‘It’s okay,’ Ingmar was saying. ‘It’s okay.’
‘Okay?’ Slvasta burbled hysterically. ‘Oh-fucking-kay? Okay? Okay? How the crud is this okay?’
His friend gave him a sad smile. ‘We can kill each other.’
Slvasta let out a demented giggle.
‘We can,’ Ingmar insisted. ‘We can use a teekay grip on each other’s heart. Squeeze together.’
‘Fuck the Skylords. Ingmar, no!’
‘Please, Slvasta. As soon as my skull reaches the egg, it’ll be over for me. It will have me. I’ll be a Faller. Is that what you want?’
‘No.’
‘Then let us do this. Together.’
Slvasta sent his ex-sight probing into the egg, trying to see what kind of grip it had on him. There wasn’t much he could perceive beyond the surface, just dense shadows. Yet there was some kind of mind in there, steely thoughts he could make no sense of other than a simple glow of expectancy. Nothing like the bright colourful tangle of unguarded human thoughts, forever discordant with emotion.
Although he could sense its outline, he couldn’t feel his lower arm, but it wasn’t cold, or in pain, there was just . . . nothing. He tried pulling. Of course, it didn’t move. He shrank his teekay down to a point, like the tip of an axe, and stabbed repeatedly into the shell around his arm. Nothing. The shell didn’t bend or crack. His attack had no effect whatsoever. He realized his arm was slightly deeper inside, the shell was now up to the top of his radius and ulna.
‘We have to do it,’ Ingmar said. He was making no attempt to spin a shell round his thoughts. Sadness and exhaustion were emanating out of him. ‘We can deny them this. We can deny them us. It’s our last weapon.’
‘Is it?’ Quanda walked down the aisle towards them. She paused at Jamenk’s prone form, and inspected him before moving on to Ingmar. ‘What a fearsome weapon that is. Can you feel my fear?’
‘Rot in Uracus, bitch,’ Ingmar said.
She put her hand on his cheek and glanced down at Slvasta. ‘Do it. If you want him dead.’
‘Yes,’ Ingmar pleaded. ‘Please, Slvasta. Once it gets to my brain, that’s it. Please.’
Slvasta watched through a fresh agony. He formed his teekay into a hand and slowly extended it out towards Ingmar. So close, waiting to push it through his friend’s body and crush his heart.
‘Do it,’ Ingmar shouted.
Slvasta could sense Ingmar’s teekay hovering above his own ribs. ‘I . . . I can’t,’ he admitted woefully. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t.’
‘I thought you were my friend,’ Ingmar wept. ‘How can you leave me to Fall?’
Slvasta shook his head, hating himself for his weakness.
With a mirthless grin, Quanda slowly began to push Ingmar’s head. He fought her, every centimetre of the way. His neck muscles stood proud. Teekay scrabbling at her impervious shell, then trying to reinforce his own muscles. It made no difference; the Faller was too strong. She pushed the side of his face against the egg surface. It stuck there immediately. Ingmar started wailing. ‘Slvasta, please Slvasta. It will take me. It will take all of me. I will never be fulfilled, I will not be guided to the Heart. Help me. Kill me.’
‘Monster,’ Slvasta hissed. ‘Why are you so evil?’
Quanda squatted down beside him and cocked her head to one side, studying him, always studying. ‘You make us; we are formed by you, your body and your mind. This – what I am, the way I think – it is inherited from your kind. It is vile. You, your species, is animal, brutal, despicable. Once we have exterminated you, it will take a generation to breed you out of us. But we will be free in the end.’
‘You will never defeat us. Freak monster. The Heart is for us, not you. You will never be fulfilled.’
‘We have been before. We will be again.’
Slvasta heard the words, but they didn’t make any sense. He tugged at his arm again, but the egg gripped it with a hold stronger than a century-old tree root. ‘Crudbitch.’ He looked up, and examined the rafters and beams holding up the barn’s roof. A lot of the timbers were thick and heavy. Maybe . . . He used his teekay to try and shift one above Jamenk’s egg. Just to loosen it would be enough. In his head he had a vision of a huge joist crashing down, crushing the egg.
‘You can kill Jamenk?’ Ingmar yelled in outrage.
