shining water that were the Quoluk Lakes. Ferbin recognised the island that held the Hausk family estate of Moiliou. The river Quoline gathered water from all the lakes and then wound away towards the distant equator, vanishing in the haze. Canals blinked, reflecting sunlight like thin threads of silver, spearing straight over level areas and describing curving contours about raised ground.

Even in the jacket, Ferbin shivered. His knees, covered only in hose and trous, were especially cold. Not having goggles or a mask meant his eyes were watering all the time. He’d wrapped his collar scarf round his lower face, but it was all still most uncomfortable. He kept an eye on the chronometer clipped to the tall front edge of his saddle and used a waterproof pad and wax crayon also attached to the saddle to mark down the passing of each great Tower as it loomed and then slid slowly past to their right.

The Towers, as ever, were a source of a kind of odd comfort. From this height more of them were visible than one saw from the ground and one was able to form a proper impression of their numbers and regular spacing. Only from this sort of altitude, Ferbin thought, did one fully appreciate that one lived within a greater world, a world of levels, of regularly spaced floors and ceilings, with the Towers holding one above the other. They rose like vast spars of pale luminescence, masts of a celestial ship of infinite grace and absolute, inconceivable power. High above, just visible, the laciness of Filigree showed where the Towers’ splayed summits — still fourteen hundred kilometres over his and Holse’s heads, for all their chilly altitude — fluted out like an impossibly fine network of branches from a succession of vast trees.

A million Towers held the world up. The collapse of just one might destroy everything, not just on this level, their own dear Eighth, but on and in all the others too; the WorldGod itself might not be beyond harm. But then it was said that the Towers were near invulnerable, and Sursamen had been here for a thousand times a million years. Whether this meant their own short-years or long-years or so-called Standard years, he didn’t know — with such a number it hardly mattered.

Ferbin wiped his eyes free of tears and looked carefully around, taking time to let his gaze rest on a succession of distant points the better to catch any movement. He wondered how long it would take for word to get back to Pourl of what had happened at the Scholastery. Riding there would take five days or so, but — using the heliograph — perhaps another patrol would be attracted, and in reality the knights who’d lost their mounts only needed to get to the nearest telegraph station. Plus, the patrol would be missed when it didn’t return; search parties would be sent out and would no doubt be signalled from the Scholastery. Seltis would surely be questioned; would they stoop to torture? What if he told them about the documents and the D’neng-oal Tower?

Well, he and Holse had little choice. They would make the best time they could. The rest was up to luck and the WorldGod.

Their beasts started to show signs of fatigue. Ferbin checked the chronometer. They had been in the air nearly ten hours and must have flown over six hundred thousand strides — six hundred kilometres. They had passed twelve Towers to their right, and flown left by one tower every five. Obor, a slow, orange Rollstar, was just approaching its noon. They were about halfway.

They descended, found an island at the edge of a vast Bowlsea with a rich crop of fat bald-head fruit, and landed in a small clearing. The caude swallowed fruit until they looked fit to burst. They started farting again, then promptly fell asleep in the nearest shade, still expelling gas. Ferbin and Holse tethered the beasts, also had something to eat, then found another patch of deep shade and cut down a giant leaf each to shield their eyes still further from the light while they slept. This was where Ferbin chose to share his thoughts with his servant on the course of events recently, and why ideas like predestination, destiny and fate had been much on his mind during the long, cold and painful hours in the saddle.

“Oh. I see,” Ferbin said. “You are familiar with the disposition of that ancient manufactury?”

“All I’m saying, sir, is that it was about the only intact building for half a day’s ride around. Even the old hunting lodge, which was, as it were, the cause of every other building in the area having as useful a roof as that stupidity I found you in—”

“Folly.”

“ — that folly I found you in, was smashed to buggery. It had been artilleried. But anyway, sir, your mount getting you there was no great surprise.”

“Very well,” Ferbin said, determined to show his reasonableness by making a concession. “My arriving might not have been due to the hand of fate. The traitors taking my father there — that was. Destiny was taking a hand. Perhaps even the WorldGod. My father’s fate was sealed, it would seem, and he could not be saved, but at least his son might be allowed to witness the despicable crime and set vengeance in train.”

“I’m sure it seemed and seems so to you, sir. However, with no buildings about the place, in the heat of a battle, and a dirt-rain starting, taking a wounded man to a place with a roof only makes sense. If dirt-rain gets into a wound, it turns cut-rot and infection from a bad risk to a perfect certainty.”

Ferbin had to think back. He recalled that when he’d crawled out of the burning building into the damp, cloying leaves and branches it had, indeed, been a dirty rain that had been falling. That was why it had all felt so sticky and grainy and horrible. “But they wanted him dead!” he protested.

“And where would you rather do that, sir? In full view of who-knows-who, in the open, or under a roof, between walls?”

Ferbin frowned, pulled his big blue leaf down over his face and from underneath said grumpily, “Still, for all your cynicism, Holse, it was fate.”

“As you say, sir,” Holse said, sighing, and pulled his own leaf over his face. “Good sleep, sir.”

He was answered with a snore.

