~ IAN ~

A thunderstorm. Fitting.

The council chamber had been a boiling pot slowly rising in pressure until it had threatened to explode. It was only right that the pressure might have seeped outside, into the very weather. Ian turned up the collar of his jacket as Sergeant Pratley fell in behind him.

“How did it go, sir?”

Shit, was the answer, not that Ian was about to discuss the matter with Sergeant Pratley. Chris had taken a barrage of criticism from all corners. Some bits, Ian reflected, had been fairer than others.

Bradshaw wanted to know why the three missing soldiers hadn’t been found—a disingenuous request, given it was his decision to reduce the searches for them. This Ian knew from David. Chris was there, he should have been able to push the point back into Bradshaw’s face, but he’d crumbled. He’d given a non-answer. A fool could see that he was being evasive. “Essegena’s very big,” he’d said, as though the senior leadership of the colony might not know what a fucking planet is.

Oliver Wrack had asked when the allowance of food was going to stop—or at the very least when he was going to be allowed to implement some rationing. The stores weren’t running low yet, he reported, but there was a clear path of progress towards them being emptied. Thus far the handful of farms that had sprung up in the valley barely had the capacity to feed a third of the colony, even months down the line when the first harvests would arrive, and wayward hunting of game was not going to make up the shortfall. Ian had begrudged Master Wrack the point. Wrack was supposedly on their side, an ally Chris had picked up at some point. What was he doing adding to the pile-on in an already-tricky meeting?

The rest had taken their turns to raise issues big and small. Master Ruddingshaw raised the issue of Caroline’s consistent non-attendance. The time would eventually come, he said, when they’d have no option but to vote to replace her. Bradshaw had used this as a hook to criticise her character. Scattered murmurs of assent made it clear that he wasn’t the only one with ill feeling towards her. Master Dombric had complained about the order of priority for building work, implying that it favoured Chris’ interests. The fact that it was Master Holden who was in charge of the order of priority seemed not to matter.

The low point had been when Master Stockton raised the issue of elections. “Why has no provision been made for a free election to allow the people of Essegena to choose their own government?”

“It’s mandated in the Unity statutes,” added Ruddingshaw, “and the code of conduct for territorial governors clearly extols the benefits of democracy.”

“It’s beginning to seem like you don’t want to give up your power,” Bradshaw said.

“Elections will happen in due course,” Chris stated. “When I feel the time is right.”

“And who put it in your hands?” Bradshaw had fumed.

Chris, clearly oblivious to the hostile atmosphere towards him, had given Bradshaw a smug look. “The Unity,” he’d said. It left him convinced he’d beaten Bradshaw back. The meeting had run its course within a wall of scowls and whispers. Chris hadn’t even seen them.

“That went well,” he’d said to Ian, as they made their way out of the chamber. “Who said we needed to be afraid of Bradshaw?”

After seeing his friend’s performance in that meeting, Ian had to say that he thought they needed to be afraid of Bradshaw.

So all in all, today’s meeting had been shit.

“Business as usual, Sergeant,” he said, all cheery. “You know how government is.”

“No sir, I don’t,” said Pratley. “Never been there myself. I always thought politics to be boring. Give me a target to kill, and all that.”

Ian glanced sideways at the Sergeant. “It would be ideal if we could avoid the killing,” he said.

Pratley held back. “Quoting the Books to keep me away? A low blow, sir. A low blow.”

“What? No, I don’t see how not wanting the private security that’s directly answerable to me to be killing people is such a controversial position that I have to be quoting something.”

Pratley snickered. “I know, sir. But you have to admit, the wording was uncanny. Are you sure you’re not thinking of converting?”

He wasn’t. In truth, he hadn’t even looked at the book Skerrett had given him. It had been sat on a shelf in his quarters all along.

“One of these days you’ll have to tell me why you’re afraid of that church so much.”

Sergeant Pratley shook his head. “I’m not afraid, sir. I just don’t get on with the Faith. I’ll spare you the wherefores.”

Of course you will. The wherefores were the only part Ian was interested in.

He parted company with Sergeant Pratley at the entrance to the Eia. One of the younger lads was currently posted outside his chambers, Corcoran his name. Pratley was happy to accept that Ian wouldn’t come to any harm during the short walk there. Corcoran nodded as he passed, and he locked the door tight behind him.