‘Because he’s already dead. Fallen,’ Slvasta shouted back.
Quanda chuckled. Then stopped, her head coming up, eyes staring at something outside the walls. ‘Were you alone?’ she snapped.
‘Go fuck yourself,’ Slvasta told her.
There was a burst of gunfire outside.
‘In here!’ Slvasta shouted, making his ’path as powerful as he could. ‘There’s a Faller in here!’ He sent out Quanda’s image, twined with all the hate in his body.
She smacked him on the side of his head. The world didn’t make sense for a long moment. There was more gunfire. Mod-apes were chittering in fury and panic. The soft roar of flamethrowers.
‘There,’ a voice called. ‘She’s there!’
More and more gunfire. Bullets punched through the barn’s timbers, sending small splinters whizzing through the air. Slim beams of sunlight punctured the gloomy interior, shining through each bullet hole.
‘Die, you bitch!’ Slvasta shouted jubilantly. ‘Uracus awaits you!’ His smile was more a snarl as he turned to Ingmar. That was when his elation died. Ingmar’s cheek and ear had sunk below the egg’s surface. He was silent, his bright familiar thoughts slowing and dimming, somehow drifting into the egg. ‘No. No, no, no! Hold on, Ingmar, fight it. They’re almost here.’
Strong ex-sights played through the shack, examining every solid object. Slvasta dropped his shell, welcoming the scrutiny. The doors burst open.
Marines were running in. Fantastic black-clad figures, holding small carbines, their ex-sight probing hard now.
One of them, a captain, walked over to Jamenk first, then Ingmar, looking closely at his head.
‘I couldn’t do it,’ Slvasta sobbed. ‘He’s my friend and I couldn’t do it.’
‘Look away, lad,’ the captain said sternly.
Slvasta did as he was told, closing his eyes and withdrawing his ex-sight. A single shot rang out. He glanced at his arm. His elbow had been swallowed by the egg surface now. ‘Is she dead?’ he demanded. ‘Is the Faller bitch dead?’
The captain stood over him. ‘Yeah. We got her.’
‘Then I’m fulfilled,’ Slvasta declared, with very brittle bravado. ‘Will the Skylords guide me?’
‘Were there any more of them?’ the captain asked. ‘Any more Fallers?’ Marines were manoeuvring a large cart through the barn’s open doors.
‘No. No, sir, I don’t think so. We only saw her. How did you know? How did you find us?’
More Marines were coming in. They carried heavy axes. Blades fell on the egg Jamenk was stuck to, swung with fierce enthusiasm. Before long, a thick milky liquid started to spray out of the tiny splits. Flamethrowers began to play across the egg fluid, boiling it as procedure demanded. According to Captain Cornelius’s manual, even the egg fluid was dangerous.
‘A regiment patrol intercepted the Shilos’ cart a day and a half ago,’ the captain said. ‘They were all Fallers. Uracus of a fight, by all accounts. Looks like this nest has been established here for a while – there are quite a few human bones left in the house. We came as soon as we got word. Shame we didn’t get to you in time.’
‘I understand.’ Slvasta took a breath and closed his eyes. ‘Do it, sir, please.’
He didn’t mean to use his ex-sight, but he perceived one of the Marines coming up behind him. Braced himself –
But there was no shot to the head. No deliverance. The Marine started wrapping a slim rope round his eggsumed arm, just below the shoulder, tying it in an unusual knot.
‘What?’ Slvasta grunted in confusion.
‘Bite on this,’ the captain said in a sympathetic voice, and pushed a small length of wood towa
rds his face. ‘It’ll do till you faint.’
‘What?’
A Marine handed the captain a saw.
Slvasta started screaming. The wood was jammed into his mouth. The tourniquet was tightened.
He tried to squirm free. But the egg held him resolutely in place.
The grim-faced captain started sawing.
2
With Varlan situated just over a thousand kilometres south of the equator, every day in Bienvenido’s capital was a hot one. Even now, close to midnight, the cobbled streets and stone walls were still radiating out the heat they’d been punished with during the day.
Kervarl looked out of the cab’s windows as it trundled along Walton Boulevard, trying not to appear like a complete neophyte to the person who rode the cab with him. He was an important man back in Boutzen county, two thousand kilometres south at the end of the Southern City Line. But Boutzen was just a county capital, dwarfed in scale by Varlan.