When they awoke it was to colder, darker, windier conditions. The Obor-lit long-day was still in its early afternoon, but the weather had changed. Small grey clouds sailed raggedly across the sky beneath a high overcast and the air smelled damp. The caude were slow to wake and spent much of the next half-hour defecating noisily and voluminously. Ferbin and Holse took their small breakfast some distance upwind.

“That wind’s against us,” Ferbin said, looking out from the edge of the plantation across the quick-chopping waves of the Bowlsea. A dark horizon in the direction they would be heading looked ominous.

“As well we made good distance yesterday,” Holse said, chewing on some air-dried meat.

They secured their few belongings, checked the map, took a few of the bald-head fruit with them — for the caude; the fruit was indigestible to humans — then took off into a freshening breeze. The wind added to the sensation of cold, even though they were flying much lower than earlier due to the great banks and drifts of dark grey cloud striating the sky. They skirted the bigger clouds and flew through only the smallest. Caude were reluctant to fly through thick cloud anyway, though they would do so if they were forced. Once inside cloud the animals were as bad as humans at gauging whether they were upright and flying straight and level, or describing a banked circle and about to crash into some nearby Tower. Caude were the rowels of the air, reliable work beasts rather than thoroughbred racing creatures like lyge, and so only flew at about fifty or sixty kilometres per hour. Even so, hitting a Tower at that speed was usually enough to kill both beast and rider, and if not, then the subsequent fall to the ground tended to do the trick.

Ferbin was still keeping an eye on the chronometer and marking the passage of the Towers to their right — they were flying closer to them now, only a few kilometres off each one, so they didn’t miss any, something Ferbin knew from experience it was all too easy to do — however, he found himself thinking back to a dream he’d had the night before and — via that — to his one journey to the Surface, back when he’d been a youth.

That, too, was like a dream to him now.

He had walked on strange ground beneath no lid or ceiling save that of the atmosphere itself, held contained by a far circle of walls and by nothing else but gravity; a place with no Towers, where the curve of the earth beneath one’s feet just went on, uninterrupted, unbroken, unsupported, unbelievable.

He had watched the stars wheel and, in each of the half-dozen days he had been there, had marvelled at the tiny, blinding dot that was Meseriphine, the Unseen Sun, the distant, connected yet unconnected pivot that great Sursamen itself spun slow about. There was a remorselessness about those Surface days; one sun, one source of light, one regular set of days and nights, always the same, seemingly unchanging, while everything he’d ever known was far below — entire levels that were themselves worlds beneath him, and only nothing above; a dark true-nothingness, sprinkled with a rash of faint points of light that he was told were other suns.

His father had been meant to be there but had had to call off at the last moment. Ferbin had gone with his older brother Elime, who had been there before but had wanted to go again. They were very privileged to be treated so. Their father could command the Oct to take people to other levels including the Surface, as could some other rulers and the Head Scholars of Scholasteries, but any other person travelled at the whim of the Oct, and they granted almost no such wishes.

They had taken a couple of friends and a few old servants. The great Crater they’d stayed within for most of their visit was green with vast meadows and tall trees. The air smelled of unidentifiable perfumes. It was thick and at once fresh and heady; they had felt energised, almost drugged.

They had lived within an underground complex in the face of a tall cliff looking out over a vast network of hexagonal lakes bounded by thin strips of land; this pattern stretched to the horizon. They had met some Nariscene and even one Morthanveld. Ferbin had already seen his first Oct, in the scendship that had taken them up the Tower to the Surface. This had been before the Oct embassy had been opened in the palace at Pourl and Ferbin had the same superstitious dread of the Oct as most people. There were legends, rumours and uncorroborated reports that the Oct issued from their Towers in the dead of night to steal people from their beds. Sometimes whole families or even villages disappeared. The Oct took the captured back to their Towers and experimented upon them, or ate them, or transported them to another level for sport and devilment.

The result was that the common mass of people dreaded both the Oct themselves and the very idea of being taken to and transported within a Tower. Ferbin had long been told these were nonsense tales, but he’d still been nervous. It had been a relief to discover the Oct were so small and delicate-looking.

The Oct in the scendship had been most insistent that they were the true Inheritors and direct descendants of the Involucra, the original builders of the Shellworlds. He had been highly impressed with this, and had felt a vicarious outrage that this fact was not more widely accepted.

He’d been in awe of the Oct’s casual familiarity with and easy control of this vessel that could rise within a Tower, past level after unglimpsed level, to the very outside of all things. It was control of the world, he realised. It seemed more real, more relevant and somehow even more important and impressive than control of the infinitude of ungraspable space beyond the world itself. This, he’d thought, was power.

Then he’d watched how the Oct and the Nariscene treated each other, and realised that the Nariscene were the masters here; they were the superiors, who merely indulged this strange species that to his people, to the Sarl, had near-magical powers. How lowly the Sarl must be, to be mere cargo, simple primitives to the Oct, who were themselves treated like little more than children by their Nariscene mentors!

Seeing, furthermore, how the Nariscene and the Morthanveld interacted was almost dismaying, because the Morthanveld in turn seemed to regard the Nariscene as something like children and treated them with amused indulgence. Another level, and another; all beyond his, above his people’s heads.

