‘That’s so noble,’ she said in admiration.
Arnice gave him a quick ironic smile as the bottle of Bascullé arrived. They toasted the day.
‘To Guidance.’
‘And Fulfilment.’
Slvasta would rather have had a decent beer, but sipped the champagne anyway, conceding to himself that it was actually rather nice. Sometimes he wondered if it was only his own prejudices which were holding him back.
‘Oh, look, the boats are setting out,’ Jaix said.
From the quayside, thousands of pyre boats were casting off, pushed out into the fast flow of water by teekay from teary relatives. They varied from large and expensive craft with high pyre platforms where those who were seeking Guidance waited on their comfortable beds, down to simple rafts with their owners sitting atop a pile of firewood.
Captain Philious stood at the front of the pavilion and waved graciously to the departing boats, smiling widely. The city’s harbour-master boats were trying to steer the irregular flotilla out away from the quays and slipways. There hadn’t been a blowback fire for over nine hundred years, and the city authorities were keen to keep that record going.
As the four of them sipped their champagne, the boats moved out and the current started to carry them downstream. Nonetheless, they maintained a loose formation, with few stragglers.
‘How many?’ Lanicia asked.
‘The mayor’s office estimated about seventeen thousand people,’ Arnice said. ‘They come in from eight counties, after all.’
Slvasta sent his ex-sight slipping over his pocketwatch. The Skylord was due in another three minutes. The sound of the waterside crowd waving and cheering was audible even on the balcony.
‘Do you think it will come?’ Jaix said.
‘The Watcher Guild reported five approaching,’ Slvasta said. ‘Their calculations are usually accurate.’
‘So how come they can never be as accurate about the eggs?’ Lanicia asked.
‘You’re talking about two very different objects to spot in space,’ Slvasta replied. ‘The Skylords are vast and glow. They are easy to see at night, especially with the large multi-mirror telescopes the guild uses at its primary observatories. But the eggs, now they’re as black as the space between the nebulas. The only way we can have any advanced warning is if they’re spotted transiting during the daytime, and for that you have to have keen eyes and get very lucky. Usually, we only get advance warning for about one Fall in five; otherwise all the guild sees is the descent contrail through the atmosphere – and we only get that if there aren’t too many clouds.’
‘I thought you couldn’t see space during the day,’ Lanicia said.
‘It’s the sun which is the problem,’ Slvasta said. ‘The Forest is directly between us and the sun. And you absolutely cannot look at the sun through a telescope; you’ll burn your eyes out in a fraction of a second.’
‘Then how do they see the eggs approaching?’
‘Filters and a giant screen,’ Slvasta said, remembering his trip to the guild’s Polulor Observatory. ‘The telescope is rigged to shine the magnified image of the Forest onto a giant screen, and I do mean giant. It’s a white wall probably half the size of this building.’
‘What did they look like, the trees?’ Lanicia asked.
‘Smudges, really,’ Slvasta admitted. ‘To me, anyway. A trained Guild observer interprets them a lot better. And they’re the people who detect the eggs falling from the Forest. I was told they’re like grains of sand, a fleck of darkness which shoots across the screen so fast that if you blink you miss it. That’s why they always have a minimum of five observers watching at all times.’
‘That’s fascinating,’ Lanicia said, staring at him over the top of her champagne glass. ‘I’d love to see the projection of the Forest.’
‘Ah, well, you’re in luck there,’ Arnice said cheerfully. ‘Slvasta can arrange a tour of an observatory for you; he has the authority.’
Which was utter crud, but Slvasta resisted glaring at Arnice. He didn’t mind the occasional blind date, but being set up like this . . .
‘It’s here,’ Jaix said quietly.
Like everyone on the balcony, the four of them stood up to watch. The first of the Skylords rose out of the north-eastern horizon. A vast ovoid of crystal sheets folded in amongst themselves in the most extraordinary warped geometry. Slivers of pastel light glimmered within the massive curving furrows, slithering and sliding about as if they were alive. Under Bienvenido’s dazzling sun they should have been washed out, yet they perversely maintained their intensity.