The cab pulled up in front of the Rasheeda Hotel, which itself was probably larger than the Council chamber in Boutzen. Kervarl frowned, angry with himself for falling into such a depreciative mindset.
I’m here now. I’m making my own impact on this world. I’m as good as any capital merchant. Better, for I have more opportunity.
‘Relax,’ the man sitting opposite said, with a kindly smile. Kervarl forced a smile.
It had taken two weeks, and considerably more coins that he’d wanted to spend, but he’d finally won an appointment with the National Council’s First Speaker in his private annex. The First Speaker had agreed to sponsor him with the palace. Again for more coinage than he’d planned on. But that was Varlan for you: everything was on a bigger scale.
It didn’t matter, he kept telling himself. Here he was in a cab with Larrial, the First Speaker’s chief aide, on his way to the palace to see the First Officer himself. The mining licences were in sight. Just keep your nerve.
He jumped when the cab door was pulled open.
‘Calm,’ Larrial urged.
Kervarl tightened his shell and looked out. A man and a teenage girl were standing on the pavement. The girl was pleasant enough, with broad features and a good figure outlined by the flimsy white cotton dress she wore. Kervarl would have preferred a prettier one. His uncertainty must have leaked out.
‘She’s fine,’ Larrial said reassuringly. ‘Just what he likes.’
‘Okay.’
The man with the girl held his hand out. His face was fuzzed, but nonetheless Kervarl got the impression of bulk and malice. He dropped some coins into the waiting hand. It stayed there, open with the coins glinting in the light radiating out of the hotel’s grand high windows. Kervarl resisted the urge to sigh, and produced yet more money. The hand finally closed, and the girl was allowed to climb into the cab. She sat next to Kervarl.
Larrial ’pathed an order to the cab driver, and the mod-horse moved forward, back onto Walton Boulevard. ‘Couple of minutes to the palace from here. Perhaps a good time for your gift . . .’ He gestured at the girl.
‘Right.’ This was where it got slightly different to the deals he was used to at home. Kervarl prided himself that he was a man of the world, that he understood how things worked. After all, that was how he’d clawed his way up to his current status. This, however . . . He steeled himself against any doubts. This was the capital. Their rules. If you weren’t going to play by them, there was no point in being here.
He produced a small phial from his jacket pocket and offered it to the girl. Her eyes widened in delight and surprise. He could sense the greed in her thoughts.
‘Take it now,’ Larrial said. There was an edge to his voice.
‘Thank you, sir,’ the girl said. She removed the sealed lid with a practised twist and stuck the phial’s long neck into a nostril, inhaling deeply. Switched nostrils, inhaled once more.
‘I think there’s some left,’ Larrial said.
A sublime smile rose on the girl’s face. She inhaled again.
Kervarl watched anxiously as the narnik gripped her, for a moment it seemed she might swoon. She seemed barely conscious.
‘A much purer form than she’s used to, I expect,’ Larrial said, studying the girl’s lolling head. ‘She’ll thank us for that in the morning.’
Kervarl said nothing. He’d heard all the rumours about the First Officer.
Walton Boulevard led directly up to the Captain’s Palace. Kervarl tried not to be impressed, but the building was massive, like a whole town in one structure. An officer of the Palace Guard came over as the cab drew up outside the huge iron gates. He clearly knew Larrial and gave permission to enter.
The cab went through a two-storey archway in the façade, and into a courtyard. A footman in emerald and gold livery was waiting. He led them through another smaller archway, and out into the palace gardens.
‘Please refrain from using your ex-sight here, sir,’ the footman said in a deep, dignified voice.
The gardens were just as impressive as the palace itself. Long pathways webbed perfectly flat lawns. Topiary trees twice Kervarl’s height stood sentry along them. There were high hedges curving round secluded grottoes. Ponds with fountains were outlined by exotic blooms. Dozens of sweet scents mingled in the night air. Lanterns flickered gracefully, forming their own nebula. Kervarl hadn’t even known you could get oil that would burn in different coloured flames. The lights added the final touch, making the whole garden astonishingly beautiful.