In some ways, they were the lowest of the low, he realised. Was this why so few of his people were ever invited here?

Perhaps if everybody saw what he, his brother and their friends were seeing, the Sarl might sink into a state of apathy and depression, for they would know how little their lives really counted within the ever-expanding hierarchies of alien powers beyond them. This had been Elime’s opinion. He also believed that it was a deliberate scheme of their mentors to encourage those who were in power, or who would one day assume power, to witness the wonders that they were now being shown, so that they would never be tempted to get above themselves, so that they would always know that no matter how magnificent they appeared to themselves or those around them and regardless of what they achieved, it was all within the context of this greater, more powerful, sophisticated and ultimately far superior reality.

“They try to break us!” Elime had told Ferbin. Elime was a big, burly, energetic young man, always full of enthusiasm and opinions and tirelessly keen to hunt or drink or fight or fuck. “They try to put a little voice in our heads that will always say, ‘You don’t matter. What you do means nothing!’”

Elime, like their father, was having none of this. So the aliens could sail within the Towers and cruise between the stars and construct whole worlds — so what? There were powers beyond them that they didn’t fully understand. Perhaps this nesting, this shell-after-shell-beyond-what-you-knew principle went on for ever! Did the aliens give up and do nothing? No! They had their disputes and contentions, their disagreements and alliances, their wins and losses, even if they were somehow more oblique and rarefied than the wars, victories and defeats that the Sarl both enjoyed and suffered. The stratagems and power-plays, the satisfactions and disillusions that the Sarl experienced mattered as much to them as those of the aliens did to their own over-weeningly cosmopolitan and civilised souls.

You lived within your level and accepted that you did; you played by the rules within that level, and therein lay the measure of your worth. All was relative, and by refusing to accept the lesson the aliens were implicitly trying to teach here — behave, accept, bow down, conform — a hairy-arsed bunch of primitives like the Sarl could score their own kind of victory against the most overarching sophisticates the galaxy had to offer.

Elime had been wildly excited. This visit had reinforced what he’d seen during his first time at the Surface and had made sense of all the things their father had been telling them since they were old enough to understand. Ferbin had been amazed; Elime was positively glowing with joy at the prospect of returning to their own level with a kind of civilisational mandate to carry on his father’s work of unifying the Eighth — and who knew, perhaps beyond.

At the time, Ferbin, who was just starting to take an interest in such things, had been more concerned with the fact that his beautiful second cousin Truffe, who was a little older than he and with whom he’d started to think he might be falling in love, had succumbed — with frightening, indecent ease — to Elime’s bluff charms during the visit to the Surface. That was the sort of conquering Ferbin was starting to take an interest in, thank you, and Elime had already beaten him to it.

They had returned to the Eighth, Elime with a messianic gleam in his eye, Ferbin with a melancholic feeling that, now Truffe was forever denied him — he couldn’t imagine she’d settle for him after his brother, and besides, he wasn’t sure he wanted her any more anyway — his young life was already over. He also felt that — in some strange, roundabout way — the aliens had succeeded in lowering his expectations by the same degree they had inadvertently raised Elime’s.

He realised he had drifted off in this reverie when he heard Holse shouting at him. He looked about. Had he missed a Tower? He saw what looked like a new Tower some distance off to his right and forward. It looked oddly bright in its paleness. This was because of the great wall of darkness filling the sky ahead. He was damp all over; they must have flown through a cloud. The last he recalled they had been flying just under the surface of some long grey mass of vapour with hazy tendrils stretching down like forest creepers all around them.

“…grit-cloud!” he heard Holse yell.

He looked up at the cliff of darkness ahead and realised it was indeed a silse cloud; a mass of sticky rain it would be dangerous and possibly fatal to try and fly through. Even the caude he was riding seemed to have realised things weren’t quite right; it shivered beneath him and he could hear it making moaning, whining noises. Ferbin looked to either side. There was no way round the great dark cloud and it was far too tall for them to go over the top. The cloud was loosing its gritty cargo of rain, too; great dragged veils of darkness swept back along the ground beneath it.

They’d have to land and sit it out. He signalled to Holse and they wheeled right round, back the way they’d come, descending fast towards the nearest forest on the side of a tall hill bound on three sides by the loop of a broad river. Drops of moisture tickled Ferbin’s face and he could smell something like dung.

They landed on the broad, boggy summit of the hill near a rough-edged pool of dark, brackish water and squelched through a quaking mire of shaking ground, leading the grumbling caude down to the tree line. They persuaded the caude to trample down a few springy saplings so they could all shoulder their way far enough in. They sheltered under the trees while the whole day darkened until it was like night. The caude promptly fell asleep.

The grit-rain whispered in the branches high above, growing slowly louder. The view of the hill’s top and a line of remaining brightness in the sky beyond disappeared.

“What I wouldn’t give for a pipe of good unge leaf,” Holse said, sighing. “Bloody nuisance, eh, sir?”

Ferbin could barely make out his servant’s face in the gloom, though he was almost within touching distance. “Yes,” he said. He squinted at the chronometer, which he was keeping inside his jacket. “We won’t get there in daylight now,” he said.

