Vespera Read online

  He looked out across the field of ruins, the sea now half-obscured by hummocks and jagged fragments of walls, bare ribs rising up in the ghosts of domes. He’d worked out why everything was a hemisphere eventually. It was the heat – hemispherical buildings had the smallest possible surface area, so lost less heat, though they’d adjusted a little by making the walls straight up to about the height of a man, giving the streets a slightly normal appearance. Not entirely normal, because they’d been covered by canopies of the same clear material the Tuonetar used for their windows and their greenhouses, there was a chunk of it on the floor down there.

  It seemed to be ice, treated to make it stable and transparent, though heavens only knew how that was possible.

  ‘Even after what they did? Can you forgive that?’ Massilio asked, taking the bridle of Odeinath’s horse as it seemed about to move off.

  ‘I suppose it’s easy for me, after all this time,’ Odeinath said. It had been the Selerian Alastre of three centuries ago they sacked, not his beloved Vespera.

  ‘Easy to forgive a historical atrocity,’ Massilio said, ‘but more difficult for one that actually affects you. You didn’t know the people killed during the Tuonetar sack.’ Was the man needling him?

  ‘As you said, no crime is so terrible it merits sending people here. Or creating this wasteland in the first place.’ It took two tries, but Odeinath managed to pull himself back onto his horse, and they moved on.

  ‘But the storms have gone,’ Massilio said, ‘and the north begins to flourish again. Maybe in two, three hundred years someone will rediscover how the Tuonetar built these cities, and we’ll be able to live under domes again. Would you rather live in Lamorra than here?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Odeinath said, trying to imagine what the city would have been like in its heyday, to transform the wasteland of thin earth and parched brown grass into a cityscape of domes and canopies and domed greenhouses, tens of thousands of people and a vibrant civilization under the northern stars.

  Why had they been here in the first place? Who had they been? Were they too exiles from the warmer south, or had they chosen to live in the arctic? That last thought was incomprehensible, but then he was a Thetian, and three voyages to the north in one lifetime was three too many as far as his health was concerned.

  ‘My people,’ Massilio said, ‘are trying to bring something of this back to the north. We have our own purposes, but it serves us to help those like Besach who look at the barbarity around them and dream of something more.’

  ‘And where are your people based?’ Odeinath asked, pulling his telescope out of the bag and scanning the field, wondering what there was to see. So much of it, and it wouldn’t be fair on the crew to spend too long here.

  ‘You would be wise to leave this line of inquiry,’ Massilio said. ‘We have enemies, and not the strength to stand up to them should they attack in full force. We are suspicious of those who ask too many questions.’

  ‘Then you’re closed-minded,’ Odeinath said.

  ‘We protect our secrecy.’

  ‘Secrecy has a way of creating more secrecy,’ Odeinath said, ‘until everything becomes a secret, and you live in perpetual fear of discovery. I’m no stranger to intelligence and its shadow-world, but I don’t like it.’

  ‘You speak from personal experience, I would guess.’

  Personal experience? Five of his crew had left because of it, lured by the world of secrets and spies and games in the shadows. One had been Raphael, of all his protégés the one who’d been closest to a son, aside from perhaps Cassini. It had been hard, saving the young man from one darkness only to watch him drawn into another, until in the end his past had proved too strong.

  At least the young man who had left the Navigator had had enough humanity, enough of his own spirit and his own strength, for Odeinath to be hopeful. He’d only discovered afterwards how dark Silvanos was.

  ‘Leave us to our ways, and we will leave you to yours,’ Massilio said, as they turned inland towards an area of ruins which had survived to above head-height, perhaps because they were sturdier and harder to destroy. ‘If you and your crew wished to join us, you would be well received,’ he said suddenly.

  Odeinath looked at him with astonishment – what was the man suggesting? That Navigator and her people join his order, whatever it was?

