Isles of the Forsaken

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.

Published with the generous assistance of the Ontario Arts Council.

At last, the war was over.

All day long the festive volleys of firecrackers had ricocheted off the tawny brick walls of Fluminos, until it sounded like a new attack was under way. Despite the March chill, the celebrations spilled out into the streets, and as sunset drew near, crowds carrying blankets and hampers of food headed down toward the harbour. Two of the great Inning warships that had conquered the Rothur navy were to be anchored in the river, and a fireworks re-enactment of the climactic battle would take place at sundown. When big, wet snowflakes began to fall, it did not cool the atmosphere at all; it simply seemed like the sky was throwing confetti to congratulate Inning on its great victory.

It had just begun to snow when Nathaway Talley emerged from the ancient, arched door of the law school and paused on the steps, books slung under his arm, to survey the drunken troop of students making their way across the quad toward the college gate to carouse. He was a spindly, gawky figure, all arms and legs. A long knit scarf wound around his neck and dragged like a tether behind him; his untrimmed blond hair was topped with a moth-eaten cap, and he fumbled to push his spectacles up past the bump on his monumental beak of a nose. As he set off through the slippery streets toward the Talley family home, his stiff, stalking gait would have telegraphed disaffection to anyone watching. No one was. Everyone was in far too good a mood to spare him a glance.

In contrast to the rest of the city, Nathaway was gripped by a feeling of failure. Others could take vicarious pleasure in the nation’s victories; for him, they only rubbed in how badly he had failed to measure up.

The family residence of the Talleys was a rambling brick townhouse at the very heartbeat centre of Fluminos, facing Holton Street, just around the corner from the opulent chambers where the High Court met. Its main floor was almost as public as the court itself, buzzing at all hours with the comings and goings of dealmakers, schemers, visionaries, and, lately, military attachés. Political quorums were apt to assemble in the library, and scientific experiments jostled with state dinners in the dining hall. The chaos was barely kept in control by the strong managerial hand of Nathaway’s mother and her competent and tolerant staff.

When he got to the courthouse square, Nathaway found Holton Street nearly blocked by a crush of carriages delivering elegant visitors to the brightly lit doorway of his father’s home. Dodging assorted footmen and a large ornamental dog on a leash, he thumped down the stone steps to the service entrance under the front stairs. The policeman stationed there nodded at him familiarly, so Nathaway reflexively pretended to recognize him.

Inside, the kitchen was a staging area as tightly organized, and nearly as noisy, as a military campaign. Liveried servitors manoeuvred down the steps with empty bottles and trays, and up again with loads of food and drink for the guests. Nathaway strolled past the counters, helping himself to canapés until Betts, the cook, slapped his hand and snatched the cap from his head. “You look like some fishmonger that wandered in, in that filthy thing,” she said. Which was, of course, the point of wearing it—to look like anything but what he really was.

“Has Corbin come yet?” Nathaway asked.

“No, they’re all up there waiting to toast him,” Betts said. “If we don’t run out of wine before he comes.”

“Who
is
here?”

Betts ticked off Talleys on her fingers. “Tarbison, Fithian, Hallowell, and Mandregan. And your sister, of course.”

“A regular reunion,” Nathaway said morosely.

“Try not to let it spoil your day,” Betts said tartly. You had to be tart in this household, just to be heard.

“Where’s Rachel?”

“Upstairs somewhere. Go off now, make yourself look like a Talley.”

Nathaway gave a cynical snort and headed for the back stairs. Before he could escape, Mumford the housemaster saw where he was headed and broke off a conversation with three maids to impart a message. “Tell your brother Mr. Hallowell that he needs to clear his fossil bones off the banquet table, or we’ll have to do it for him,” Mumford said.

“All right,” said Nathaway.

He took the servants’ stairs two at a time, up past the muffled sound of conversation on the first floor, and to the second. He peered out into the hallway, and finding it empty, slipped out. It was clear Hallowell had returned from his tour with the fleet, because the hall was lined with shadowy crates of scientific instruments, specimen books, and an enormous kite. A creature that looked like a cross between a small dog and a lizard saw Nathaway approaching its cage and spread its ruff with a menacing hiss.