A few leaf-filtered drops of the dirty rain plopped down about them; one landed on Ferbin’s nose and trickled to his mouth. He spat.

“My old dad lost a whole crop of xirze to one of these buggering silse storms once,” Holse said.

“Well, they destroy but they build up too,” Ferbin said.

“I have heard them compared to kings, in that regard,” Holse said. “Sir.”

“We need them, both.”

“I’ve heard that too, sir.”

“In other worlds, they have no silse, no sticky rain. So I’ve been told.”

“Really? Doesn’t the land just wear away to nothing?”

“Apparently not.”

“Not even eventually, sir? Don’t these places have rain and such — ordinary rain, I mean, obviously — that would wear the hills down and carry them all away to lakes and seas and oceans?”

“They generally do. Seemingly they also have such hydrological systems that can build up land from beneath.”

“From beneath,” Holse said, sounding unconvinced.

“I remember one lesson where it sounded like they had oceans of rock so hot it was liquid, and not only flowed like rivers but also could flow uphill, to issue from the summits of mountains,” Ferbin said.

“Really, sir.” Holse sounded like he thought Ferbin was trying to fool him into believing the sort of preposterous nonsense a child would dismiss with derision.

“These effects serve to build up land,” Ferbin said. “Oh, and the mountains float and can grow upwards wholesale, apparently. Entire countries crash into each other, raising hills. There was more, but I rather missed the start of that lesson and it does all sound a bit far-fetched.”

“I think they were having you on, sir. Trying to see how gullible you might be.” Holse might have sounded hurt.

“I thought that, I have to say.” Ferbin shrugged, unseen. “Oh, I probably got it wrong, Choubris. I wouldn’t quote me on this, frankly.”

“I shall take care not to, sir,” Holse said.

“Anyway, that is why they don’t need silse rain.”

“If a tenth of all that stuff’s true, sir, I think we have the better side of the bargain.”

“So do I.”

Silse rebuilt land. As Ferbin understood it, tiny animalcules in the seas and oceans each grabbed a particle of silt and then made some sort of gas that hoisted creature and particle to the surface, where they leapt into the air to become clouds which then drifted over the land and dropped the lot in the form of dirty, sticky rain. Silse clouds were relatively rare, which was just as well; a big one could drown a farm, a village or even a county as efficiently as a small flood, smothering crops with knee-deep mud, tearing down trees or leaving them stripped of branches, breaking roofs of too shallow a pitch, paving over meadows, blanketing roads and damming rivers — usually only temporarily, swiftly resulting in real floods.

The gritty rain was dripping on to them even under the cover of the trees as it found its way through the now heavy, drooping branches.

From all directions around them, a sporadic series of loud cracks rang out above the sound of the silse storm, each followed by a rushing, tearing, crashing noise concluding in a great thump.

“If you hear that right above us, sir,” Holse said, “best jump.”

“I most certainly shall,” Ferbin said, trying to uncloy his eyes from the gritty stuff falling on them. The silse stank like something from the bottom of a latrine trench. “Though right now, death does not seem so unattractive.”

The cloud passed eventually, the day brightened again and a strong wind veered about the hilltop. They squelched out on to the doubly treacherous summit. The newly dumped silse mud covering the already unstable surface of the bog pulled at their feet and those of the caude, both of which showed signs of distress at being forced to walk in such conditions. The mud reeked like manure. Ferbin and Holse brushed as much as they could from their skin and clothes before it caked.

“Could do with a shower of nice clean rain now, eh, sir?”

“What about that sort of pool thing up there?” Ferbin asked.

“Good idea, sir,” Holse said, leading the caude to the shallow, now overbrimming tarn near the summit of the hill. The caude whinnied and resisted, but eventually were persuaded to enter the water, which came to halfway up their bellies.

The two men cleaned the beasts and themselves as best they could. The caude were still unhappy, and their slipping, sliding take-off run only just got them above the trees in time. They flew on into the late afternoon.

They kept flying even as the dusk slowly descended, though the caude were whining almost constantly now and continually tried to descend, dropping down and answering only slowly and with much grumbling to each up-pulling of the reins. On the landscape below must be farms, villages and towns, but they could see no sign of them. The wind was to their left side, constantly trying to push them towards the Towers they needed to keep to their right. The clouds had settled back to a high overcast and another ragged layer at about half a kilometre; they kept beneath this, knowing that getting lost in night cloud might easily be the end of them.

Eventually they saw what they thought must be the D’neng-oal Tower, a broad, pale presence rising across an extensive marsh still just about reflecting the slow-fading embers that Obor had left on the under-surface of the sky high above.

The D’neng-oal Tower was what was known as a Pierced Tower; one through which access might be gained to its interior and so to the network of thoroughfares in which the Oct — and the Aultridia — sailed their scendships. This was at least the popular understanding; Ferbin knew that all the Towers had been pierced originally, and in a sense still were.

