The Promise of the Child (64 page)

“Grab the damn reins, Lycaste!” Sotiris yelled, the barbed elbow of his suit scraping past Lycaste's own. He did as he was told, pressing himself as low as he could into the harsant's back. Sotiris stretched out a hand as they approached a lumbering tank, its guns swivelling in their direction. As they galloped past, the Amaranthine reached and snatched up one of the shocked little creatures that were climbing about on it, swinging him in an arc by the end of his helmet and depositing him roughly in the saddle facing Lycaste.

Lycaste stared at the creature and it stared back, huge blue eyes wide in its pale face.

“Vulgar!” Sotiris shouted, lifting his faceplate, “You will take this Melius into the city and to the House of Gellesh. You will
not
stop to engage Lacaille, you understand?”

The little head nodded, glancing uneasily back at Lycaste. “Yes, Amaranthine,” it squeaked in Unified, “the House of Gellesh.”

The harsant swerved again, the flames of the downed Voidship rumbling across their path. Sotiris took Lycaste suddenly by the arm. “You remember my instructions?”

He stared back into the Amaranthine's eyes for a moment. “I do, but I still don't understand why you won't come with us.”

“Just do as I say and all will be well,” Sotiris said, sliding down his faceplate. With one hand still on the reins, he pulled the harsant to a stop and dismounted quickly, slapping it hard on the rump with his gauntlet. As they raced through the smashed wreck of the guttering Voidship, Lycaste tried to look back, but Sotiris had already disappeared in the pall of smoke.

When they were through, Lycaste and the creature regarded each other dubiously, both ducking under a sudden volley of shots. The Vulgar glanced around and shook his head, muttering.

“You know where this house is?” Lycaste asked in First, taking in the intensely foreign look of the creature.

The Vulgar twisted in the saddle and unholstered a side arm, twining a length of the reins around one arm. “We have to get through the city first, Melius—just steer this thing while I shoot.”

Lycaste pulled on the reins, directing the stumbling harsant through another bank of smoke. Up ahead a pulverised section of the city walls, charred black and scattered with burning bodies, spilled out towards them. They climbed the huge blocks of smashed stone, clopping among stunned, half-dead Secondlings shuffling and coughing. When at last a wounded soldier thought to raise his weapon, Lycaste spurred the beast on, galloping up into the flaming city streets.

“What are you?” he asked as they cantered, dodging running troops and tents.

“Just
steer
!” The little man aimed and fired at a doorway, blowing it to splinters. “Through there!”

Lycaste yanked the reins and the harsant went smashing through the house, knocking furniture and screaming Secondlings out of the way. They emerged in an ash-settled back garden stacked with supplies, ploughing through the boxes of fruits and meats and on into the next house.

“Where—”

“Short cut!”

Another two houses later, they emerged into an empty street, sheets of ripped linen flapping around the pommel of the saddle. A group of Firstling soldiers in polished silver armour strung with long green standard capes rounded the corner, stopping when they saw the animal cantering towards them.

“
Jégeresső a Vulgáris, jégeresső azt Első!”
the little man shouted in High Second as they swept past. Lycaste looked back to see some of the Firstlings cheering.
Hail the Vulgar, hail the First.

The streets narrowed as they ascended, coiling in a corkscrew fashion up the cone-shaped hill of the citadel. The guns at the top fired in stuttering bursts, their voices louder as the harsant climbed higher, but Lycaste could also hear the shouts and screams from below, where the Jalanbulon had made their way into the city. Secondling citizens scrabbled across the streets before the harsant, clothed in whatever makeshift armour they could cobble together from pans and plates and pots. They yelped and scattered at the animal's approach, and Lycaste found he was enjoying himself despite his fear.

The thundering of monstrous engines came suddenly from above. Lycaste looked up into the raging evening clouds to see more of the elaborate Voidships screaming down upon the citadel. Bursts of repelling fire pulped the closest of them to a fireworks display of glowing cinders, the others banking away.

“Ha!” screamed the little man in First again, almost falling from the mount. “Not so easy!”

He swivelled to face Lycaste as they clattered through one last empty encampment of colourful tents and up to the gates of the mighty house. “What happens now? Who are we looking for?”