As always when one of the mighty creatures appeared, silence fell across the city as its true size became apparent. The leading edge of its giant shadow rippled across the land and river below as it blocked out more and more of the sky. Birds warbled in distress as they flapped frantically, trying to outrun the impossible umbra. Tufts of strato-cumulus were torn apart by the wind roaring out in all directions as the Skylord ploughed through the air.
Down amid the flotilla of pyre ships, those seeking Guidance sent their last ’path goodbyes to everyone watching from the city. Captain Philious raised both arms beatifically, wishing his subjects a successful Guidance, looking for all the world as if he personally had conjured the Skylord into existence. Before him, the would-be astral travellers crushed their little capsule of etire juice and swallowed the sickly fluid. Within seconds, the toxin had stopped their hearts. As their bodies died, they used teekay one last time to start whatever method of ignition was on board. Flames began to lick at the pyres as the Skylord swooped low overhead, as if the flames could help propel the departing souls upwards.
It took a particularly sensitive ex-sight to perceive souls as they departed their physical body. Slvasta had never even come close to sensing such a delicate essence. Today he didn’t have to. Today, those with the greatest ex-sight ability were standing along the city’s waterfront, minds open to share their gifted perception with everybody.
The souls began to glide up out of dying bodies; ephemeral spectres taking on the idealized form of the corpse they had just departed. No longer old and frail, bloated or withered. These were themselves as they best remembered, young and vibrant. Delight radiated outwards as they slipped fluidly through the growing flames and tendrils of smoke. Phantom hands were raised in farewell to those they once loved. In response, the cheering and shouts of encouragement from the shore grew ever louder.
The flames engulfing the flotilla of boats rose higher, becoming bright enough to be refracted from the vast crystalline sheets hanging above the river. More and more souls ascended into the Skylord, absorbed into its translucent mass, where they could journey safely – though Slvasta was sure he perceived several slip off the surface of the crystal, those the Skylord didn’t consider worthy. The unfulfilled – tragic souls whose lives had left them bitter or broken. They were left behind to make their own way across space to the Giu nebula, which was the entrance to the Heart of the Void.
Even so, he joined the cheering, applauding wildly as the souls streamed into the Skylord. So many were going; so many had reached fulfilment. He was genuinely proud of a world that provided so much opportunity despite the constant adversity of the Fallers.
Then the Skylord was moving on, slipping across Varlan’s rooftops towards the next city. Slvasta looked upwards as the massive bulk glided smoothly through the air above him. Weird bands of coloured light played across his face, and the air swirled energetically. There was a part of him that wanted to join the Skylord there and then, to be taken away to the Heart, circumventing the difficulties he knew he was going to face during his mortal life. His hand came up and saluted the alien angel. He wasn’t surprised to see tears glinting in Lanicia’s eyes, while sadness and longing oozed from her mind. She caught him looking and gave a modest little shrug as she hardened up her shell.
They ate a lunch of pasta and fish while the abandoned boats on the Colbal burnt in spectacular style, thousands o
f flaming hulls drifting downstream, pumping out clouds of lively sparks which swirled and twirled above the choppy water. The current was strong enough to carry them past the city boundary, and the river wide enough so they never came too close to the banks. By mid-afternoon the last flames had expired in puffs of dirty steam as one by one the scorched hulls were swallowed by the water.
They were just finishing dessert, a heavy walnut sponge coated in thick toffee syrup, when a batch of Arnice’s friends came in. Slvasta didn’t even have to use his ex-sight to see who was making their way up the club’s broad stairs. He heard them a long time before they reached the restaurant. Their braying voices carried through the club, full of sneering and self-confidence. Slvasta never did understand how someone as basically decent as Arnice could ever talk with such people, let alone actively seek out their company.
The three of them blundered into the restaurant and, as one, yelled greetings to Arnice, sauntering over, stealing spare chairs from other tables. Their breath smelt of narnik smoke and whisky.