Every Tower, where it fluted out at its base on each level, contained hundreds of portals designed to transport the fluid which it was alleged the Involucra had planned to fill the World with. On the Eighth the portals were, in any case, all buried under at least a hundred metres of earth and water, but in almost every Tower the portals had all long since been firmly sealed by the Oct and Aultridia. There were rumours — which the Oct did nothing to deny — that other peoples, other rulers, had sunk mines down to where the sealed portals were and had tried to open them, only to find that they were utterly impenetrable to anybody without the kind of technology that let one sail the stars, never mind the interior of Towers, and also that even attempting to meddle with them inevitably brought down the wrath of the Oct; those rulers had been killed and those peoples scattered, often across other, less forgiving levels.

Only one Tower in a thousand still had a single portal which gave access to the interior, at least at any useful height — telescopes had revealed what might be portals high above the atmosphere, hundreds of kilometres above ground level — and the usual sign of a Pierced Tower was a much smaller — though still by human standards substantial — access tower sited nearby.

The D’neng-oal’s access tower proved surprisingly difficult to spot in the gloom. They flew round the Tower once, under the thickening layer of cloud, feeling pressed between the mists rising from the ground below and the lowering carpet of darkness directly above. Ferbin was worried first that they might crash into the lesser tower in the darkness — they were being forced to fly at only a hundred metres above the ground, and that was about the usual altitude for the top of an access tower — and then that they had chosen the wrong Tower in the first place. The map they’d looked at earlier had shown the Tower was pierced, but not exactly where its accompanying access tower was. It also showed a fair-sized town, Dengroal, situated very close to the nearpole base of the main Tower, but there was no sign of the settlement. He hoped it was just lost in the mists.

The access tower lit up in front of them as the top twenty metres of the cylinder suddenly flashed in a series of giant, tower-encircling hoops so bright they dazzled the eye. It was less than a hundred strides in front of them and its summit was a little above their present level, almost in the clouds; the blue light picked out their gauzy under-surface like some strange, inverted landscape. He and Holse pulled up and banked and then, with gestures, agreed to land on the top. The caude were so tired they hardly bothered to complain as they were asked to climb one more time.

The summit of the access tower was fifty strides across; a concentric series of blue hoops of light was set into its surface like a vast target. The light pulsed slowly from dim to bright, like the beat of some vast and alien heart.

They landed on the tower’s nearest edge; the startled caude scrambled and beat their wings with one last frantic effort as the smooth surface under their grasping feet failed to bring them to a halt as quickly as ground or even stone would have, but then their scraping claws found some purchase, their wingbeats pulled them up and finally, with a great whistling sigh that sounded entirely like relief, they were stopped. They each settled down, quivering slightly, wings half outstretched with exhaustion, heads lying on the surface of the tower, panting. Blue light shone up around their bodies. The vapour of their breath drifted across the flat, blue-lit summit of the tower, dissipating slowly.

Ferbin dismounted, joints creaking and complaining like an old man’s. He stretched his back and walked over to where Holse was standing rubbing at the leg he’d hurt when the mersicor had fallen on top of him.

“Well, Holse, we got here.”

“And a strange old here it is, sir,” Holse said, looking around the broad circular top of the tower. It appeared to be perfectly flat and symmetrical. The only visible features were the hoops of blue light. These issued from hand-wide strips set flush with whatever smooth material made up the tower’s summit. They were standing about halfway between the centre of the surface and the edge. The blue light waxed about them, giving them and their beasts a ghostly, otherworldly appearance. Ferbin shivered, though it was not especially cold. He looked about them. There was nothing visible beyond the circles of blue. Above, the slow-moving layer of cloud looked almost close enough to touch. The wind picked up for a moment, then fell back to a breeze.

“At least there’s nobody else here,” he said.

“Thankful for that, sir,” Holse agreed. “Though if there is anybody watching, and they can see through the mist, they’ll know we’re here. Anyway. What happens now?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Ferbin admitted. He couldn’t recall what one had to do to gain access to one of these things. On the occasion when he’d gone to the Surface with Elime and the others he’d been too distracted by everything that was happening to take note of exactly what the procedure was; some servant had done it all. He caught Holse’s expression of annoyance and looked around again, gaze settling on the centre of the tower’s surface. “Perhaps…” he started to say. As he’d spoken, he’d pointed at the glowing dot at the focus of the pulsing blue hoops, so they were both looking right at it when it rose slowly, smoothly into the air.

A cylinder about a foot across extended like a section of telescope from the dead centre of the tower’s summit, rising to around head height. Its top surface pulsed blue in time with the widening circles radiating out from it.

“That might be useful,” Ferbin said.

“As a hitching post for the beasts, if nothing else, sir,” Holse said. “There’s bugger all else to tie them to up here.”

“I’ll take a look,” Ferbin said. He didn’t want to show Holse he felt frightened.

“I’ll hold the reins.”

Ferbin walked over to the slim cylinder. As he approached, an octagon of grey light seemed to swivel into place, facing him, level with his own face. It showed a stylised Oct in silhouette. The cylinder’s surface beaded with moisture as a light rain began to fall.

