One day it will all be gone, this halfway world. Or what will not be gone will come with certificates from the Schools and wear a uniform with all the buttons done up right. But in this protracted twilight before the dawn of global Perfection, there persist these half measures. Of which the islands of the Galletes are surely the most spectacular.
Former Cohort-Broker Banders took a deep breath, finding the air pleasantly chill after months of muggy warmth on the Loruthi front.
“This,” she said, “is the way to travel. If I make Sage-Broker I’ll have one of these for my personal use. Scholarly retreat, you know?”
“And then when you’re Former Sage-Broker they can throw you off the edge of it,” the Butcher remarked. “Are you counting those or not?”
Banders looked down at the box of bandages. “Not,” she decided. “I mean, it’s full. You could maybe fit three more bandages in there all neat-like without squashing stuff. So how many’s it supposed to have, and it’s that-many-minus-maybe-three. Chief, relax.”
The Butcher turned his best piggy glare on her, but the waxy tint to the skin around those eyes robbed them of their power. He sat back and replaced the lid on the box he’d been going through.
“I mean they’ll have stuff when we get there,” Banders said. “And short of mutiny we’re not going to need them in the air.”
The words in the air had the intended effect of worsening his pallor.
“I know a man over at Confiscations who’s got a little box of bezoar specials,” she told him. “Box about yay big, sounded half full when he rattled it at me. Nothing for sky-sickness like bezoar specials.”
She had all the fun of watching him – master of all he surveyed most of the time – wrestling with his pride before saying, “If he’ll part with them for something within reason.”
“I shall go and extend the hand of Correct Exchange to him,” Banders said sweetly. “Or I would if I didn’t have to count all these bandages.”
“Get out,” he said, and she did.
They hadn’t set up the hospital, of course. No point and no room. A whole battalion covered almost the entire spare ground of the Gallete, as these things were known. Named after the people who’d built or found or repurposed them, and who probably hadn’t originally intended them for Pal troop transport. But that was army ingenuity for you. You found a use for anything the Inquirers hadn’t set fire to yet, and you used it until it got too hot to handle.
Like the hospital. Banders knew as well as anyone that, just because it had worked so far, didn’t mean the next Professor-Inquirer with big ideas wouldn’t shut it all down and excise any mention of the project from the records. But until then…
The rest of the department didn’t get their regular tents and haunts, but were crammed into one end of a big dorm tent along with a whole bunch of regulars. Banders, strolling in, almost ran into Tallifer storming out. The woman’s face looked fire at all concerned, pushing through a rabble of soldiers half in and half out of uniform. Who were wondering what had the old woman riled. And, because the old woman was also a foreigner and an Accessory, that might lead some of them to be over-bold in finding out. Banders helpfully took it on herself to announce loudly, “Time of the month!” Which should get sympathy from around a third of them, and not-wanting-to-know from the rest.
At the back of the tent, Lochiver was dancing a little jig about the beds. Alv, in contrast, was sitting on one of the bedrolls, splinting her own leg with only a little wincing. Banders dropped to one knee beside her and helped, holding the brace steady until the Divinati’s fingers – mostly healed now – had secured it.
“You are so the soft touch,” Banders said.
“I am paying my dues,” Alv replied.
“Nobody owes that capering turd anything,” Banders said. “Although this does mean he won’t be constantly on at me for pills so I guess I owe you one.”
Alv winced and her shoulders sagged, but probably that was just the pain of her newly broken leg.
Beyond her, sitting on his own mat and staring at the back of the tent, was Jack. “Oi oi,” Banders called to him. “Oi, Maric. Come get some air.”
“I’m fine thanks,” he said, sounding strained. “I’m fine right here. I’ll just be looking at this stretch of canvas.”
“Come take a walk,” she invited. “My treat.”
“No I – what does that even mean?” That at least had him twist around to look at her. She had seen less miserable corpses fished from rivers.
“You never said you were scared of flying.” She prodded him in the shoulder.
“I never flew before.”
“Look, come actually see. You’ll feel better.”
“I don’t want to…” His eyes ferreted around, hunted. “I don’t want to fall off,” he whispered.
“Jack, it’s, like, the size of a phalanstery and grounds out there. We won’t go near the edge, I promise.”
“But what if I… fall. Through? Just… down.”
“Through this?” She stamped, making him wince. “Jack, it’s solid rock. It’s like a hundred, two hundred feet of rock. Compared to boats this is safe as houses.”
“Well I don’t really like boats either, but at least you can try to swim.”
“Can you swim?” she asked him. It was just about universal with any Palleseen born to the Archipelago, but she understood most foreigners couldn’t. And indeed here was Jack, shaking his head, and she said, “Well then you may as well try to fly if you fall off. Come on, Jack. You know what we’ve not got, up here?”
“What’s that?”
“The war.”
He blinked, raised his eyebrows. “Fair point.”
