The Promise of the Child (36 page)

Lycaste made himself comfortable a respectful distance from the new addition, taking his established place within the group that had accepted him that day. They muttered agreeably as he sat down, patting him on the back and shoulders. Their talk among themselves was nonsense-speak, songs and imitation, grunts that started raspberry-blowing competitions and uncontrollable fits of giggles that could spread from group to group across the Utopia.

An Immortal jogged giddily forwards, gripped Lycaste by the arm and pulled him closer into the circle. It was the well-spoken man he'd met that morning.

“Big fellow, like I told you, brother!” He pointed at Lycaste with a cackle, thrusting him towards the man sitting among the birds.

“I noticed you at the speech today,” the strange Amaranthine announced in a sighing voice. “Did you know my sister?”

It took Lycaste a moment to understand his own tongue, having been without it for so long. The man was speaking in a rather antiquated but nevertheless perfect version of Tenth, the sort his grandfather would have used.

“No, but it was sad all the same.”

“Why do you say that?” enquired the Amaranthine after a moment, cocking his head.

He hesitated. “It is always sad when someone dies.”

“I see.”

Lycaste reddened; quite clearly he'd said the wrong thing.

“What is your name, Melius?” The man's penetrating stare forbade anything but the truth.

“Lycaste.”

The Amaranthine nodded and glanced away indifferently. “Sotiris.”

It was the first proper name he'd heard in the Utopia. The other Amaranthine smirked or scowled when asked, and the birds here appeared to have no need of nomenclature, never addressing Lycaste as anything but “you.” Only the Glorious Bird possessed any title, as appointed overseer of the sanctuary.

He remembered his manners. “Well, I'm sorry for your loss, Sotiris.”

Sotiris adjusted his feather scarf, the owl on his head watching his fingers as if they were scuttling mice. “And what's your story, Lycaste? What brings you to the Utopia?”

Something flew between them, aimed at a small man just arrived in the clearing. He staggered, wiping at his face and giggling shrilly. More fruit was slung about the circle, the screams of laughter accompanied by hoots and whistles of encouragement from the birds, many of whom were making for the tree branches to avoid being hit themselves. Two women dashed into the centre to grab more food, scooping armfuls as the rest of the Immortals hurriedly chose sides. A chunk of something slapped Lycaste's new friend on the side of the head and he grinned, ducking, his black owl flapping away into the late afternoon light.

“Into the water!” cried someone excitedly, and more than half of them disappeared through the trees, the rest quickly following. Lycaste watched them chasing one another across the grass, heading for the nearest lake. He was glad they'd gone—they were like children tasked with a treasure hunt so the adults might have some peace—but was nervous at now being left alone with Sotiris and the few birds that had stayed to pick at the decimated feast.

Sotiris was gazing up at the sky. He looked up, too, seeing nothing but the deep, dirty orange-blue of twilight.

“Meteor shower,” whispered the man, as if hunting something rare and timid. Lycaste looked again for longer, eventually seeing one, then another, dashing across the luminous sky. He looked back. The well-spoken man lay in the Amaranthine's lap, his eyes narrowed, apparently asleep. A cracked smile spread across his thin, wet lips as he saw Lycaste watching him.

“I heard him call you brother,” said Lycaste.

Sotiris looked down at the man. “He was my sister's lover for a long time. Before they both forgot each other.”

Lycaste glanced at Well-Spoken again. He'd asked him where the eulogy was to be held only that morning, and the man had looked at him without comprehension. He didn't even know she was dead.

“He wouldn't understand,” said the Amaranthine. He looked off through the night-dark trees, eyebrows set hard. “They lived side by side for centuries without recognising each other.” He leaned over to see if Well-Spoken was awake. “Hello” he said sweetly. The other Immortal giggled.

“Do they remember you?” Lycaste asked.

“They remember an idea, a scent …” He trailed off, smoothing the reddish hair on Well-Spoken's head. “Nevertheless, if I were to spend too much time away from them it'd be very hard to persuade even Gara-mond here that he knew me.”