“Repetition,” said a voice like rustling leaves. Before Ferbin could say anything in reply, the voice went on, “Patterns, yes. For, periodicity. As the Veil become the Oct, so one iteration becomes another. Spacing is the signal, so creates. Yet, also, repetition shows lack of learning. Again, be on your way. Signal that is no signal, simply power, follows. Unrepeats.” The octagonal patch showing the silhouetted Oct shape faded and the cylinder started to sink silently back into the surface.

“Wait!” Ferbin shouted, and grabbed at the smooth round shape, putting both arms round it and attempting to prevent it disappearing. It felt cold and seemed to be made of metal; it would have been slick enough anyway but the drizzle made it more so and it slid imperturbably downwards as though his efforts to retrain it were having no effect whatsoever.

Then it seemed to hesitate. It drew to a stop and rose back to its earlier height. The grey octagonal shape — some sort of screen, Ferbin realised — glowed into existence on the surface again. Before it could say anything, he shouted, “I am Ferbin, prince of the house of Hausk, with documents to support my right to warranted travel under the protection of our esteemed allies the Oct! I would speak with the Towermaster, Aiaik.”

“Denigration is—” the cylinder had started to say, then the voice cut off. “Documents?” the voice said after a few moments.

Ferbin unbuttoned his jacket and took out the finger-thick grey envelopes, brandishing them in front of the screen. “By the authority of Seltis, Head Scholar of the Anjrinh Scholastery,” Ferbin said. “Of the Eighth,” he added, partly in case there was any confusion and partly to show he was familiar with the realities of the World and not some coarse-bonce bumpkin who’d somehow achieved the summit of the tower for a bet.

“To wait,” said the leaf-rustling voice. The screen faded again but this time the cylinder stayed where it was.

“Sir?” Holse called from where he stood holding the reins of the now soundly sleeping caude.

“Yes?” Ferbin said.

“Just wondering what’s happening, sir.”

“I believe we’ve established some sort of rapport.” He frowned, thinking back to what the voice had said when it had first spoken to him. “But I think we’re not the first here, not recently. Perhaps.” He shrugged at the worried-looking Holse. “I don’t know.” Ferbin swivelled, looking all about, trying to see through the glowing blue mist created by the drizzle. He saw something dark moving in the air to one side of Holse and the caude; a huge shadow, heading straight for them. “Holse!” he cried, pointing at the apparition.

Holse glanced round, already starting to drop. The great shape tore through the air just above the two slumped mounts, missing Holse’s head by no more than the span of a hand; the sound of massive wings beating whumped through the air. It looked like a lyge, Ferbin thought, with a rider on its back. A sharp crack and a tiny fountain of yellow sparks announced Holse firing his pistol at the departing, wheeling beast.

The lyge rose, stalled and turned, catching itself on a single great beat of its massive wings as it landed on the far edge of the tower. A slight figure jumped from its back holding a long gun; the flier dropped to one knee and took aim at Holse, who was slapping his pistol with his free hand and cursing. Holse dived for cover between the caude, both of which had raised their heads at the sound of the shot and were looking sleepily about them. The rifle spoke again and the caude nearest the shooter jerked and screamed. It started trying to rise from the surface, beating one wing and scraping one leg back and forth. Its fellow raised its head high and let out a terrified wail. The flier from the lyge levered another round into the rifle.

“Small detonations,” said the Oct voice just above Ferbis’ head. He hadn’t even realised he’d ducked down, just his head showing round the side of the cylinder so he could still see the flier attacking them. “Celebratory actions inappropriate,” the voice continued. “Betokening the undesired. To cease.”

“Let us in!” Ferbin said in a hoarse whisper. Behind the figure with the rifle, the lyge hunkered down. The wounded caude near Holse screamed and thrashed its wings against the surface of the tower. Its companion keened, shifting and shuffling away, stretching its own wings. The flier took aim again and shouted, “Show yourself! Surrender!”

“Fuck off!” Holse yelled back. Ferbin could barely hear him over the screaming caude. The creature was moving slowly backwards over the surface of the tower as it beat its wings and shrieked. The second caude rose suddenly on its legs and seemed to realise only then that it was unrestrained. It turned, hopped once to the edge of the tower, spread its wings and launched itself into the darkness with a miserable wail, disappearing immediately.

“Please!” Ferbin said, knocking on the cylinder’s surface with his knuckles. “Let us in!”

“The cessation of childishness,” the cylinder’s voice announced. “Necessary if not sufficient.”

The wounded caude rolled half to one side as though stretching itself, its screams fading as its voice became hoarse.

“And you!” the lyge flier yelled, turning to point the rifle at Ferbin. “Both of you. Out. I’ll not shoot if you surrender now. The hunt’s finished. I’m just a scout. There are twenty more behind me. All regent’s men. It’s over. Surrender. You’ll not be harmed.”

Ferbin heard a fizzing sound between the desperate shrieks of the wounded caude, and a hint of yellow light seemed to illuminate the surface just behind the screaming animal.

“All right!” Holse shouted. “I surrender!” Something flew up from behind the wounded caude, lobbed over its beating wings on an arc of orange sparks. The flier with the rifle started back, rifle barrel flicking upwards.