“You won’t need the box,” she pointed out, when he started to shrug it on. And the jury was out, with the department, as to whether it did anything, or whether it was Jack himself, but all Banders knew was it creeped her out. “Alv’ll look after it, won’t you Alv.”
“I would be happy to,” the Divinati said. “I’m not going anywhere, after all.”
For a moment Jack looked guilty, then he looked guilty and sneaky, and he put the box back down. When he came with her out of the tent he was like a kid sneaking out on teacher. Banders grinned delightedly.
“Behold,” she told him. “Gallete Thema.”
“Goyetter?” was his best attempt at it. She tried to correct his pronunciation two or three times before admitting that, as a Pal, she was probably mangling it herself.
He shrank back from the nearest edge. “I like my landscapes with a bit more horizon.”
“Nah, just like being up a mountain.”
“I’ve never been up a mountain. I mean, we have mountains. Ilmar’s right up against some. But we don’t live up them, and part of that is because you can fall off.”
“I have stood right there.” She indicated the very skirt of rock before the open sky. “Looked down. Bloody rush like you wouldn’t believe.” And, seeing him about to bolt back inside the tent, “But we’re not doing that. Come have a stroll. You want a bezoar?”
“I don’t know. Do I?”
“Takes away the queasy,” she told him. “I need to get some for Ollery. You can have one for free if you keep me company.”
That obviously sounded good to him, and so they wove through the tight-knit mesh of tents and tables and crowded spaces, Forthright Battalion in transit, half still in its boxes. And, beyond the intricate tessellation of tents and tarpaulin-shrouded supply caches, the houses. Jack stopped when he saw them. Houses, slant-roofed, brick-built, set in a careful tiering of gardens. People, not in uniform but wearing long tunics and coats and flap-eared hats. They didn’t stare back, but tilled at their little plots and hunched their shoulders against the scrutiny. A hamlet, a whole village of them. Twenty, thirty extended families, a few hundred people. Here on an island that was coursing through the sky to the orders of the Palleseen.
“All right,” Jack said evenly. “And they are?”
“Galletes,” she told him. “Also, Accessories like you. All happy parts of the Sway, right? These are their islands. They let us use them.”
He shot her a look. “Let you, is it?”
“Oh, what? They get to keep doing what they do, and they get to be useful. Better than the alternative, right?”
She didn’t like his look, which suggested the alternative was to be left alone entirely, or that the Palleseen Sway not exist. “Are you judging me, Jack? No bezoars for judgy people.” And, when he didn’t smile. “Oh, don’t be like that.” Remembering, belatedly, that his card had said something about revolution back where he came from. “Look, you’re here, they’re here, I’m here, we’re all making the best of it, right.”
His eyes dropped. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”
“Right I’m right,” she agreed, and put an arm about his shoulders. “Look, we went through something, back there, didn’t we? You, me and Masty?”
“We did that,” he agreed weakly.
“We deserve a break.”
“That would be nice.”
“Come on, let’s get the Butcher’s special in, and then we’ll see what there is to do on this rock.”
*
The promised box of bezoars procured, raided for Jack and then delivered, she tracked down Masty and recruited him too. He fussed a bit about having things to do, but in truth there was a limit to how many times you could take inventory before it drove you mad.
“You,” Banders told him, “have earned a good time.”
He gave her a look. “Do you have any idea what that sounds like?”
She smirked. “You already set me straight on that one year before last, Masty. Like me as a friend, I remember. Like a sister to you, was it? Like a dear auntie who looks after your best interests.”
“I mean my sister used to pull my hair,” Masty said, with a somewhat hollow smile she was about to take him up on, except Jack had a weird look now as well.
“What?”
“In Ilmar,” he told her, “We say Auntie – piutarma, you know – for someone who runs a gang. Like a criminal boss. I was just thinking, you’d make a good one.”
That was worth a good laugh, and the good laugh covered over the bad feeling that talking about Masty’s family probably hadn’t been the best idea. Given he’d been snatched by the army when he was, like, seven or something, and just maybe he’d had the treat of seeing his blood relatives shot right before that. All water under the bridge but there were a few memories left, no doubt.
“Let’s get bladdered,” she said.
“Uncle’s rules,” Masty countered. “It’s a dry camp. Doesn’t want anyone walking home the long way after one too many.”
“Ah fuck,” Banders said. “Also, like hell it’s a dry camp. Give me three questions and five minutes and I’ll find out who’s got a barrel under their bunk.” But that did mean that getting properly lathered and then playing Awkward Questions with the new boy wasn’t going to happen. She could find them a decent nip of something to take the edge off, but too much of a risk to get thoroughly insensible and end up on a charge.
“Who,” Jack demanded, as she changed direction impulsively and dragged them through the camp, “is Uncle?”