Slvasta stayed for a tactful five minutes, then excused himself. Arnice barely noticed. As he headed down the stairs, Slvasta saw with some dismay that Jaix was laughing heartily at the anecdotes of the youthful aristocrats. She would make Arnice an excellent bride, he thought.
‘Are you really going?’ Lanicia ’pathed him.
‘Yes, ’fraid so.’
‘Wait.’ She appeared at the top of the stairs and hurried down towards him. ‘You weren’t going to leave me with them, were you? What kind of officer and gentleman does that?’
He grinned. ‘Sorry.’
‘Sometimes I wonder how we ever survive the Fallers. I thank Giu we still have men like you, to protect us.’
‘We all play our part.’
‘Ha.’ She rolled her eyes and made a remarkably obscene gesture towards the floor above. ‘They don’t.’
Slvasta began to re-evaluate Lanicia in an altogether more favourable light – and realized he was staring at her divine face again. ‘There are always ways round people like that.’
‘So what party are you going to tonight?’ she asked as they walked across the entrance hall.
‘I won’t be. I have some work to do. It’s a good time to catch up.’
‘Oh, Slvasta, that’s terrible. Everybody parties the night a Skylord arrives, from the stevedores up to the Captain himself. We deserve it. Don’t you think?’
‘It would be nice, but, like I said, someone has to remain vigilant.’
They reached the door, and the concierge clicked his fingers, calling a carriage from the waiting rank.
‘I will be attending the Kayllian family party tonight,’ she said as the carriage pulled by a black terrestrial horse drew up beside them. ‘But until then I shall probably take to my bed to rest. I keep a day villa on Fortland Street. Would you care to escort me there, captain?’
Given his pause could only have lasted a second, Slvasta was impressed with himself for just how many thoughts for and against ran through his mind. ‘I would be delighted at such a duty.’
*
As always, Slvasta woke at six o’clock, just before his alarm clock was set of go off. His teekay reached out and flicked the little toggle on the top of the clock so it wouldn’t ring the hemispherical copper bells. He was glad to find it there beside the bed; indeed he was glad to find he was in his own lodgings, for he couldn’t really recall much about travelling back here last night. He’d certainly taken a cab from Fortland Street, but he’d kept dozing off during the ride home. An afternoon in Lanicia’s bed was as exhausting as a week of Faller combat exercises. She’d been very keen to explore the potential for wickedness his strong teekay could accomplish, casting off her shell as fast as she did her clothes. And his missing arm certainly didn’t seem to bother her.
He lay there in bed as the usual sounds of the morning city washed over him, remembering their repeated couplings throughout the afternoon, some dreamy part of his mind wondering what life would be like if they were wed and every night was spent like that. He sighed ruefully at the impossible thought. By now he’d learned that his status condemned him to being nothing more than an audacious dalliance for girls of Lanicia’s upbringing, some spicy sexual shenanigans before her inevitable society wedding. Still, there were worse things, he decided. And Lanicia had seemed different to the normal debutantes – more independent, smarter, more curious about the world. Not so . . . pointless. He shook his head at such whimsy and went into the little bathroom.
Slvasta had lodgings in Number Seventeen Rigattra Terrace, a nice four-storey white stone building overlooking Malvine Square, in the centre of one of Varlan’s more affluent districts. A proper gentleman’s residence. The landlord (from an old metropolitan family) had been delighted to accept a bachelor officer, even though Slvasta was only from a county regiment. The rent alone was equal to his captain’s salary, but of course that was paid for by the regiment.
Water gurgled in the pipes as he turned on the brass tap; as always, he had to wait a minute for it to warm up. There was a communal boiler somewhere in the building, burning logs loaded by the landlord’s mod-dwarfs. Everybody in Number Seventeen had one or two of the mods as servants. The practice was so well established that the building actually incorporated their pens in the basement, with a separate warren of passages and little doors opening into all the residents’ rooms. But Slvasta, of course, refused to have any kind of mod in his lodgings and had bolted the little door from the inside as well as putting a heavy dresser in front of it.