  ‘We are all outcasts, in our own way,’ Massilio said, with even a trace of warmth in his voice now. ‘You seem to like the company of those who don’t fit elsewhere, and your crew are talented, from what I’ve heard and seen.’

  ‘Is that a uniform?’ Odeinath asked, pointing at Massilio’s black tunic with its odd cut, now half-concealed under a long split coat trimmed with grey fur.

  ‘Yes, it is. Of a sort.’

  ‘Many of my crew fled to avoid that,’ Odeinath said, and saw Massilio’s face close in again.

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Thank you for your offer,’ said Odeinath. It was touching, in its way, and he sensed it was a genuine offer of whatever, in Massilio’s mind, passed for friendship.

  ‘It was only a thought,’ Massilio said, offhandedly. ‘I would advise you, however, not to linger too long in Lamorra.’

  Odeinath pulled his horse to a stop, clumsily, and it whinnied in protest. ‘Whyever not?’

  ‘We have . . . allies passing through here soon, with no love for Thetians. Like many northerners. I wouldn’t like to see you and your crew captured by them. They are . . . not kind, even by the standards of the north. If I were you, I would head south again, southeast best of all. Since you wouldn’t take my offer, this warning is the best thing I can do for you.’

  Odeinath stared at Massilio for a moment, searching for traces of deception or anything else in the other man’s face.

  ‘Your warning is taken,’ he said finally. ‘What is too long?’

  ‘Three, four days would leave you ample time. I’ll make sure Besach provisions you with whatever Lamorra can afford, as a gift. Now, if we take this next opening on our right, you’ll see something quite impressive.’

  Unwilling to pursue this any further, Odeinath said nothing as they tied their horses outside the opening in what must once have been the largest dome in the city, and through the remnants of a passageway between two other hummocks, into the interior. They came out into a wide circle, overgrown here and there, with what might once have been a tribunal on the far side.

  ‘What was this?’

  ‘It was their place of assembly, when they still had citizenship and elections. It’s not much to see, there must have been a stunning one in Eridan once, but it’s the best-preserved one out here.’

  Odeinath’s eyes widened. ‘Eridan? You’ve been to Eridan?’ Aran Cthun the Thetians had named it, transforming the relatively innocuous name of the Tuonetar capital into a place of fear, at least in the minds of those who heard the name. Perhaps it was only a matter of pronunciation.

  ‘There’s nothing left,’ Massilio said. ‘Only ice and ash and ghosts.’

  He walked away, around the edge of the circle, and Odeinath stared after him for a moment before reaching for his sketchbook. So much to examine, so little time.

  They spent three days in Lamorra, trading with people from across the island, dining with Besach and talking late into the night every evening. They didn’t get called decadent southerners too many times, not after Tilao had demonstrated that he could comfortably outdrink Lamorra’s best and still be up earlier the next morning. It was not somewhere Odeinath would ever have felt at home, and for all Besach’s reforming pretensions the hand of war, and the crushing greyness of the north, lay heavily on it. But he was doing his best, and on the second day accompanied Odeinath and Massilio round the ruins, asking questions about anything and everything.

  Besach showed them his library, terribly proud of the fifty or so books he owned, more than the rest of the island put together, and Odeinath didn’t laugh as so many others might have done who’d seen the library of
the Museion in Vespera, millions of volumes stretching back over the centuries, the largest collection of books and scrolls on Aquasilva. Besach had taught himself to read as a child, scorned by his family and only protected by his rank from the viciousness other children showed to anyone in the slightest bit different.

  Massilio made no more mention of the threat, but they were resupplied by Besach with the food of Lamorra, fresh vegetables and water from glacial streams. Odeinath returned to the ruins, to sketch what he could while Cassini wandered around the fields and the beach collecting northern plants, much to the puzzlement and sometimes disdain of the farmers. Daena mended a few bones and treated people where she could, which was probably appreciated more than anything else they did. She was incomparably better than anyone the Lamorrans would have seen before, and some even thought her a miracle-worker. A label that could too easily turn sour, applied to a woman.

