There wasn’t much of a fight and all I really knew of it was what I heard when it was done. Verunian and Laudassan troops having been pledged to Amyra, the night saw a short-lived resistance as those troops mounted a defence. But, just like her, Arif and Omran had been counting on the south; the caliphs Bardon, or a gryphon, had won back. The chain of command was broken too. And by then the Methan Regiment controlled the fortress walls. As for the ergish regiments, they were on the plains; someone said, like a ring of torchlight lighting up all our horizons. But they never advanced; never had to.
What I do remember is being frozen to the steps of the throne’s dais, with the former satrap lying, gurgling, beside me. I remember watching Savhar’s Eighth round up the Shieldmen in the hall while Artabh Keda led more soldiers through the citadel grounds, seizing the rest. I remember Zeek hauling me up from my trance, away from Szaferis, then somehow through the storm of fiercely churning bodies, out of the doors and to the stairs and down, back down, into the Deep. Where we heard vibrations of a nation changing hands.
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In all the wildness faces blurred. I didn’t see Rusper escape the hall. But that could wait; the most important thing was going back for my people.
Pintle and Gudgeon were in the Hub. To my surprise, Rusper had already been here, seen the sphere and gate below Zone One, and left instructions. Both the overseers came with me, down into the Roads, and saw the realm of the Builders for themselves. Their faces were spellbound as, behind their eyes, I was sure I saw their looming struggle to word reports.
Almost two miles underground, Naemians waited in the dark. They were still huddled in that same cube of greenstone I’d sent them down in, and when their pale faces caught the light of my lantern I felt cruel. They were shaken and frightened. Javairea too, she couldn’t hide it. Nor could Garth or his guards. Only Jerome seemed fully calm. But they were together at ;east. and no one hurt.
It took some hours, getting them all back to the surface on the sphere. By the time we counted eighty haggard Naemians in the wagon depot, and they’d been given a good meal and enough blankets for the night, my strength was spent and my shoulder in so much pain that I couldn’t move that arm. Curled up on the straw beside Jerome, I slept a half-sleep.
Some time later a healer came to tend my shoulder. I didn’t bother opening my eyes but recognised her voice. Aznath. Wall to wall, the martial shouts across the city ebbed and flowed but I’d have dozed through whatever she was doing anyway. By her tutting I could tell it wasn’t good; I didn’t care. Just had to sleep. Figured I’d live.
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Guards returned to the High District and the next morning a contingent escorted the Naemians to their new lodgings. Passed back to the throne and commandeered by the Fortress Guard, this was Amyra’s estate. At least for now. They’d have the whole upper floor, while ergish Vedans took the lower.
As we passed through the iron gates of the mansion, lines of labourers moved past us, ferrying her seized assets to the citadel: furniture and artworks, all in a foreign style I guessed was Eredian. I saw the Duchess of the Dunfinds as she departed, only recognising her as she boarded her heavy carriage by her blustering tirade against the “futile expedition.” Out of imposing frills and hennin, she and the Gran-artésan were dressed for overland travel through the dustlands. But even if they weren’t enraged, insulted and appalled, they’d not have been here much longer. Royal decree – maybe the first – was that they go.
The Captain wasn’t among the guards I saw during that day, nor could any of those guards give me news of him. I didn’t see much of Rusper either – only a glimpse that evening at he rode by with Savhar; a quick inspection on his way somewhere else.
Javairea came the following day with the now official supply wagons and a team of tan-cloaked wardens who now seemed oddly enthusiastic, even friendly with us. I even caught that man – Shamak, who I didn’t think knew how to smile – sharing a laugh with Miss Nindry and her son.
When I asked about Mondric, Javairea didn’t have answers either, but said that Garth had been placed in charge of the guard-force for now. I felt unsettled about that and wasn’t really sure why. He’d taken a bad slash to his neck and would be healing, I knew. But more was broken. I’d seen his face.