The book was there waiting for him. Had he put it so prominently on display? He supposed he must have done—books don’t walk on their own, as a general rule. It was softly coloured in a wine-purple leather. A blazing marigold adorned the cover, crudely painted on, and beneath it ornate gold lettering spelled out ‘The Testimony of Eia’.

The pages were thin and fragile. He had to open them with care in order not to tear them, and as he was planning on returning the book to Lightness Skerrett at some point he was keen to make sure it stayed in one piece.

Inside, the print was very small—obviously chosen to get as much as possible onto the pocket-sized pages. Each chapter was headed by a colourful illustration. The drawings, so rough around the edges that the scuffed pencil marks showed clearly, were old, too old to be from Skerrett’s hand. They had come from another Lightness. Perhaps an acolyte. A hundred years ago, by the looks of it, or more.

Ian tried to put himself in the mind of someone a century ago, reading these same words as they took a break from their life. What had their day been like? The histories never gave a real picture. They pulled statistics and sterile figures and drew from them stereotypes. Those people in the past had probably been just the same as he was. Thinking about them made him feel funny, and he tried to focus on the text.

The Mother Eia, sketched coarsely and coloured in yellow and red inks at the top of the page, found herself on a beach, in some ancient corner of the universe, to find that her daughter was missing. Ian knew the story, even if the meter was unfamiliar. He hoped something else would happen. The book would get boring, otherwise, and he’d have to put it down.

After half a dozen pages of the Mother Eia’s search, Ian caught himself scouring every sentence for poor word choices or double entendres. It was his usual trick. Whenever he had it in his head that he wasn’t going to enjoy something, he’d look out for any flaws he could find, any excuse to justify not enjoying it. What was the point? If he was set in not enjoying it, why had he bothered to open the book in the first place? It wasn’t as if anybody was forcing him to read it.

So he stopped being critical, and tried for a while to enjoy it for what it was. He didn’t have to believe it was true. ‘The Tragedy of Tembenel’ wasn’t true, not in any sense more than that a young woman called Tembenel had existed once, probably. It hadn’t stopped him from becoming enamoured with the story every time he went to see it. It hadn’t stopped him from weeping every time poor Tembenel laid her head on a pillow of gauze to die, and accusing Elise of being the one who’d cried.

With that mindset, washed free of the cynicism, the purple book became an altogether more pleasant read. Some of the prose was outdated, but it rushed over him like an incorrigible tide of heliotrope water. The words danced. Beneath each one was the Mother Eia’s signature in invisible melancholy. She must have been a devoted woman to search so long for something.

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed—whether it was a few minutes or an hour, or longer perhaps. By the end of the first chapter he’d found himself rooting for the Mother Eia to find her daughter. But Matheld could not be found.

And then he came to a chapter that stood out from the rest, in how it was presented. The first ten had all followed the same design, the illuminations coloured from the same palette and beneath them the text in rows of tiny, organised print. This one was different. The words were sparser, and several smaller pictures had been scribbled in the margins in lieu of one at the top.

‘Dear Thilde do not care to think ill of me,’ the text read. ‘It is not for want of love that I have left my search empty. I did journey a thousand miles, and that again when still I had not found you, and now I find myself back at this place where first I found I was without you. Where now is there to look, when I have already searched the world?’

Ian flipped over the page. Overleaf, he saw the left hand side was printed in the same disjointed style. On the right, a poem. Perhaps not one he was familiar with, but he’d been through the school system and listened to the teachers, and he could recognise a poem when he saw one.

This poem, he felt, wouldn’t be a joyful one.

The page before it didn’t exactly set a cheerful tone either. ‘In this place I will commit your memory to the earth, and that without a body, for I know that in the darkness of my days you can be a beacon for me. Let that beacon shine bright. Let it shine for the life you lived with me, and the life that still you live, and will live for years to come, even if not in my arms. Sweet child, whither you are take solace: your Mother loves you. It is out of love that I let you be, out of love that I set you free from me. What stronger love can there be than that?

‘Listen to these words I say, that I might mourn you now and leave you at peace:’

Ian’s eyes flicked across to the poem, his head a mess of thoughts. The memories of a soiled adolescence came back in confusion. He could not untangle the weave.