  Besach himself came to see them off on their last day. He was accompanied by Ambiorix, Massilio and a crowd of warriors who clearly felt that if Navigator warranted a send-off by the Prince himself they should be there. Ambiorix kept them at a safe distance, thankfully.

  Odeinath had decided on that first day that Besach deserved a better gift than simply a Mons Ferratan dagger, but it had taken him until now to decide what, exactly, to take from the Navigator’s treasured library that could be replaced. He had to ask the crew’s permission for that, as several of them were voracious readers.

  One was an almanac based on Bostra’s Geography, updated not too cack-handedly only a decade or two ago by someone who could actually write, and another an encyclopedia of the kind the Museion scholars were obsessed with at the moment, though their ideas of cataloguing all knowledge were bound to come to nothing.

  The third was the Thesserey, because Besach didn’t have a copy, and had never heard of Ethelos, first and greatest of poets in any language. It was a Thetian edition, because there were no translations of it into Ralentic, but Massilio should be able to help him.

  ‘Everyone should read it,’ Odeinath said, almost embarrassed by the warmth of Besach’s thanks. ‘No-one really knows who Ethelos was, though everyone claims him. But even if he was a Tehaman, he inspired so many Thetian authors that he’s just as much a Thetian.’

  And because it was one of the most beautiful works of art ever produced by anyone, anywhere.

  He also told both Massilio and Besach that if, for any reason, they ever left the north, they would be welcome to join the Navigator’s crew, and meant it. Perhaps there were enough embers of a soul inside Massilio for someone to fan into life, or maybe Odeinath and Massilio were both too old for that.

  Then they said goodbye, leaving behind the strange ship he was sure had something to do with Massilio’s people, and sailed off to the south-east until Lamorra was below the horizon.

  Then, taking advantage of an hour of sun and a relatively calm sea, he hove-to, told the ship’s crew what Massilio had said, and asked them a question.

  Half a glass later, Navigator turned and began a long turn that would take her round Lamorra and onto a course heading north-west towards Thure.

  PART II

  A CLAMOUR OF FURIES

  CHAPTER VII

  The Exiles’ Sanctuary in Vespera, where Aesonia was staying, lay south of Triton, anchored in the clear water of Sanctuary Harbour in the shadow of the Hall of the Ocean.

  Raphael took a boat there the following morning from the Embassy’s water-gate, dispensing with any pretence of anonymity for now. There were messengers, Exiles, functionaries going back and forth between the Embassy and the Sanctuary all the time, and he shared a boat with two Exile acolytes and a clerk clutching a sheaf of papers, probably arrangements for the upcoming masked ball. The Ulithi staff had been thrown into frenzied chaos on discovering they had less than a week to organise a ball, and, with only three more days to go, the sense of urgency was mounting.

  Raphael ignored the fidgeting official and watched the City slide past on either side, his mind largely preoccupied by the coming visit to Aesonia. He needed her to believe in his loyalty, particularly if he were to be fishing in dangerous waters. And she was the key to this, he was sure, the one who’d shaped the Empire’s political direction as her husband and son concentrated on warfare.

  This part of the City, the north-eastern edge of the Marmora around Naiad Hill, was the heart of clan territory, where the palaces were most thickly clustered by the water’s edge, cooled by the prevailing easterly winds down the valley. Dozens of arched bridges spanned the Processional Way down here, connecting higher clan palaces to their boathouses at the water’s edge. The palaces stood resplendent in the late morning sunshine, banners in a hundred colours, proud seats of the clans of Vespera which had withstood the centuries, and Raphael felt a brief stab of envy.

  The Thalassarchs didn’t have to dance attendance on an Emperor for favours, and even caught in the complex webs of tradition and intrigue which wove the City together, they had an independence of thought and action only the Merchant Lords of Taneth could match. And, particularly since the Anarchy, an openness to new blood. It worried the Empire, just how many of the Vesperan clans were led by men and women who’d worked their way up from nowhere, and were little inclined to surrender their lives’ work to the Empire’s benign authority.

