The Promise of the Child (5 page)

Lycaste had contemplated leaving, perhaps returning to Kipris Isle for a year or two, but he could hardly show his face there, either. His eyes moved unseeing across the jungle of indifferent stars, wondering where he could go. There were trade ships docked in the ports of the Tenth Province that might take a wealthy traveller anywhere within the Nostrum—Fouad, Tripol, even past Tunizerres and as far as the Westerly Provinces—but such a journey would be long and likely fraught with danger. Lycaste knew he hadn't the stomach for travel, just as everyone said. After five miles he'd be pining for home, trembling and sick from the sea.

The moon had now risen fully, its dense whorls of cloud shrouding whatever mysterious things went on up there. His feet met grass and he looked up to see that he was back in the orchard, walking slowly through an irregular grove of young trees. He hadn't known love could be so draining, so demanding. The stories he read had never explained what it did to you when it left, how much it stole as it drifted away.

He would have seen Eranthis sooner if her skin had not flushed a bottle-green to match the moonlight, and the resemblance to her sister was just enough to shock his heart into life—the way she carried herself, the angle of her neckline, the exact curve of her bare shoulder. Even before he saw her face.

“Lycaste.”

“Eranthis. I thought you were …”

“You were hoping for someone else?”

He resumed walking slowly back to the tower, the sounds of low conversation coming from the lighted doorway. His entire life had been spent surrounded by nudity, people clothed only in the formal colours they assumed when etiquette required. He cared for Eranthis, of course, almost as fondly as you could care for someone who was not family—but the similarities between the sisters were all too noticeable, and he found it hard to look at her now.

“She's confused, Lycaste. She thought she could trust you more than other men.”

He hesitated, turning back. “Of course she can trust me.”

“Pentas has been through so much. She needs you—just not in that way.” Eranthis came closer in the moonlight, her features, more yellow than red without added colour, were stronger than Pentas's. “I know you have … difficulties, that it's not always easy for you to understand people or feel things for them, and that now you do feel something at last it's not returned in the way you'd like—”

He shook his head. “That's her business.”

“Give it time. All things heal with time.”

Lycaste looked off to the hills as he contemplated such an empty statement. “It
is
hard, for me,” he said at last. “My parents on Kipris always wanted another son, someone different.” He glanced dejectedly back at her. “I thought I'd be used to rejection by now.”

“Nonsense.” Eranthis smiled. “I've never known someone so in demand. Perhaps you should open the door when the bell rings once in a while. Perhaps happiness is waiting on the other side.”

He nodded solemnly, thinking that he just wanted to be home, in bed, anywhere else. Eranthis took his hand and walked him towards the gentle light of the doorway.

“She counts you as her finest friend—can't that be enough for now?”

He smiled and looked away, opening the door for her as he knew a gentleman should. She didn't understand what it was like to be shy, to have one's entire life governed by self-consciousness. In Eranthis's mind there were always others out there for Lycaste, potential suitors just a letter or a smile away. But he knew that was not so. He had found his love, even if she did not want him in return.

Inside the butler birds were drying bowls with sheets of linen, passing them to one another to be stacked. Holcus, Borago and Sonerila were each excellent—and expensive—examples of some pedigree breed Lycaste could never remember the name of, their ancestors no longer present in the world. Where wings had presumably once been, there were now four flightless twig-like arms complemented with a multitude of clawed fingers, their legs long enough for them to reach waist-high to most Tenth people. Lycaste had grown up among creatures like them and he took the birds and the services they provided for granted. They were
people
, in the accepted sense—along with anything able to converse—and their large grey eyes could appear unsettlingly human in the right light. Briza, Drimys's little boy, treated the birds like aunts and uncles, entirely unconcerned with any differences between their species.

The boy had joined them, and Lycaste watched him carefully as he sat down, anxious in case the child dropped anything. He carefully positioned himself as far from Eranthis as he could.

“Tell him to use a plate if he's going to eat something,” he reminded Drimys, pouring a final digestif and staring morosely into the darkness of the drink.