“Just get us in there,” he grunted, urging the beast up some stone steps to the gardens. He found that he'd become quite a proficient rider since leaving the forest with Sotiris, barely half a day earlier.

The Vulgar shrugged. “Very well—you'll have let me know who I'm allowed to shoot at, though.”

The harsant clambered, grumbling, over the lip of the garden wall and onto the sunken lawns surrounding the estate, now strewn with smouldering pieces of the Voidship that had dared to attack the house. A column of guns, each of their barrels longer than three Melius men, pointed to the darkening sky or looked out over the bridge. Some clearly exhausted Secondlings plated in old-looking cuirasses were loading shells and ducking as they fired. Two five-legged tanks painted a lurid orange were still waiting, un-crewed, at the edges of the path to the house. Lycaste led the harsant to the edge of the wall, the animal panting and coughing, so that he could look out while they remained hidden from the house. The bridge, far below, had been almost completely destroyed, with only one or two connecting paths of stone remaining between the craters and towers of rising smoke. Massed troops still swarmed upon it, bottlenecking at the crossings, their voices like the distant roar of a waterfall. He watched a few being picked off by snipers higher in the city and retaliating fire from below. Down at the ruined gates the battle raged amid the decimated carcass of the Voidship. Heaving crowds of Jalanbulon and Firstlings struggled and shot at each other, the First soldiers outnumbered and surrounded. Lycaste's eyes moved to the city streets where shots rang out among the white stone buildings, many already gutted by the fires. Some mounted Jalanbulon were cantering back down to the aid of their comrades at the gates; it would not be long before they had the city. Over the dark, misted jungle, the Voidships were massing again, the throaty rumble of their movements cutting a low bass note beneath the crack of shots and the boom of shells.

The Vulgar sat up in the saddle. “Quick now, Melius, they're coming back.”

“My name's Lycaste,” he growled, looking up to the grand house. “We'll have to leave the harsant here.”

“The what? Oh.” The little man seemed to consider dismounting on his own, finally turning and raising his arms impatiently.

Lycaste set him down, wiping his hands with mild disgust, then dismounted himself. He stood on tiptoe to look over the inner wall, taking in the Voidship stationed at the top of the building. “Around the side, there are some outhouses—probably a necessarium. We could get in there, couldn't we?”

The Vulgar shot him an inquisitive look, and Lycaste wondered once more what he was doing with such a strange little person. “A necess—?” the soldier began to ask.

“A place where you, you know …” Lycaste mimed a squat.

The Vulgar's eyes widened and he looked away. They were modest people, apparently. “Yes, yes, that's enough.” He sighed, pushing back his spiked helmet. “Come on, then.”

Lycaste kicked open the necessarium door, the Vulgar soldier sitting atop his shoulders with his rifle poised. The house kitchens were deserted and bare, with nothing but crumbs and empty sacks scattered across the vast oak tables. Long windows let in the last light of the falling dusk but were too high to see out of. He looked over to the three huge hearths, their fires still stoked and roaring.

“All right, Melius, let me down,” the Vulgar said, swinging his little legs.

“
Lycaste.
My name's Lycaste.”

“Yes, yes, Licasse, very good—let me down now.”

Lycaste grabbed the soldier by the foot and dangled him upside down. “What's my name?”

“Lycaste! Lycaste!” the Vulgar screamed, his helmet clattering to the floor.

“Good. And what do I call you?”

“Huerepo! Huerepo Morimiel Vuisse! At your service!”

“Pleased to meet you,” he grumbled, setting the soldier down.

“How dare you!” the Vulgar spluttered, sweeping his wiry hair back from his reddened face. “You wouldn't like it if I did that to you!”

Lycaste smiled as he investigated one of the larders quickly. He'd not eaten a thing since his dinner with Envoy the night before.

“I've done my job, you know. I got you here, like the Amaranthine asked. He didn't say anything about being dangled upside
bloody
down!”

“All right,” said Lycaste through a mouthful of starchfruit. He stared at the peculiar person—apparently from some unimaginable place beynapping from the silken fibres ofond the sky—marvelling for a moment at how poor both of them were at spoken First. “Do you know the inside of this place?”