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In the courtyard, three days after the Rite of Uribb, Bardon was presented to the people as their Satrap-Archimandrite. Unlike the satraps of Aysattah, he took no Eredian royal name and now I wondered why they’d ever done that.
At the same ceremony, Caliph Arif and Caliph Omran were put to death. In front of gleeful, watching Vedans their necks were chained and they were pushed off the sentinel spire. Which broke them, just the way Szaferis had threatened he would break Rusper Symphin. Apparently, Omran had bounced twice against the wall, which pleased the crowd. Viziers Basra and Ramed were chained and dropped next. Dranz didn’t die, although his plotting was well known. Instead he was created Caliph of Methar. People said that it was clever, but to me it made no sense.
I didn’t go anyway; could do without watching more death, no matter whose deaths they were.
The truth of Plamen’s death was known. Except the Disc part of course. It had been that which broke the deadlock between Viceroy and Senera, clearing the way for Rusper’s arrest. Venara, Plamen’s sister, was now pardoned. She’d never meant betrayal. Using her influence over the caliphs, Amyra had seen to it that her son, Plamen’s nephew, was deployed on the front lines just as Ergmouth started to lose its footing; the young cadet reassigned when his mother spoke against the Viceroy.
The Iron Shield was disbanded. I learned now that the order had been founded long ago under Syphus the First – until Bardon, the last man to overthrow a dynasty – its purpose to shield the newly-risen satrap from an undecided people. There’d been no need. Even then, the people of Vorth had quickly disowned their former ruler to accept the new.
Closest to Syphus II, Szaferis, had been Zimran. His advisor, even friend. I knew so little about the man, but what I did know – always had, ever since learning his name – was that he was loved by the desert’s sovereign and by the people. Amyra had used that: used him. Through Zimran she’d resurrected the old order as her tool. And then, when she’d been ready . . .
Except for Jharis and those who’d gone down through the Roads, no Shieldmen died with Bardon’s rise. The forty of the Shield who remained would either join the Antissan Regiment or else enlist as fortress guards. Or they would die.
All became vortans.
Savhar was now High Commander and the Methan Regiment supreme. The people rallied behind it, even the Antissans, who very quickly changed their minds.
Amyra had been right about them; how changeable they were. Maybe even known, I guessed like Rusper did, that Antissans weren’t Vedish at all. Maybe, in a way, they didn’t know who they were. Maybe, I thought, that made me Antissan after all.
Mondric stood down as Captain of the Guard. By the time I found out, he’d packed his life up already and, with his two wives and two daughters, left Antissa. He went to Ospégath, about as far away from the city as one could go within Vorth’s borders. Part of me understood why.
Even as he’d stood by Rusper Symphin on his knife-edge, he’d been loyal to Vorth and Syphus to the end. He hadn’t known of Bardon’s plans. True, if he’d not freed Bardon, then Syphus II would still sit his throne, if only a throne that was Ered’s and with only a few blissful days to sit it.
All that and worse could so easily have happened if not for what Rusper had set in motion. If not for Azal who’d slipped an extra pouch of “gems” into Zeek’s pocket when she reported news of Rusper's arrest. If not for Bardon who’d won the southern caliphs back. If not for Mondric who’d released him to condemn Amyra before the Vedish people, and in so doing opened the fortress to an army he hadn’t even known was there . . .
If not for me, who’d sent Pintle back down in the sphere for Mondric’s party. Javairea doubted he blamed us. ‘He’s Vedish, Florian,’ she told me, almost cold. ‘He knew as well as any other Vorth could one day change its heart.’
I couldn’t say if she was right, but whether or not we had betrayed him, I wished I’d got to say goodbye.
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My caliph was safe. I’d moved him off the middle mark but quickly covered him by four. And she had only three nearby—she couldn’t get him. No chance.
I went for forfeit.
Zeek rolled the knuckles, read the numbers, flipped two white orfin, pushed one forward by a space. Then she sat back against the inside of the window, looking smug.
I smacked my hands down. ‘Ugh!’