“It's all right,” said Impatiens, preparing to leave. “He has a task—we gave him the silver to polish.” He touched the boy's shoulder. “He has something for you, don't you, Briza?”

Briza smiled shyly and placed a small plastic figure on the table. “Sorry for touching your dolly house, Lycaste. This is mine—you can have him.”

Lycaste took the figure and examined it. It was a wolf, standing on its hind legs like a man. The plastic was yellowed and sun-faded, but he thought with a lick of paint he could find a place for it somewhere. He glanced back at the boy, trying his best to smile.

Virginis

Looking up at the vaulted walls unfolded something in the observer's mind, expanded it somehow. Sotiris never tired of gazing upwards, and had never sat or spoken to anyone without taking time to glance around him just once more as he considered the business before him. A person, no matter how philosophically minded, could stare into the ink of the Void without comprehension, pupils unmoved by what they hadn't been constructed to parse, but looking at this was different. It was like peering inside one's own eyeball, scooped of its vitreous jelly and with only the raw nerves left clinging to the inner surface. Above him arced millions of square miles of islands the colour of autumn leaves, birthed by one enormous river delta that bled across the world in mint-green tributaries. Cloud patterns whirled and drifted, a great storm hanging like a bruise across one of the small inland seas above; there would be ships crossing that glittering bay, tiny galleons too small to see tossed and blown in the gale. Stationed at the centre of the world upon a network of colossal buttresses three thousand miles above, between him and the storm, was the small, silent Organ Sun. It was dim enough to look at, its tides of fire peeling apart at a thin black band running down one side to cast an amber shadow across a wedge of the Vaulted Land a few thousand miles over Sotiris's shoulder, high on one mountainous continent.

The dream still lingered, faint in his thoughts. As always, he'd awoken before the boat reached the harbour, but it was closer than it had ever been now. Close enough for the crew to start uncoiling heavy ropes and stand with them, smiling and waving. That was new.

Hytner, slumped back in his chair, was looking at him.

“I did suggest that we stop at Henry James.”

Sotiris sat up straighter, rubbing his eye with a knuckle. “Which book were we talking about?”

Hytner picked it up from the table, tapping the title. “
Portrait of a Lady
. Didn't you read any of it?”

He tried to remember but came up blank. “Weren't we on Dumas? Have we skipped some?”

Sotiris's friend stared back, apparently mystified. “Last year, Sotiris. We read Dumas when I came to see you in Cancri.”

“Ah. Cancri. That's right. I was at the September House.” He scratched his neck and frowned incredulously. “Almost a year ago.”

Hytner continued to stare, playing with the carnelian buttons of his frilled collar. “Is something the matter?”

“Something the …? No, nothing's amiss. Keep going.” He pointed at the book in Hytner's hand. “What did you think of it?”

His companion sighed, slapping the tiny jewelled book resembling an ancient pocket Bible back on the table. “I gave up at eighty pages.”

Sotiris smiled, stretching into his chair and watching the contented movements of the bees around them in the meadow. One drifted close enough for him to see its silver shell, beaded with orbs of fabulously expensive blue lapis: even the insects here were pampered beyond measure. Such things were of course modest in comparison to those in his home Satrapy—there the bees' robotic counterparts were each made from a single lump of gold, hollowed precisely to make a functioning drone capable of mindless pollination. But that was Cancri, where the concept of understated opulence simply did not exist.

He watched a speck rise and drift away from the surface flames of the sun, thinking about the harbour. Across the lawns, clothed Melius acolytes were playing something with bats and balls. Beyond them rose the Virginis cathedrals, great geometric shapes in the curved haze. He heard the umpire of the game announce something, watching the play come to a brief halt.

“That was out,” said Hytner faintly, leaning forward as if he meant to interrupt their play. He squinted, raising the flat of his hand to shade his eyes. “He's allowed it, though.”

The two of them looked at each other as the Melius resumed their game. Eventually Hytner let out a long breath, the delicate cream lace around his chin trembling. “I suppose you've heard from your
friend
by now? What mischief is he preparing down there? Or are you not allowed to tell me?”