“No, I don't. Why should I?” Huerepo slung his rifle across his shoulder and peeped over the edge of the table in search of his helmet. “Now, if it's all the same to you, I'll be on my way.”

Lycaste's ears twitched as he took another bite of the fruit. He grasped the Vulgar by the end of his rifle and hurled him into the larder, closing the wooden door behind them and covering the struggling little man's mouth.

Through the crack in the door he saw a Firstling dash into the kitchen and stare wildly about. His armour looked blackened and burned, his face bloodied. “There are tables!” he shouted in Second, grabbing the edge of one and pushing it further into the room until it slammed up against another.

“Here! Here!” yelled more voices, the thundering of their metal boots reaching the kitchen. Lycaste saw perhaps a dozen fully armed Firstlings and Secondlings swarm into the chamber, suddenly remembering the last time he'd been trapped in a cupboard. The soldiers rushed about, sweeping the sacks and crumbs from the surfaces of the oaken tables before dragging more of them together.

Others came in, their faces stained with filth and gore, their pinkish eyes haunted. They were hauling something that scraped along the flagstones. It was too low for Lycaste to see.

“Clear some space!” an authoritative voice shouted and the soldiers fanned out, exposing an armoured Firstling body being lifted onto the pushed-together tables. The body's cuirass had been bent and hammered by some huge impact, and Lycaste saw that pieces of it were embedded in the Firstling's torn-looking face.

Huerepo muttered something, struggling, and Lycaste reluctantly removed his hand.

“
Filago
,” the Vulgar whispered.

Lycaste didn't know the name, but he kept his mouth shut, watching a Thirdling fleshdoctor bending over the man and fiddling with shaky hands at the clasp of his case. The Firstling soldiers in the room paced and muttered, some glaring at the doctor. The Secondlings looked too numb and shocked to care. One turned to the larder, his yellow face expressionless, and began to try to open the door.

“Staunch!” the fleshdoctor announced as a spurt of blood splashed him in the face. “I need linen!”

The Secondling turned back and went to the table, blocking the bloody scene from view.

“We can't stay in here,” hissed Lycaste.

“Why not?” whispered Huerepo. “There's no way out.”

“There must be!” He looked around in the darkness of the larder.

A tall Secondling soldier clad in a huge banner cape, muddy and bloodstained around the hem, rattled into the doorway. He raised the visor of his plumed helm and stared in horror at the scene on the table.

A general who had been pacing up and down stopped to regard him. “Goniolimon?”

Lycaste pushed his eye to the gap again to see the man, his heart thumping. Goniolimon Berenzargol, Callistemon's father.

The Secondling came to his senses and looked round at the general. “Skylings, First Lord, in the grounds.”

The Melius on the table moaned as the fleshdoctor extracted another shard from his face, dropping it into a mixing bowl with a clink. The Firstling general glanced grimly at the high windows, taking Gonio-limon by the arm and leading him over to the larder door.

“Listen carefully,” he said in a whisper. “Take Protector Filago to the roof. There was a Vulgar galleon stationed up there—with any luck it may be there still.”

“What do I tell—”

“Here.” There came the rasp of metal on metal. Lycaste peered through the gap.

“It contains two hundred length of silk,” said the general, lifting a chain over his head and passing it to Goniolimon. At the end of the chain dangled an intricately wrought pendant. The Firstling checked over his shoulder and opened the complicated clasp for the Secondling to see.

“The Vulgar won't refuse you.”

“I won't flatter you by saying I'm disappointed, Reginald,” said Stone, looking up from his wine.

Bonneville stared into his eyes, his body very still. He could do nothing but picture how he looked to the Perennial. An eroded, antique memory of the little priest's house in Colwyn Bay flittered through his mind, rain battering the roof tiles.
This is what happens to boys who steal.

“You think you're the only one who tried to assist the Jalan?” Stone's eyes narrowed for a moment. “Elatine will bow to us even when he reaches the First.” He glanced at Elumo. “We did not imagine he would have such eager help, however.”

Elumo rose from his seat, not looking at Bonneville. He put the drink down. “You come to us with lies, Sire Bonneville, financing our enemies behind our backs.”