She shook her head.
Perched in the deep bay window of the mansion’s smaller dining room, we’d played three games on the little mat Loquar had pulled out his turban while, cross-legged on the floor, Jerome had watched over his arms. That was three times she’d beat me now. I stared down at the well-worn triangle of smaller blue and white triangles and knew I’d not been concentrating. ‘There’s something I still don’t understand.’
Zeek frowned and leaned in, a little irritably counting out how many orfin flanked the caliph.
I said, ‘Not that.’
‘What is it, ekhit?’ said Javairea. With Azal and Loquar, she sat in a high-backed chair with curly arms at the table, looking tired but content. Her neck was missing its emerald band; officially. Bardon had announced only this morning that Javairea Imraldh, among some others of the houses, was unfit for the royal harem. No reason was given and I wondered if it meant what I thought it did. ‘Well?’
But my question wasn’t for her. I stood and left the window. ‘Why weren’t you there?’ I asked Azal.
The mathematician set down his cup of the floral tea we were sharing. ‘My bid was entered, what need was there?’
‘But I don’t understand why Amyra let you do that. The gems, she didn’t know what they were.’
He pursed his lips. ‘The Duchess knew.’
Of course she had. And obviously Amyra would have done anything to keep the Duchess’ favour; won as it had been by the clever wheedlings of Heironymus Etch. What exactly those wheedlings had been I didn’t know and didn’t care.
There was a sudden crunch as Loquar bit into an onion, big and brown, and slouched down deeper in his chair to relish it. Turban again. Azal had brought, not only tea, but a hamper of Eredian sweet-cakes, buns and wafers. Jerome had feasted well. Chin and cheeks powdered with sugar, he mounted into the window-seat as Zeek reset the Xiqopix.
I felt a laugh puff through my nostrils. Just a small one but it took me by surprise. Then I realised why. It wasn’t my old friend’s clumsy face, or the way he pushed his lower lip out, bracing for the challenge. Which was funny, but . . .
‘There are no Lackish tribes left, are there,’ I said.
Cradling his tea again, ‘Most unlikely,’ said Azal.
I nodded. ‘Those strangers in the dustlands that were seen from the fortress, the ones that Rusper talked about . . . they were always Amyra’s servants.’
He didn’t answer but Javairea leaned her head back in her chair with a look of dawning realisation. Ered. Moments later, she sat forward again to pour some more tea.
Knuckles fell in the bay window. Through the glass pane—and all these windows had glass panes, which made it probably the only glass-windowed building in the city—we could see out through the eaves, white walls and terraces of the High District, which was a quiet place today. No one would guess that, days ago, a royal dynasty had ended. I went and sat next to the senah, who gave a warm cup to me.
Loquar took another bite out of his onion, looking at nothing in particular, while Javairea touched my slung-up arm and gave a small smile. My shoulder smarted but I didn’t show it. Aznath had said there was bad damage to the ligaments and that it might not heal completely. Hetch had got even after all.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
‘What’s going to happen now?’ was the next question I put to Azal. ‘You know everything, don’t you?’
‘The Rath will surround you,’ was the straight answer he gave instead of the riddling smile I expected.
‘How do you know?’
‘I’m fully in favour of your practicality sir,’ he said. ‘No doubt essential in your line of work.’ As he sipped his tea, I ignored the compliment. ‘The immediacy of the danger is reduced, however. Due in no small part to certain recent civic developments, the enemy that would attempt to breach the fortress from below will find Antissa less than permeable.’
‘Because of the closed door.’
‘Yes.’
‘What else?’
‘Well, Szaferis Aysattah will die, his dynasty with him.’
‘Bardon’s satrap already.’ Azal didn’t respond and sipped again. ‘It’s good he’ll die,’ I mused softly, though the thought of him made me sad.
‘Many share the sentiment,’ said Azal.
‘Now they can see,’ Javairea added, ‘that their sovereign died many years ago.’