The finned grenade landed three strides in front of the lyge flier. As the bomblet bounced, the caude Holse had been sheltering behind gave a final great thrash of its wings and one last scream before overbalancing and falling over the edge of the tower in a despairing tangle of wings, revealing Holse lying on the surface. The creature’s wails faded slowly as it fell.

The grenade landed and rolled round, pivoting about its cruciform tail, then its fuse gave a little puff of orange smoke and went out even as the lyge flier was scrambling backwards away from it. In the relative silence following the departure of the caude, Ferbin could hear Holse trying to fire his pistol; the click, click, click noise sounded more hopeless than had the wounded caude’s cries. The lyge flier went down on one knee again and took aim at the now utterly exposed Holse, who shook his head.

“Well, you can still fuck off!” he shouted.

The chronometer smacked the lyge flier across the bridge of the nose. The rifle pointed fractionally upwards as it fired, sending the shot a foot or so above Holse. He was up and running at the dazed figure on the far side of the roof before the chronometer Ferbin had thrown got to the edge of the tower’s summit and vanished into the drizzle. The lyge looked down at the rolling, disconnected-looking figure in front of it and appeared merely puzzled as Holse threw himself forward and on to its rider.

“Fuck me, sir, you’re a better shot than him,” Holse said as he knelt on the flier’s back and prised the rifle out of his fingers. Ferbin had started to think their assailant was a woman, but it was just a small-built man. Lyge were faster than caude but they could carry less weight; their fliers were usually chosen for their small frame.

Ferbin could see dark blood on the glowing blue band beneath the fallen flier. Holse checked the rifle and reloaded it, still with one knee pressing on the back of the struggling lyge flier.

“Thank you, Holse,” Ferbin said. He looked up at the thin, dark, puzzled face of the lyge, which rose up a little and gave a single great beat of its wings before settling back down again. The pulse of air rolled over them. “What should we do with—”

The grenade fizzed into life again. They scrambled away on all fours, Holse making an attempt to pull the lyge flier with him. They rolled and clattered across the hard surface, and Ferbin had time to think that at least if he died here it would be on the Eighth, not somewhere lost and unholy between the stars. The grenade exploded with a terrific smacking noise that seemed to take Ferbin by the ears and slap him somewhere in between them. He heard a ringing sound and lay where he was.

When he collected his scattered senses and looked about him, he saw Holse a couple of strides away looking back at him, the lyge flier lying still a few strides further back, and that was all.

The lyge had gone; whether killed or wounded by the grenade or just startled by it, it was impossible to know.

Holse’s mouth moved as if he was saying something, but Ferbin couldn’t hear a damn thing.

A broad cylinder, a good fifteen strides across, rose up in the centre of the tower’s summit, swallowing the thin tube that Ferbin had been talking to. This fresh extrusion climbed five metres into the air and stopped. A door big enough to accept three mounted men side by side slid open and a grey-blue light spilled out.

Around the tower, a number of great dark shapes started to appear, circling.

Ferbin and Holse got up and ran for the doorway.

His ears were still ringing, so Ferbin never heard the shot that hit him.

9. One-finger Man

Mertis tyl Loesp sat in his withdrawing chamber, high in the royal palace of Pourl. The room had started to seem overly modest to him recently; however, he’d thought it best to leave it a short-year or so before moving into any of the King’s apartments. He was listening to two of his most trusted knights report.

“Your boy knew the old fellow’s hiding place, in a secret room behind a cupboard. We hauled him out and persuaded him to tell us the truth of earlier events.” Vollird, who had been one of those guarding the door when the late king had met his end in the old factory, smiled.

“The gentleman was a one-finger man,” the other knight, Baerth, said. He too had been there when the King had died. He used both hands to mime breaking a small twig. A twitch about his lips might also have been a smile.

“Yes, thank you for the demonstration,” tyl Loesp said to Baerth, then frowned at Vollird. “And then you found it necessary to kill the Head Scholar. Against my orders.”

“We did,” Vollird said, uncowed. “I reckoned the risk of bringing him to a barracks and oublietting him too great.”

“Kindly explain,” tyl Loesp said smoothly, sitting back.

Vollird was a tall, thin, darkly intense fellow with a look that could, as now, verge on insolent. He usually regarded the world with his head tipped downwards, eyes peering out from beneath his brow. It was by no means a shy or modest aspect; rather it seemed a little wary and distrusting, certainly, but mostly mocking, sly and calculating, and as though those eyes were keeping carefully under the cover of that sheltering brow, quietly evaluating weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and the best time to strike.

Baerth was a contrast; fair, small and bulky with muscle, he looked almost childish at times, though of the two he could be the most unrestrained when his blood was up.

Both would do tyl Loesp’s bidding, which was all that mattered. Though on this occasion, of course, they had not. He had asked them to perform various disappearances, intimidations and other delicate commissions for him over the past few years and they had proved reliable and trustworthy, never failing him yet; however, he was worried they might have developed a taste for murder above obedience. A principal strand of this concern centred on who he could find to dispose of these two if they did prove in sum more liabilitous than advantageous to him; he had various options in that regard, but the most ruthless tended to be the least trustworthy and the least criminal the most tentative.