Lycaste considered this. “Why are you not … the same as all these people, Sotiris?”

The Amaranthine studied him again, as if he was meeting Lycaste for the first time. “I'll make you a deal,” he said. “Tell me who you're running from and perhaps I'll tell you what you want to know.”

Cherry

Lycaste had used the new maps to find his way to the Artery from Chaemerion's burned plantation, hoping that not everything Melilotis had told him would turn out to be pure invention. He found the strange causeway only by accident, noticing the hoof-prints of a donkey or zeltabra turning suddenly into the forest at the edge of the hills. There were no signposts or gates leading into the quiet line through the woodland, as if Chaemerion had wished to keep this branch of the road secret. Knowing what he knew now, Lycaste assumed he probably had.

The Artery's floor was emerald grass, growing in a thick, flawless carpet for as far as Lycaste could see and walled in on either side by silver-barked trees. He could find no evidence that another person had ever set foot on this road: no ash from a fire, no discarded food or litter, no footprints ahead in the springy grass. He pushed sideways into the forest on more than one occasion with the ring secure on his fingers, spokes glowing, sure that Melilotis would be hiding there waiting for him. Inside the forest, the cloisters of trees were regimented in mathematically exact rows until they dwindled into shadow, perfectly dark once afternoon turned to evening. He quickly learned that the only way to find the Artery again once he'd entered the woods was to keep a fire lit on the narrow road, and had done so only by accident, struggling blindly through claw-like branches until he'd noticed the spark of his camp in the distance. The only food that grew did so in narrow margins on both sides of the lane—lose the road and you'd starve.

Lycaste measured his progress by counting Artery exits, working out their symbols on the map from a key set into the back of one of the charts and scraping notches on the metal with some pronged cutlery he'd taken from the burned house. The Artery curved north-east with every step, threading across two hundred and fifty miles of forested countryside to the southern shores of the Black Sea, where it skirted the water for the same distance again until it met a port, Pirazuz.
Owned by Salix
, declared the map in fanciful lettering beneath a poorly engraved portrait of an unfortunate cross-eyed gentleman.

Connecting branches of the road wound off through the trees to join each Province, but Lycaste had decided at length to wait until he found the shore before choosing an alternate route. He had always lived near the water's edge, and if his new money could buy him anything in a distant land, it would go towards a nice little house by the sea, as accurate a copy as he could find of his last beloved home. Until then, the Artery seemed to provide a reasonably pleasant and apparently safe way to travel to his next life, however far away it might be.

But on the morning of his second day—and roughly every forty miles after that—Lycaste found them. He grew to dread each alternate day as he was forced to walk past the creaking, twisting shadows in the trees. First, two girls and a boy. Red-skinned, fresh. He'd forced himself to look briefly at their faces, still uncoated with flies. Underneath their small feet dangled a wooden sign, a mysterious demonstration quite wasted on the empty road. Scrawled in First, it read:

3/21

Done with pleasure in his name

If you love him do the same

Lycaste read it twice, mouthing the words to himself, then hurried on along the road making sure not to pass beneath them. With each new cluster of corpses he noticed one thing they had, or rather didn't have, in common, besides their colouration. Though they all bore the same simplistic poem, every sign he encountered was written in a different hand.

Sitting in front of his small fire just off the grassy road, Lycaste began to grimly suspect that it was simply what they did here, in the northern regions of the Sixth—which was where he guessed he must be by now. There was no point ignoring what he could see plainly; the children were all like him, crimson once they'd joined colourlessly with death. Melilotis and his brother had been different—finer, daintier, with a jaundiced complexion that was almost yellow. Rather like Callistemon, he supposed.

For all of his life, Lycaste had assumed that the thinly spread people of the world were rather like him; not in appearance, perhaps, but in spirit. He'd lived without wanting to travel, content in the knowledge that there was nothing but more of the same out there in the blue haze that he regarded as the border of his Province. Kipris Isle, his rugged birthplace, was cosmopolitan and much visited, yet he couldn't remember encountering a single person with yellow skin, let alone someone possessing the sort of murderous tendencies he'd become used to in the last few days.