He still had a couple of clean dress shirts in the wardrobe. The pile of dirty linen was getting unreasonably large again. Without mod-dwarfs cleaning the rooms and taking care of such things, he had to organize his own laundry service.
The last of the dawn river mist was drifting away as he left Number Seventeen. A team of civic council mod-dwarfs were busy in the street, extinguishing the flames in the street lamps, trimming the wicks and refilling the little reservoirs with pressed yalseed oil ready for the night. He nodded to their wrangler and made his way down Tandier Avenue to Rose’s Croissant Café. It was his first stop every morning. Inside, he joined the usual bunch of early risers, plus a few nightshift people on their way home. These were working people, and he felt comfortable around them. It had taken a while for the other regulars to grow accustomed to him, but he was now accepted as one of them.
Rose herself was serving this morning: a big woman in her eighties, wearing a floral-print dress. ‘Half my girls are late,’ she complained as she brought his orange and mango juice over. ‘Out partying last night, no doubt. So it might take a moment longer this morning, sorry.’
‘Guidance is worth celebrating,’ he assured her.
She gave his face a shrewd look. ‘And they weren’t alone,’ she decided. ‘I think someone had a nice time last night.’
‘I’ll have scrambled egg and smoked lofish on brown toast, Rose, please. With tea.’
‘She’s a lucky girl,’ Rose declared as she left.
Slvasta grinned and opened one of the news sheets Rose provided for her clientele. The rack beside the door held both official news gazettes and pamphlets from the smaller political parties. Rose had been nervous the first week he started visiting her café when she saw him reading through the pamphlets, most of which were critical of the National Council, or the Captain’s officials (never the Captain himself, which Slvasta found interesting). But he was interested in the genuine grievances that were raised in the pamphlets – the way cheap old housing was kept in such bad repair, the rising cost of food, the lack of jobs and the low wages among the poor, the slow but noticeable increase in people drifting to Varlan from various outlying provinces, particularly Rakwesh. And always the rumours of nests – though most of those were satirical attacks on suspicious ties between merchant families and councillors. Then there was Hilltop Eye, a relatively new pamphlet that always contained some highly embarrassing stories of the aristocracy and t
heir corrupt involvement with officials, or some family’s semi-legal financial affairs. Twice in recent months, the city sheriffs had tried to track down the ‘citizens’ collective’ that produced it – to no avail. Distribution was clever, with civic mod-dwarfs counter-ordered and given the pamphlets to take to cafés and pubs and theatres. Nobody knew who or what the citizens’ collective was, though the best rumour Slvasta had heard in the Regimental Council offices was that the Captain’s family was behind it, using public condemnation as an excuse for cracking down on families that didn’t pay their full taxes. The latest Hilltop Eye had arrived overnight while everyone was out partying (good tactics, Slvasta thought admiringly). Its main story was about the hundred-and-twenty-eight-year-old mayor of New Angeles, Livanious, who it seemed was diverting a lot of city funds into his own coffers to pay for outrageously decadent parties and keeping a seventeen-year-old mistress, Jubette, in a luxury villa on an offshore island – safely away from his (seventh) wife. Livanious, as everyone knew, was Captain Philious’s uncle.
So much for Hilltop Eye being produced by the Captain’s family, then, Slvasta thought cheerfully as he ate his scrambled eggs. There were quite a few people in the café chortling over the pamphlet as they had breakfast. It was a bold story to put into print, confirming what everyone ’path gossiped anyway. The problem the authorities had with Hilltop Eye was the way it encouraged other pamphlets to be equally audacious. Questions about the activities it reported were already being asked in several district councils. Nothing in the National Council yet. But if it carried on exposing theft and fraud like this, people would want to know just what Captain Philious was going to do about it. Probably a question the good Captain would be asking himself this fine morning.
*
Slvasta arrived at the Joint Regimental Council building just after eight o’clock. It was a monolithic stone building on Cantural Street, whose three lower floors were a maze of corridors leading to hundreds of small offices occupied by junior staff. Slvasta, at least, had an office on the fourth floor, with a broad arching window that gave him a view out into the central quad, with its fountain and topiary flameyews.