He peered over the balcony railing into the main floor below, and saw his father receiving guests in the lamp-lit foyer. Tennessen Talley radiated enjoyment of the moment. The judge knew everyone; he had a joke or observation for every occasion; his trademark laugh rang out at regular intervals, giving everyone in earshot the impression that they were surely at the most entertaining event on earth. He was not being Chief Justice tonight, for he was dressed in civilian clothes; but he couldn’t stop being the perfect politician, since that was no act. Tennessen dominated the room so instinctively that it was hard to remember he was not the guest of honour, only the hero’s proud father.

When Nathaway peered into the first door down the hallway, he found a cabal of Mandregan’s political friends intently debating something over wine. They broke off when he entered, and turned to see who it was; but since it was only Nathaway, they resumed their conversation.

“An army would be a threat to our liberties, and would have to be disbanded,” Mandregan was saying. “But a navy is a different matter. Each ship is its own fiefdom. A navy is more a confederation of little warlords than a single machine. It gives a necessary outlet to dangerous men who crave glory, but in the end it is easy to disunite and defeat
in camera
.”

“It seems to me your brother the admiral is the living argument against you,” one of his co-conspirators said in a low tone. “The way things stand, he could walk into any office he chose, the nation is so entranced with him. Emperors are acclaimed, remember—it is the people who choose them, not the law.”

“Corbin will never be emperor,” Mandregan said with a secretive look that made the others draw closer, sure that he knew something they didn’t. He had a lean, vulpine face that always looked like he was hiding something. His deep-set eyes were like the ones in paintings that always watched you. “Do you think the court hasn’t been in a knot about that very question? What do you
do
with a man who has earned the adulation of the nation? It is a very risky situation.”

“What does your father feel?” one man whispered. “As Chief Justice, will he support the nation, or his son? Does he see a dynasty as his legacy?”

Nathaway knew that Mandregan could never answer the question, since answering it would deflate the drama of the moment. Stirring up suspicion and mistrust was Mander’s hobby. Sure enough, Mandregan turned to him. “Did you want something, Nat?”

“Have you seen Rachel?” Nathaway said.

“I think she’s down listening to Hal’s tall tales,” Mander said.

Having been put in his usual place of irritating little brother, Nathaway turned to leave. The conversation would not go on anyway, he knew. This convocation had achieved its purpose of bringing everyone to a shivering precipice of uncertainty about the future of the Inning lexocracy. To continue would be redundant.

Out in the hall again, he paused at the side table where a chess game was set out in progress. It was black’s turn, since the salt cellar was sitting on that side of the board. Nathaway studied it for a minute, then made the next logical move, and set the salt on the other side for the next passer-by.

A peal of infectious laughter from down the hall told him where Hallowell was holding forth to his scientific friends. As Nathaway approached the door, he heard his brother’s commanding baritone saying, “. . .these tiny organisms, far too small for the naked eye to resolve, will sometimes bloom in such abundance that the whole surface of the sea turns red. The natives regard it with the utmost superstition, imagining that the sea has turned to blood. . . .”

As Nathaway appeared in the doorway, Hal saw him and rose to his feet. “Nathaway, upon my word!” He picked his way through the chairs to throw his arms around his younger brother. Hal was the one that most took after their father, both physically and in temperament. He would have been a natural in politics, but that had never interested him. Natural history was the realm Hal had set out to conquer.

“Upon my word,” he repeated, holding Nathaway at arm’s length. “You’ve grown like a
Leguminosae
. You’re three feet taller than when I saw you last.”

Nathaway shrugged self-consciously and said, “Mumford wants you to shift your bones.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your fossil bones. The staff will have to give them to the dogs if you don’t move them.”

“Ah.” With his arm still around Nathaway’s shoulders, Hal turned to the others in the room. They were an assortment of university professors, a publisher, a well-heeled collector, and an officer of the learned society that had funded Hallowell’s research. So in fact, Hal was not as oblivious of politics as he made out. The one woman in the room was Nathaway’s sister Rachel.

“My friends, we had better take the chance to view the
mastronomicon
before some ignorant chap throws it in the dustbin. If you will follow me . . .”