I looked at her. Then Azal. ‘Did you come here to kill him?’
‘I came to obtain a gryphon,’ he answered, ‘at the price of an opportunity.’
The gryphon was still with the conclave. After Pintle and Gudgeon had learned about the Builders’ Stones under the gardens, they’d excavated Meck’s old house to grant the priests first access. They’d been down there all day, conducting some sort of blessing on the creature. But it belonged to the legendary mathematician now, and would soon be passed into his care.
I was staring at my tea.
Azal set his cup down. ‘You think it peculiar,’ he said, ‘that I know Antissa to be reasonably secure from the horde that will encroach around its depths. Strange too that I perceive you for an engineer of more than mere machines. Neither is truly any stranger than my capacity to enable a desired outcome. Or your own.’
‘You didn’t know that Szaferis’ death was what we wanted,’ I argued.
‘Of course not,’ he replied. ‘But is there ever only one possible outcome, at any time? On this one visit alone I’ve been aware—keenly aware—of a handful. But sir, a word in your ear. . .’ He regarded me seriously, somehow maintaining a smile. ‘This was the outcome someone wanted. And he did choose it.’
Yes, he had. We had.
No. Rusper had chosen.
I took a deep breath: ‘What do you think will happen to us?’ I asked him. Or maybe just asked myself. I shrugged, ‘Rusper still isn’t talking to me.’
Javairea scoffed, flapped a hand and took a cake.
‘Oh-ho, you needn’t trouble over that,’ chuckled Azal. ‘Once I’m gone, you and he will be very much back to normal. For my tallan’s worth, the Satrap-Archimandrite will honour his word to both the Viceroy and the people insofar as he is able. And the people . . . ah well, you know them better than I.’
Onion devoured, Loquar fished his pipe out and thumbed some daskh into the bowl. We sat in silence for a while. I pulled my leg up on the chair and tried to push thoughts into order while picking gently at the claw-mark on my leg. Finally scabbing over properly. Javairea slapped my hand away. Leaning in close, she drew my eyes.
‘I do not believe the Naemians need fear retribution,’ she said quietly before a deep smile widened her cheeks. ‘All will be well, ekhit.’ I thought of Sarah and, though I missed her—missed her still so much—smiled too.
As the air over the dining table filled with ginger smoke, Loquar sat upright and clicked fingers at Jerome. ‘Oi, Wingnut! Give ‘im the box.’
Wingnut? Oh, his ears.
He’d been pressed up against the window with both hands splayed like a gecko, prodding and tapping at the pane; probably the first glass he’d ever seen. Now abandoning Zeek in mid-game, he hopped up and went to rummage in the satchel I guessed was his. When he came to the table, he placed a box of wood and metal in front of me.
‘Kid made it,’ said Loquar. ‘Least with some help.’
The box had six snibs down its sides, which I fiddled with for a while until I realised they were linked and must be pushed all at the same time. Which was almost impossible but I wasn’t going to say that.
Inside were my things; somehow they must have got them up from digging level. Nuts and bolts, tallans and kopechs, a chrozite capsule and some schot-stones. My ragged headcloth from the mission and the wilted Ilovish anemone Eflan had picked. The Ratheine charm bracelet and Javairea’s dragonfly earring. Meck’s diagrams, folded, which I ignored. Even the red and green cloths we’d used to wrap the Discs in.
New treasures.
At the grind of heavy wood over floorboards, we looked to see Zeek drag another chair up to the table. She sat in it, spread the Xiqopix mat in front of Azal and started laying out pieces. Doubting scoffs burst out of both Loquar and Javairea. Up shot the mathematician’s eyebrows. He then popped his knuckles, leaned forward and beamed: ‘If you insist.’
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Florian,
I do not want for you to feel bad about Eflan. He was a brave soldier and a good brother and son. He did his duty. I know you could not tell me that he died before the war. I am happy you were with him at the end. Remember him. I am with my family again in Chidh Chauri. My legs hurt but not too much. I hope one day to see you again.