Sotiris smiled at him and shook his head. “I have received no letters from Maneker, though I know you won't believe me.”

Hytner returned his gaze to the game. “So he departs for the Old World and doesn't even tell his dearest friend.” He hesitated, battling some internal dialogue. Sotiris could almost hear it. At last he gave in. “What kind of Amaranthine has he become? What could they possibly have done to him to turn him so quickly?”

“He has been persuaded,” said Sotiris with a shrug, aware that the leisurely morning of idle talk was now at an end. “Just as the Devout were.” He watched Hytner bridle at his words.

“The
Devout
, indeed,” he spat. “If only His Venerable Self could be made to see that this edict should be reversed—have Maneker put away somewhere, a Utopia. At least exiled, removed somehow, and his followers punished for such presumption.” Hytner shook his head. “This new business with the Prism should count for something.”

Sotiris blinked sleepily in the sunlight, brushing another of the glinting bees from his armrest. “You think the Satrapies are in enough danger to warrant overturning an edict?”

Hytner's eyes narrowed. “You don't? The Prism ridicule our borders, Sotiris, pilfering what they like when our attention is engaged elsewhere. If it weren't for the Vulgar and Pifoon standing armies, the Firmament would be overrun in months, if not less.” He leaned forward. “Perhaps not even the Vulgar can be trusted any more, since the rumours of some new …” He searched for the words. “Some new
killing
device being developed at Nilmuth persist.” Hytner regarded him gravely. “These primates grow too big for their cage. Its bars must be strengthened.”

Sotiris raised his dark eyebrows. “I don't believe the Prism—as they are now—could arrange a decent invasion force for all the treasure in the Firmament, let alone develop anything new that we haven't foreseen or manufactured ourselves.” He spread his hands. “If you are so convinced, then surely all the more reason to let the edict stand, perhaps—why not allow this Pretender to try his hand at wielding the Firmament's might? Why be so eager to crush him before we've seen what he can do?”

Hytner compressed his lips to a thin, pale line before he spoke again. “If you were not the most dependable of Perennials I would consider that a treasonous comment, Sotiris. Treasonous beyond belief. His Venerable Self can only be protected by a Parliament of peers now, he's too—”

Sotiris sat up slightly, exasperated. The man's silence lingered irritatingly in the air. “Say it,” Sotiris replied at last. “Go on. He's mad.
Insane.
Destined for a Utopia himself before too long.” He stared at his friend. “I know it, you know it, twenty thousand Amaranthine damn well know it.”

The other Perennial closed his eyes, massaging his brow. “You have to take sides this time,” he said softly. “You can't keep avoiding these questions.”

They stared at each other, the whispering meadow appearing to amplify the sounds of the game across the lawn. Respect for Sotiris in the Firmament was a bright constant, long-lived and hardy like the artificial sun glowing overhead. He had a good many friends among Perennials on both sides of the debate. Neutrality, while on paper perhaps a cowardly trait, had ensured that he kept them. He took in Hytner, dressed in all his Virginis finery. He, of course, didn't have that problem.

Hytner glanced away in frustration. “This supersedes friendship, Sotiris.”

Sotiris shook his head, following Hytner's gaze. A visitor, still some way off, was heading towards them across the meadow.

“You won't be allowed to hold on to neutrality for ever,” said Hytner when he received no response. “They won't talk to you like this, they won't give you a second chance.”

“
They
are still a minority, Hieronymus. I think you forget that in your panic. This Amaranthine, whoever he may be, however old and powerful he may say he is—though of course I severely doubt his claim—is still just one man on the Old World, with a few devout followers. The kingdom of the giant Melius is where they shall stay; they would never risk coming here, into the greater Firmament.”

“Not yet, at least. But give them time. This … Aaron, he has been quick about his work. Gliese, of all places, has already been offered to him—straight into his hands, should he want it. You think he won't accept the capital as a coronation gift?”