  Particularly given that, if the Empire were to establish control over Vespera, the City would immediately become the capital, and the clans would have to deal with a resident authority they’d have no way to control.

  Of course the Emperor wanted Vespera. Valentine saw it as part of his birthright, the question was how quickly he’d make his move. This visit was a first step, an attempt to win hearts and minds, but did it mask a deeper plan?

  They were rounding the Hall of the Ocean now, acclaimed for centuries as the greatest building in Vespera, perhaps in the world, the great blue-green dome on its peninsula, its supporting arcades seeming to rise directly out of the sea. A structure so enormous and awe-inspiring it beggared description, and a magical place inside, but not one that brought calm to Raphael today.

  He would come here before Valentine left Vespera to truly appreciate it, to trace the patterns of the ancient compass rose on its floor and see the inside bathed in a strange blue-golden light from the dome and the alabaster windows. The last achievement of the dying Republic – the original Republic, not Ruthelo Azrian’s short-lived revival – for all that it bore the first Emperor’s name above every entrance.

  He watched it without really seeing as the boat turned down a thin canal cutting across the neck of the peninsula, under the bridges and past the semicircular docking basins for boats and barges, their striped mooring poles faded and peeling. The Council had almost no use for the Hall, a venue fit only for the largest and most splendid occasions.

  Then they came out on the far side and the rambling, half-living Sanctuary anchored in the harbour. It was the only building in Vespera not made of stone, built instead of treated hardwood and a substance very close to manta polyp which stood up to centuries in salt water.

  It reminded him of Sarthes, the enormous abbey which dwarfed the Vesperan Sanctuary, a floating city with its strange polyp and wood buildings, its soaring spires, its network of corridors and cloisters which stretched down below sea-level. The same materials, the same rough plan, the same odd, slightly alien Exile architecture which had developed over the centuries. The windows were pairs or rows of slender, pointed arches utterly unlike the rounded arches of the rest of Thetia, the doors likewise on a larger scale. Thin, delicate spires rose from the Sanctuary itself, a ring of twelve of them round the central dome.

  Laughter echoed out over the water, abruptly cut off, and he saw a group of young acolytes, no more than fourteen or fifteen, being shephered across the wooden pontoon bridge from the mainland under the stern eye of a novice mistress. The bridge had been there so long it was almost a permanent structure, carrying pipes and aether conduits in its structu
re from Vespera’s grid, its timbers bleached by the sun.

  The boat came in to dock by a landing stage close to the Sanctuary, and was forced to wait a moment or two until another had pulled away. The two acolytes scrambled out and walked briskly off in one direction, the clerk in another, and Raphael was left standing on the hardened polyp deck-slabs, wondering where to go.

  He headed into the nearest doorway, a round structure off one side of the Sanctuary, and stopped.

  He’d never expected the perfect round pool of seawater linked to the sea by a channel, or the thin, geometrically interwoven arches of the double annular colonnade surrounding it, painted white and rippled by the reflection of the sun on the pool. A steady stream of people were passing through, gazing into the water or throwing offerings into it, but without the silence Raphael associated with temples. Instead, they were talking quietly, even as they paid their respects to the Goddess. It seemed a desecration of this place with its sparse but incredible beauty.

  ‘The lower gallery is silent,’ said a soft voice behind him, as he waited on the steps into the Temple proper, unwilling to leave this place to find Aesonia. ‘And so is this one, at night.’

  He swung round, wondering how in heavens’ name anyone had got that close without his hearing them – and stopped, feeling even more unsettled than he had a moment before.

  ‘Do I know you?’ Raphael said. There was something very familiar about the priestess who stood there, poised and collected in dark sea-green robes. Something in the face, the fall of her classically Exile coppery hair.

  ‘I thought you were a master intelligencer,’ she said, with a grave smile. ‘I’d expect you of all people to have a better memory.’