‘The winter light hangs still upon the thick forgotten grove

Where tagetes for Thilde grow as suns upon the floor

No wailing wind will take her there

No summer breeze upon her hair

When I have wandered everywhere I’ll search for her no more

Not in the deep declivities the aspect of a girl

Nor in the hush of twilight oer the wheat there in the field

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

I carried her through shadowed lands

I tightly held her infant hand

And yet awoke on golden sand

Alone

Sweet daughter, sweet child, please don’t be afraid

I will find you one day

Sweet daughter, sweet girl, come out from the shade

Let me see you again

Here in this garth of willow trees walled by a stranger’s spell

This place where others fear to tread but which to me is home

I’ll bury you beneath the dirt

I swear to you it will not hurt

I promised that it wouldn’t hurt to voyage through the gloam’

Ian paused, his breath caught in his throat. Dani was there in the room with him, so clear he wanted to touch her. A shade or a hallucination—he couldn’t tell which was which. She must have heard his promise. “It’ll be over soon, I swear. It won’t hurt a bit.” Her mute eyes demanded that he plead for forgiveness. You lied, she screamed, in the voice of a child. The only voice of hers he could still remember.

“No,” he told her. “No, I didn’t lie. I never lied.”

The corner of her lip twitched, that phantom in the form of Dani Carrigan. The skin was clammy on her face, he could see. Thick and flaking away. Waxy. The muscles moved uneasily. The mouth didn’t open. Remember what you’ve done, she said.

He’d never forgotten.

He turned back to the book, pressed it so close to his face that he couldn’t see beyond the pages. The words fell out of focus, and he had to read each in turn. But at least he could pretend there was nothing other than the book.

‘This stone will be remembrance of everything you were

You live on in my memory, you’ll live on now beyond

The darkling day encloaking you

The fire’s light to birth anew

My daughter on the morning dew

Alone

Sweet daughter, sweet child, please don’t be afraid

I will find you one day

Sweet daughter, sweet girl, come out from the shade

Let me see you again

I woke upon a beach as soft as that sweet child’s kiss

And for a year I saw her in the shadows of my eye

I never heard her happy song

Nor in this lonely world belonged

And I will carry every wrong until at last I die

Then in the kind God-Mother’s hall I’ll see my girl again

And warmth again will dwell within the hollows of my soul

Sweet Thilde, I would watch you grow

I’d love you more than you could know

My poor heart breaks to let you go

Alone’

The poem continued to the end of the page, but he didn’t take in a word of it. He turned the page, turned several pages ahead so he could skip past that whole section. Let somebody else listen to the Mother Eia as she buries her child. He wanted the uplifting stuff.

He didn’t find any uplifting stuff. Instead, he found a distraction in the gentle tapping on his door. Corcoran poked his head in. “Governor Ballard to see you, sir.” Unlike Sergeant Pratley, Corcoran didn’t insist on his presence. When he was on duty, he guarded Ian by standing silently outside the door. That suited Ian fine. But unlike Sergeant Pratley, Corcoran would never tell the Governor himself to take a hike, no matter how much Ian wanted to be left alone.

He stuffed the book beneath his pillow and stood as Chris came in.

“Is this where you’re living?” Chris pulled a face. “Ian, it’s tiny. You should have said something. Let me speak to Master Holden, bump your manor up the priorities.”

“It’s fine, Chris. This is enough for me.”

The very notion seemed to take Chris aback. “Oh. You’re sure?”

Ian nodded. “I have a bed. That’ll do me.”

“I need a favour,” said Chris, with no time devoted to the transition between topics. “I’ve double-booked my schedule and I shouldn’t disappoint Caroline today. I fear I’ve upset her lately.”

“What’s the favour?”

“Master Stockton wants to see me,” said Chris. “Don’t know why, he didn’t say, but to be honest it doesn’t sound pleasant. I’d rather spend the day watching Caroline gush over some exotic fish or something.”

Ian frowned. “Does she normally do that?”

“No, but you never know. She’s got it into her head that there’s some lake somewhere that’s worth wasting a day on. There’s fish in lakes, I think.”

“Try not to get into too much bother trying to catch them,” said Ian. Chris had once fallen from a boat while out fishing, something which was a bit of a sore spot for him. He glowered at Ian and turned to leave.