He heard the sound of laughter as they walked. It seemed to be coming from one of the grottoes. There were the fainter rhythmic cries of sex. Cheering. Then came a yelp of pain. He focused on watching the stoned girl, making sure she didn’t stumble.
The footman led them into one of the grottoes, surrounded by an impenetrable rubybirch hedge. Smaller ornamental trees were inside, bark gnarled with age, and chosen for their night-blossom. Tiny pink and white petals snowed silently onto the spongy grass. Fountains played outside a pavilion of white cloth whose drapes fluttered softly in the warm breeze. Lamps inside made it glow with a golden hue, as if it were some kind of giant ethereal lantern. A harpist was playing.
The party inside was exclusive. Kervarl recognized Aothori, the First Officer. The Captain’s eldest son was in his thirties, though his exceptionally handsome face made him appear a lot younger. His fine features were framed by thick curly red-blond hair, with a neat goatee beard styled to emphasize the already-prominent cheekbones. A loose toga revealed a perfectly muscled torso as he lounged on a couch behind the table. Despite that strong physical presence, Kervarl could only think of him as dandyish. His friends around the table, from the highest echelons of Varlan’s aristocratic society, were equally youthful and vibrant. One couple in the corner of the pavilion were having sex on a mound of cushions, with several more standing over them, sipping wine as they watched. All the serving girls wore long skirts, but were naked from the waist up, and just as beautiful as the female guests. The two serving boys wore loincloths, their oiled skin glistening in the hazy lamplight.
All Kervarl’s inferiority came rushing back. He felt old, shabby, poor.
‘My dear chap,’ Aothori said. ‘Welcome.’
Some of the partygoers deigned to look at Kervarl, only to instantly dismiss him. That was when anger started to replace his timidity. Who the crud were they to look down on him? Aristos who’d inherited everything. Who accomplished nothing.
Larrial made the slightest sound in his throat.
Kervarl bowed. ‘Thank you for receiving me, sir.’
‘Not at all. The First Speaker speaks very highly of you.’ He turned to the beauty lounging next to him. ‘You see what I did there?’
She grinned indolently, then fixed Kervarl with an icy stare.
‘I brought you a token of my appreciation, sir.’ Kervarl applied his teekay to the girl’s back and pressed her forward, praying she wouldn’t trip over. Narnik-glazed eyes blinked heavily as she walked up to the table with its piles of ri
ch food. Once again, Kervarl wished he’d brought a prettier girl.
‘How generous of you,’ Aothori said. ‘I’m sure she’ll be most entertaining.’
All Kervarl heard was the First Officer’s mocking tone.
Aothori clicked his fingers. ‘Get her ready,’ he told one of the serving boys. The girl was led away, still in a narnik stupor.
‘Now, I understand you have some kind of commercial proposition for me?’ Aothori said.
A couple of the guests laughed at that. Over on the cushions, the sex was getting louder. Another man shrugged out of his toga and joined in.
‘Indeed, sir. I have lands in the Sansone mountains. I would like a licence to mine there. The Captain controls mineral rights across the planet; I understand you can sign a licence for my company.’
‘To mine what, exactly?’
‘Silver, sir.’
Aothori raised a perfectly manicured eyebrow. ‘I didn’t know there was silver there.’
‘My surveyors have found it, sir,’ Kervarl said proudly. He wanted to explain how difficult it had been, how expensive, how much effort had gone into the venture. The risk. But here in this ludicrously decadent setting his prepared speech was rendered utterly pointless. All he wanted now was the agreement, and to leave.
‘That’s very enterprising of you,’ Aothori murmured.
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘And why exactly should I grant you a licence?’
‘I would like to propose a joint venture.’
‘Ah. Delightful. And very smart. I can see you and I will get along wonderfully. What sort of percentage did you see me taking?’
Kervarl hoped he wasn’t sweating. This was crucial: get the figure wrong . . . The First Speaker had advised fifteen. ‘Seventeen and a half, sir.’ He cursed himself all the way to Uracus for being such a coward.
‘That’s a very generous offer,’ Aothori said. He poured some wine from a flagon and gave it to a serving girl. She carried it over to Kervarl.
Everyone round the table was waiting, watching. Several knowing, predatory smiles were growing. Over on the cushions the vigorous threesome were drowning out the sound of the harp.