The next morning, Lycaste decided to change his colour, blending an almost headache-inducing golden yellow. He wondered at the implications of appearing too well bred, for anyone who passed him would naturally assume he was of a Province a thousand miles from his own, but it struck him that the alternative might be worse. Only closer inspection of his long, narrow Southern face might tell him apart. It was misleading, really—the weight he'd gained had dissolved early in his exile, constant exercise easily counteracting his paltry appetite each night, and so Lycaste looked even more foreign than he actually was.

On the ninth day, he came upon the harsh eastward turn that he had started to think did not exist, his new map perhaps overcompensating for some error in the drawing. Once the Artery turned parallel with the inland sea he would be able to follow a tributary out to the coastline, free to choose any route he liked from then on. Lycaste began to walk faster, excited that he would soon be out of the eerie green lane and in sunlight again.

He rounded the corner. The people and animals saw him before he could duck into the woods. They were picking fruit from an orchard of wizened apple trees near the turning, birds and mammals in aprons and smocks, singing softly among themselves. In a small field by the road there was a picnic set out, presumably for their masters. There was no opportunity to hide or slip by, so Lycaste carried on walking, making sure to keep his face lowered and his stride assured.

With hushed whispers and pointing fingers they observed him, but at first made no effort to approach. Just as Lycaste thought he might get away with no more than a wave, a youngish boy caught up to him, crossing the Artery sheepishly.

“Master Plenipotentiary?”

He turned hesitantly to the slender boy, the strength of his disguise still dangerously untested. A round girl of perhaps sixteen joined the boy and took his hand.

“Would you like to share some of our lunch?” The boy indicated a pile of baskets stacked against one tree.

Lycaste tried to remember how Callistemon had sounded, recalling the dead man's voice in his head, but he had no talent for impressions. “No, thank you. I have plenty.” He spoke his best First, hoping that because it wasn't their dialect either, they wouldn't notice his errors.

The girl frowned. At that moment, an older woman came walking quickly through the trees. She was tall but plain, her yellowish body looking as if it had birthed more than one child in its time. He noticed painted lines around her eyes, like the armoured woman.

“Sir?” she enquired. “How may we help?”

“I was just on my way.” Lycaste nodded modestly, turned and began to continue up the Artery.

“Won't you join us?” she called after him. “We'd be most honoured.”

“We've offered already, Mother,” said the girl.

“Might we trouble you for news before you go?” the boy called after him.

Lycaste ignored the question, continuing to take long strides away from them. He heard quick footsteps in the grass and turned once more to find the boy at his heels.

“Please join us,” the boy pleaded. “You must know something of the battles?”

Lycaste stared down at him, his disguise temporarily forgotten. “Battles?”

“We hear nothing but rumour out here,” said the woman, taking her daughter's shoulders. “Here,” she said, pulling back the cloth lid of a basket and distributing covered bowls and bottles on the grass. “Please, eat. I am Jasione, and this is my daughter, Silene.” Silene's frown remained, but her attention had shifted to the steaming bowls. Hot food. Lycaste hated hot food.

The young boy offered his hand in the traditional way. “My name's Ulmus.”

Lycaste took it gingerly. “Pleased to meet you all.” He had a sense, as the girl and the boy looked at him excitedly, of what Callistemon must have felt meeting the people of the Tenth for the first time.

“You've come far?” asked the woman. Even the questions were the same.

“Yes,” he said simply, sitting and peering into one of the bowls to sniff at the stew.

Ulmus didn't touch his bowl, his eyes bright with curiosity. “Have you been in the Fifth?”

“The Fifth? No.”

“You haven't heard anything?” All eyes were on him.

“No. What should I have heard?”

“The last we knew was that Elatine had killed Zigadenus at Vanadzor, and that the stronghold is theirs now.”

“Oh.” Lycaste didn't understand a word of what the boy was saying. It all sounded made-up.