—Taflan
Folding the letter I’d got from Gudgeon just that morning, the second day after Bardon’s ascension, I smiled and climbed the steps into the Dynasty Hall. I’d been summoned: the revolution was complete and it was time.
I always liked it here in twilight as orange faded into blue. Voices floated from the far arches where the business of passing Szaferis’ care into new hands was going on. Peacefully at least. He was up there in the highest room of that tower again; Bardon was going to let him die there. And it wouldn’t be long, as maybe only a few in the city knew. By now the man would be so deep in the trance there surely couldn’t be much pain. And Khalyl was up there with him. The entire coterie of royal physicians had been executed too, for their defection and part in Amyra’s plot. That was her plot against the Viceroy, not the throne.
Rusper was standing on the plinth of Syphus I and his four lions, gazing up at the long-dead face. ‘So you’re the Satrap’s most trusted now,’ I said.
I’d hoped to make him smile but he didn’t, or even seem to be listening. Then, snapping off the end of some thought, he looked towards me and fluttered eyelids at the notion. ‘For now,’ he said. ‘But I’ll be doing little more than passing administrative duties back into the hands of the First Circle, where they belong.’
‘You don’t trust them.’
‘Little matters who I trust,’ he replied. ‘A new man sits upon the Mooncircle Throne. How he secures the loyalty of the Caliphate isn’t for me to predict. Either way he will rule. And just as all who ruled before, back to the earliest chieftains, he will do as he sees fit.’
He patted the mighty muscled thigh of Syphus I, then rested a hand on the head of a lion.
‘So, if you and Bardon—’
‘Satrap Bardon,’ he corrected.
‘You’re friends, I know you are. So did you know all along?’
He released a sigh. ‘Friends, yes. Zimran too for many years, but we’d distanced. Especially after the marriage. His influence in Antissa was always crucial, and without it . . .’
That wasn’t an answer.
But then, ‘No,’ he said, ‘I didn’t know. At least, I never believed it would happen this way. It was always possible, all three of us knew that.’ He paused. ‘I didn’t know Zimran had reached out to Bardon as he died. He never told me, not even . . .’ His eyes went distant.
‘You thought Syphus would die first,’ I guessed.
A slow nod. ‘Without heirs. Then it would have been mine as Viceroy to instate his successor. And yes, it was always to be him. It was for him, not for Syphus, that I fought to keep hold of the Viceroyalty. But. . .’ He started coming down the coil of steps around the statue. ‘This is Vorth. Always has preferred revolution and, naturally, Bardon didn’t know about your mathematician’s plot.’
My mathematician.
But it was Rusper’s plot as much as mine. If he wanted he could admit it. After all, we weren’t killing a satrap, just letting a sick man die in peace.
Rusper disappeared behind the plinth, then reappeared and reached the floor. He moved towards me with his hands behind his back. ‘You must consider your own future,’ he said.
I didn’t like the way that sounded. ‘What do you mean?’
‘With the ascension I can return fully to the Guilds and work ahead. As such, I am unlikely to require the services of an assistant anymore.’
My heart flopped.
He stopped in front of me. ‘You have it?’
I remembered, ‘Oh,’ and dug the Guild-Ring-Most-Royal out of my pocket for him.
He slipped it onto his forefinger. ‘How’s your shoulder?’
‘It’s okay.’
His eye twitched off my sling, then off my close-shaven head. ‘The Satrap gives me his word that the Naemians will be provided with modest homes in the city, and the status of free Antissans from this day forward. They’ll be permitted, indeed obliged, to make their livings in the districts and earn their way as citizens. It will be hard, but they will suffer no more persecution here. The Iron Shield is dissolved now, the city’s law will protect them.’
‘That’s good,’ I said. Felt numb.
‘I expect you’ll join them.’
Judging by his tone, this was it. I was being seen off for good. I’d outstayed my welcome now. Or maybe—yes, that’s what it was—he’d not forgiven me for what I’d said. And so I’d lose it all again.