“Speak to Stockton,” he huffed. “Find out what he wants.”

And Chris was gone.

Dougray Stockton’s laboratory was dimly lit, with a permeating air of sterility. The stench of bleach filled the room, only partially disguised by a lavender perfume that somehow smelled worse. At least it was clean, Ian thought. The walls, painted a pale blue, were lined with worktops, and several long benches filled the room. At the far wall, a young woman in a white frock was stood over a tank filled with dirt, shining a torch into the dirt as though the light might come out the other side. She was the only one in the room.

Ian forced a cough, and the woman glanced his way. “Sorry,” she said, setting the torch down on the side and balancing a plastic lid over the tank. “I didn’t hear you coming in.”

“That’s quite alright,” he said, pulling out a stool from the nearest bench and sitting on it. As the woman walked towards him, showing her face for the first time, his mind tuned out. She was saying something, but he wasn’t sure what—his brain was too busy running through a mandatory list of a million and one thoughts. There was something familiar about that face. Something that was making his blood run cold. What was it?

He suddenly realised that the woman was looking at him. Waiting for him to reply, no doubt. “I didn’t catch that,” he said.

“I only asked how I can help you,” said the woman.

“Ah. Yes. I’m looking for Master Stockton. I’m told this is his laboratory?”

The woman nodded. “Master Stockton’s out the back, working on a special case. He asked me not to let anybody through to see him—”

“That’s odd,” Ian said, cutting her off, “because he specifically asked me to come. I’m here on behalf of Governor Ballard.”

The woman bit her lip, looked at him for a second. She had a steely gaze, piercing eyes that seemed to smile and scowl at once. He was certain somebody else had looked at him like that, in the past. Either he knew this woman, or she had a doppelgänger. Was it something in her face? Perhaps the way she wore her hair? But no matter how he wracked his brain, he couldn’t remember how it was he recognised her. “Sorry,” he said, “have we met before?”

“No, I don’t believe so. I’ll go and fetch Master Stockton.” She pivoted on her heel and walked through a door at the back of the room—into the depths of the lab. Who was it she looked like? Alone in the near-dark, Ian found himself running through different women in his head. Women he’d worked with before, women he’d met in bars, women he went to school with. None seemed to match. And then it hit him. This woman... she looked like Dani. He shook his head—it couldn’t be her. Dani was dead, and long may she rest with Taléa. It was just coincidence. The woman had a couple of features that favoured Dani, that was all.

A man’s voice brought him back to reality. It was coming from through the door, where the woman had gone. Stockton. “I must admit, I was a little surprised to be given a job like this,” he was saying. “I’m less a coroner than your wife is. But I’m glad she passed the body on to me.” The door opened and Stockton came through. His cheeks flushed slightly when he saw Ian. “Master Fitzhenry. I apologise, I was expecting Ballard.”

“Governor Ballard’s occupied at the moment,” Ian said, short, suddenly annoyed at Stockton. It was technically true, even if a picnic in the sunshine wasn’t quite what Stockton would assume he meant. “He sent me.”

“Of course.” Stockton stood in the doorway. Ian had only ever seen him seated before. Standing, he was a squat, slightly chubby man. He seemed to be sizing Ian up.

A small voice came from behind him. “Excuse me, Master Stockton.” Stockton stood aside as the woman from before came back into the room. On second look, she didn’t really resemble Dani Carrigan all that much. She was superficially similar, sure, but her hair was a few shades lighter than Dani’s had been, her face a little more angular. Her eyes were blue, where Dani’s had been that unforgettable hazel. She gave Ian the briefest of smiles, then made for her tank of dirt.

“I see you’ve met Miss Trang,” said Stockton, pointing a hand in her direction. “She’s a good worker. A lot of the youngsters here are cut from the same cloth—their minds are sharp enough, but they don’t have the work ethic. They get pulled out of universities where they’re sleepwalking to failure, given great placements on the Unity’s next big project, and they think they’ve got it made. And as soon as we have a nice sunny day like this, they all find excuses to get outside and waste the day.”

“Youngsters are the best we’re gonna get,” said Ian. “There’s not many people willing to leave their wives behind and go to the far edge of human life, not when they can stay at home and still get any job they want.”