“Mr. Seltis’ confession was most comprehensive,” Vollird said, “and included the fact that the gentleman who had been there earlier had specifically demanded that the Head Scholar get word to said gentleman’s brother here in the palace, regarding the manner of their father’s death and the danger the younger brother might therefore be in. There had been no time for the Head Scholar to begin effecting such warning; however, he seemed most tearfully regretful at this and I formed the distinct impression he would do what he could to pass this information on should he have the chance, to whatever barracksman, militia or army he happened to encounter. So we took him to the roof on excuse of visiting the place where the fleeing gentlemen had absconded and threw him to his death. We told those in the Scholastery that he had jumped, and assumed our most shocked expressions.”

Baerth glanced at the other knight. “I said we might have kept him alive as we were told and just torn out his tongue.”

Vollird sighed. “Then he would have written out a warning message.”

Baerth looked unconvinced. “We could have broken the rest of his fingers.”

“He’d have written using a pen stuck in his mouth,” Vollird said, exasperated.

“We might—”

“Then he’d have shoved the pen up his arse,” Vollird said loudly. “Or found some sort of way, if he was desperate enough, which I judged him to be.” He looked at tyl Loesp. “At any rate, dead is what he is.”

Tyl Loesp thought. “Well,” he said, “I will concede that was well enough done, in the circumstances. However, I worry that we now have a Scholastery full of offended scholars.”

“They’d be easy enough to cull too, sir,” Vollird said. “There’s a lot of them, but they’re all nicely gathered and guarded, and they’re all soft as a babe’s head, I swear.”

“Again, true, but they’ll have parents, brothers, connections. It would be better if we can persuade a new Head Scholar to keep them in order and say no more of what occurred.”

Vollird looked unconvinced. “There’s no better way of ensuring a tongue’s held than stilling it for good, sir.”

Tyl Loesp gazed at Vollird. “You are very good at pieces of the truth, Vollird, aren’t you?”

“Only as needs be, tyl Loesp,” the other man replied, holding his gaze. “Not to a fault.”

Tyl Loesp felt sure the two knights were convinced that killing all the scholars at Anjrinh would end the problem that they might have seen Ferbin, alive and on the run.

Ferbin, alive. How entirely like that fatuous, lucky idiot to stumble through a battle unscathed and evade all attempts at capture. All the same, tyl Loesp doubted that even Ferbin’s luck would be entirely sufficient for that; he suspected the servant, one Choubris Holse, was providing the cunning the prince so evidently lacked.

Vollird and Baerth both imagined that simply excising those who’d seen the prince would put an end to the matter; it was the obvious, soldierly way to think. Neither could see that all such surgery had its own further complications and ensuences. This present problem was like a small boil on the hand; lancing it would be quick and immediately satisfying, but a cautious doctor would know that this approach might lead to an even worse affliction that could infectively paralyse the whole arm and even threaten the body’s life itself. Sometimes the most prudent course was just to apply some healing oils or cooling poultice and let things subside. It might be the slower treatment but it carried fewer risks, left no scars and could be more effective in the end.

“Well,” tyl Loesp told the knights, “there is one tongue I’d have stilled as you propose, though it must look as though the gentleman has been careless with his own life, rather than had it surgeried from him. However, the scholars will be left alone. The family of the spy who alerted us will be rewarded. The family, though, not the boy. He will already be jealoused and despised quite sufficiently already, if the others truly suspect who was there.”

“If it was who we think it might have been. We still cannot be sure,” Vollird said.

“I have not the luxury of thinking otherwise,” tyl Loesp told him.

“And the fugitive himself?” Baerth asked.

“Lost, for the moment.” Tyl Loesp glanced at the telegraphed report he’d received that morning from the captain of the lyge squadron who had come so close to capturing or killing Ferbin and his servant — assuming it was them — at the D’neng-oal Tower just the night before. One of their quarry wounded, possibly, the report said. Too many possibles and probables for his liking. “However,” he said, smiling broadly at the two knights, “I too now have the documents to get people to the Surface. The fugitive and his helper are running away; that is the second best thing they can do, after dying.” He smiled. “Vollird, I imagine you and Baerth would like to see the Surface and the eternal stars again, would you not?”

The two knights exchanged looks.

“I think we’d rather ride with the army against the Deldeyn,” Vollird said. The main part of the army had already left the day before to form up before the Tower through which they would attack the Ninth. Tyl Loesp would leave to join them tomorrow for the descent.

Baerth nodded. “Aye, there’s honour in that.”

“Perhaps we’ve killed enough just for you, tyl Loesp,” Vollird suggested. “We grow tired of murdering with every second glance directed over our backs. Might it not be time for us to serve Sarl less obliquely, on the battlefield, against an enemy all recognise?”

To serve me is to serve the Sarl; I am the state, tyl Loesp wanted to say, but did not, not even to these two. Instead he frowned and pursed his lips momentarily. “Let us three agree a compact, shall we? I shall forgive you for being obtuse, disloyal and selfish if you two forgive me for seeming to have expressed my orders by way of a question, with the implication that there is any choice whatsoever on your part. What d’you say?”