Would it just go on and on forever? Never knowing a home I could keep?
He turned his face to the windows. ‘I wonder if you realise,’ he mused, ‘what it means.’
I waited, a bit tense now.
‘The Builders . . .’ he said, and looked at me. ‘Their legacy may unite us now, give Vorth the chance its people deserve to diminish with some kind of dignity in this shrinking world.’ He shook his head, seeming to marvel, then raised a hand to fondle the medallion of the Viceroyalty on his chest. ‘It would seem, Flint, you’ve been the engineer I couldn’t be while this was shackled round my neck.’
‘It wasn’t all me,’ I reminded him. It wasn’t like I’d built it; the sprawling network of caverns and tunnels full of machines, those had been down there for at least five hundred years. But I was thinking of Meck, who’d somehow known of its existence. And Azal, who’d known him. And the Disc.
Of course the Disc.
‘No,’ he said, tilting his head. ‘But it’s as I said, you wouldn’t understand. One day you might.’
I looked at the floor and knew he wasn’t going to “thank” me. He wouldn’t touch me on the shoulder like someone else I’d known once. Not Rusper Symphin.
‘So alternatively,’ he said. I raised my face to see him frowning hard at something in his hand and seeming to sink into thoughts again. ‘Well here, take it,’ he said and passed me a ring: a small bronze loop crested with three ornamental cogwheels. I stared. ‘Close your mouth, Flint.’
‘Guild training?’
‘Those cogs are silver.’
‘Royal . . .? But,’ I stammered, ‘doesn’t City Guild training come first?’
He sighed explosively. ‘I might no longer rule the country, my boy, but I think you’ll find I’m still Chief Engineer.’ He cracked a smile and cocked his head. ‘Course, I’ve extended the same to Loquar. Seemed rather over-stringent not to, after everything. And I believe he’s taken your friend Jeremiah as his assistant.’
‘Jerome,’ I corrected whilst poking the tip of my right forefinger through the band.
‘As you know,’ he went on, ‘Gudgeon’s apprentice was crippled by her injuries on the defence-line.’
‘Yeh.’
‘I understand that you were friends, but nevertheless . . .’ he said, his softer tone taking me back to those things he’d said when we’d first met, about Erik and Sarah. ‘Nevertheless, you’ll take her place if you should wish it.’
If I should wish it.
Admiring the ring in the bluing light, I let the feeling fill me up as it had the first time. Except now without the guilt. Things had happened, terrible things. And then things had changed. My people, last of the Naemian race, were finally safe, as safe as any of us were, and could take that shaky step into a new life just as I’d done. I could have this.
Saying thank you didn’t fit. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t said it to me either.
‘There’s work ahead,’ he smiled wryly. ‘More than ever.’
‘I know,’ I smiled back, ready.
He took a sudden breath in. ‘Florian . . .’ It was the creak there in his voice more than his use of my name that made him sound so old again, if only just for a moment. I saw it in his face too, around those burn-reddened crow’s-feet and the set of his jaw. I watched him, waiting for—what? He swallowed, shook his head slowly. Then rubbed an eye and looked aside. ‘Remind Gudgeon about the Zone-One damages report please, urgently, I should’ve got it this morning.’ The creak was gone.
I nodded. ‘Yes, Cali—’
But where the honorary title had been was a gap. I searched his face for something to fill it, but as those murky-green eyes settled on my face again I thought they’d never been so still on me before. ‘Rusper will do,’ he said with little a nod to the arches. ‘Don’t keep him waiting.’
I turned and made towards the arch-end of the hall, the city’s glow through the tall windows now more purple than orange. Something was right. Rath roamed in thousands all around and soon directly below, but there was more ahead than darkness. More than exile and fear.
By the time I reached the arches and looked back, Rusper had gone, though I could still hear his footsteps fading from the hall. A tiny sparkle caught my eye. Back on its hook again, it was the medallion swaying side-to-side.