Master Stockton held up his hands. “I understand the wherefores. I’m still entitled to moan. Anyway, Miss Trang’s not like the others. She stays until the work’s done.” Ian couldn’t help but notice that the woman had stopped what she was doing. Her hands were hovering over the tank of dirt, and she almost seemed to be glancing towards Master Stockton. “I should like to keep her working here with me. She’ll go far.”

The woman let out an almost inaudible squeak, and dropped the torch she was holding onto the lid of the tank. The crash caused Stockton to turn to her. “Sorry,” she muttered. “Clumsy.”

“What was it you were saying, before you came in? About the body?”

“Huh? Oh, yes. That man they found out up by Plateau Watch. The so-called ‘time traveller’. I had a look at it on Doctor Ballard’s request. It’s unsettling, to say the least. Here, see for yourself.” Master Stockton bent down to open a cabinet below one of the benches, and pulled from it a small cardboard folder. He dropped it on the bench in front of Ian. Inside were a series of colour photographs—of what, Ian couldn’t really say. It was a maze of crystallised red tendrils. Like a snowflake, magnified to extremity, but in a bizarre crimson. “These were taken from samples from the deceased’s blood. Magnified, of course.”

Ian laughed. “Blood doesn’t look like this. However much you zoom in.”

Master Stockton nodded. “That’s just the thing, Master Fitzhenry. This poor fellow’s blood does look like this. We’ve taken samples from several different sites all over his body, and it’s all the same.”

“How does that happen to someone?”

“I wouldn’t like to say. Certainly, I’ve never come across any chemical that has this effect on blood.”

Ian traced the path of red on one of the photos. The ink seemed to bubble and fizz beneath his fingers. I’m imagining things, he told himself. It’s just a photograph, it’s not magic.

“There might not be anything wrong.” The woman seemed to have given up any pretence of not listening. Ian and Master Stockton turned to face her almost in unison. Her face turned red, and she looked away. “Sorry, I shouldn’t be listening in.”

Stockton smiled. “It’s quite alright, Ella. If I didn’t want you to hear, I could have spoken to Master Fitzhenry in a different room.”

“In what way might there not be anything wrong?” Ian asked. “Are you saying blood should look like this?”

She shrugged. “Perhaps he wasn’t human. No, that’s silly, I’m just thinking out loud. Sorry.” She returned her gaze to the tank, and seemed to find something very important to do there. Ian looked back at Master Stockton.

“Not human?”

“It’s possible, I suppose. We’ve been on this planet, what, half a year?”

“Less,” said Ian.

“Less,” Stockton nodded. “Exactly. Less than half a year. It hasn’t been fully explored, it hasn’t been fully mapped. We’ve barely ventured out of this valley yet. Let’s face it, Master Fitzhenry, it’ll be a long time before we have a clear picture of the lay of Essegena. Who’s to say there isn’t some as-yet-unknown form of life here?”

Ian couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow. “An unknown form of life that speaks our language? Wears our clothes? That looks and acts exactly as any human being—that, by pure coincidence, has evolved to be identical to us in every way. Only its blood looks like this?” He thrust one of the photos in Stockton’s face.

Stockton merely smiled. “It’s unlikely, I admit. But I can’t think of any solution that’s not equally unlikely. It doesn’t hurt to keep an open mind.”

“Well, say it’s not. Say the truth is as simple as some substance doing this to the poor fellow’s blood. Is there any way you can find out what might have had this effect on the man’s blood?”

Master Stockton nodded. “It’s my top project. If there’s an answer, I’ll find it. Just give me some time.”

“How much?” asked Ian.

Stockton regarded him with pursed lips. “As long as it takes,” he said stiffly. “As for how long that might be, I wouldn’t like to say. And yes, you can take that quote to Ballard. Science can’t be rushed.”

“We always get there in the end, though.” That was the girl, Miss Trang, piping up.

Stockton looked at her. “What was that, Ella?”

“In the end. The solution always presents itself, right when it’s needed the most. That’s what my mam says.”

Stockton’s lip twitched.

“Always listen to your mam,” Ian smiled. “Keep me posted, Master Stockton.”

By the time the door had shut behind him, Ella Trang’s face had become Dani’s in his memory. That damned ghost would continue to haunt him.