They all rose on cue and crowded after Hallowell out the door. Nathaway let them pass and waited till Rachel came close. “I’ve got to talk to you,” he said quietly.

Together they crossed the hall and made for the back stairs again. They had to go single file up the twisting flight to the third floor, where the family bedrooms lay. It was a much more spartan place up here. A well-worn carpet runner covered the board floor in the hall, and the walls were simple plaster. The line of doors made it look like a dormitory—which, when they were all growing up, it had been.

Nathaway headed for his own room on the side that overlooked the harbour. The window was nearly dark, so he lit the oil lamp, then turned to Rachel, who had settled down cross-legged on his bed. “Well?” she said.

The famous Talley family resemblance that gave the seven brothers their distinctive looks had had an unfortunate effect in Rachel’s case. The pronounced nose that looked noble on the men simply looked horsey on her face; the blonde hair had no life nor curl to lend her beauty, so she wore it in a limp braid. The brothers all grew up tall and recognizable; Rachel was just lanky and homely. But she was Nathaway’s confidante and ally.

He closed the door and turned to tell her. “I did it,” he said. “I quit law school.”

“Oh no,” she breathed. Her face gave him a preview of the horror that would ripple through the Talley household at the news.

“I was going to flunk contracts and legislative theory anyway,” he said. “So better to save everyone the embarrassment.” They had all grown up knowing that everything they did reflected on the others. Their father had always said it didn’t matter what they chose to do in life, so long as they were better than anyone else at it. It had seemed like a fair enough rule till Nathaway had had trouble figuring out what, if anything, he was any good at.

“How are you going to tell the judge?” Rachel said, meaning their father.

“Wait, you haven’t heard it all.” He drew a deep breath. “I’m leaving Fluminos.”

“What? Where?”

“They’re recruiting law students to go to the Forsaken Islands,” he said.

“The Forsakens!” she protested. “There’s nothing there but pine trees and savages.”

“That’s the whole point. The Court’s going to be expanding our presence in the Forsakens, developing some of the poor and primitive areas. They need observers to make sure it’s all going according to the law. We’re to be like Justices of the Peace, adjudicating disputes and so forth. They have no courts or judiciary there, no advocates or trial by jury. It’s barbaric, and unscrupulous people could take advantage.”

“But can you do that without a degree?”

He shrugged. “They took me.” Of course, like everything else, he could not know whether it was because of himself or his name. “I’m to leave in two weeks.”

“Oh, Nat,” she said. “This is . . . it’s crazy.”

He looked out the window, where the snow was falling in earnest now, big fat flakes gathering on the sill. “I’m sick of this city,” he said, his voice low and intense. “I’m sick of being the last Talley in line, the only one who’s not some kind of hero. It’s all so false, like theatre. I don’t want to play a part; I want to do some actual good in the world.”

“You will,” Rachel said. “You’ll be a hero, Nat. Just give yourself time.”

He sat on the bed facing her, crossing his long legs underneath him, his bony knees sticking up. “You should have heard the recruiter talk about the Forsakens,” he said. “We’ve supposedly ruled them for years, but we’ve done nothing to help them, just left them in a state of poverty and ignorance. They have no schools, no doctors. We’ve let the most horrible superstitions persist. Did you know they still practice a kind of human sacrifice?”

“No!”

“Yes. There’s a race of islanders that are like their chattel, kept in bondage because of a belief that their blood can cure disease. So whenever the islanders grow ill they bleed these slaves, sometimes to death. The administration has tried to put a stop to it, but the practice is too ancient. And as long as they have no alternatives, what are they supposed to do but keep their traditional cures? I’ve thought that I could pick up some medical books before I leave, and show them there are better ways.”

His dry description did not do justice to the thrill of horror he had felt at the recruiter’s much more lurid account. He did not mention the overtones of sexual slavery. It was his outrage at the needless suffering, his pity for the victims, his disgust at the ignorance, that had told him this was what he had to do. Never had he felt so strongly that he was called upon to act. All his life had been an aimless, pampered game up to now. Something had sent this message to him, to fetch him to the place where he was needed.