“Higher Orders,” Masty explained, the pair of them hurrying to keep up. “Specifically, Sage-Monitor Runkel. Which is perfect, really. Because ‘Uncle’ was always Pal soldier’s cant for whoever’s in charge, but then he came along and the name just clicked.”
“That’s the general?”
“I mean, that’s what you savages’d call it,” Banders allowed. “The man in charge of the Battalion, anyway. He must be chewing his lips off right now.”
“I don’t even know what you mean by that,” Jack complained. “I thought the point of Pel was that it made everything clear.”
“Yeah, so did my teachers at the orphanage,” Banders agreed cheerily. “I mean, he got a bloody nose back there. He’d have wanted to stick around long enough to push back, just to salve his permanent record. Instead of which he’s stuck on this island heading who knows where, off to support who knows who. And the Lor business is where the big medals will get handed out. Whoever’s boots get onto Loruthi soil first is guaranteed a professorship back home. This overseas business is just garnish and starters.”
“Less intense?” Jack asked. “Less work for us?”
Banders and Masty exchanged looks. “Yeah,” she said. “You hold onto that thought. Let it keep you warm at night. Time enough for reality when we get wherever, right?”
Then her ears had picked up a raucous cheer from somewhere across the sea of tents. And, if it wasn’t actually a drunken revelry, it was at least someone having a good time. She diverted again and they jostled into a crowd of soldiers in their shirtsleeves, sitting and standing and sneaking the occasional contraband flask about. Because someone was doing a play.
Plays were, of course, permitted. So long as the text was authorised by Correct Appreciation as being properly educational and informative, and supportive of the ideals of Perfection. There were various mass-printed booklets distributed by the Schools. Those who wrote them and censored them and handed them out did so in the strict understanding that they were wholesome, moral scripts that could serve as an antidote to foreign strangeness and turpitude.
And then, the soldiers got hold of them, and actually put on a play. It was, Banders considered, one of the great artistic forms. Not drama per se, but the way that a properly motivated pack of troopers could take that philosophy and make it a thing of filth, innuendo and ripe humour without changing one word. Gesture, inflection, impromptu costuming and some fairly risqué business turned the most well-meaning instructional parable into a spectacular piece of ribaldry. She loved it.
Masty was at least chuckling along, because he’d been with the army long enough to get all the jokes. And a chuckle was all you ever got from Masty. Jack just sat there blankly, occasionally asking questions like, “Why’s that one got a carrot?” or “Was that supposed to happen, where she fell over?”
And then, “I can’t even understand what that one’s saying. He’s just saying, ‘hooley-hooley-hailey’ all the time.”
Banders opened her mouth to explain and then her brain caught up and beat the words back hurriedly. “Oh it’s, um, you wouldn’t get it.”
Jack glanced around. “I mean everyone else gets it.”
Banders looked to Masty for help but he was avoiding her gaze.
“I mean it’s…” Banders tugged at her collar. “He’s, er, pretending to be, you know… Maric.”
“He’s… what?”
“Maric, okay. His character is supposed to be a Maric. I mean I’d have thought you could tell from all the baggy clothes he’s wearing.”
“We don’t – that’s not how people dress where I come from. Did you – that wasn’t what I was wearing, when you first saw me.”
She shrugged. “I mean, a bit.”
“And I don’t sound like that.”
“I mean, you do sound like that.”
“What, hooley-hooley-hailey?”
“I mean, a bit.” She shrugged. “Look, you speak decent Pel but still… I mean I like it. It’s kind of weird and exotic. But it does make it hard to know what you’re saying sometimes.”
He shared out his stock of aggrieved looks between her and the stage, where the cod-Maric was trading a purse of money for a wooden fish. “What the… what is even happening now?”
Hoping he meant the play rather than life in general she said, “Well, they’ve told him that this is a magic fish and he’s desperate to get it off them, so he gives them all his money, because…” And again, belatedly, her brain intervened and she petered off into, “You know.”
Jack gave her the sort of reproachful look she usually only got from teachers and superior officers. “Well, I don’t know.”
“Because…” She squirmed. “Marics are, er,” and as though if she mumbled it quickly then it wouldn’t count, “greedy and gullible.”
He stared.
“Look, it’s just a play. It’s meant to be funny. Everyone’s laughing.”
He stared, not laughing.
“I bet you have loads of jokes you make about Palleseen.”
He stared, and she had a profoundly uncomfortable moment where she could see what she’d just said from his perspective. The man who’d been taken up for resisting in an occupied city, amongst other and less comprehensible crimes. Probably not the jokiest place, where he came from. Probably they saved their breath for curses, where the Pals were concerned.
“Look,” she said, working towards anger and simultaneously knowing that it wasn’t her who should be angry – which just made her angrier. And she got angry quickly, and calmed down quickly, and had learned at cost that other people didn’t just put things behind them and move on the way she did. She’d lost friends that way, and right now she was going head-to-head with Jack. And he was a foreigner and they were surrounded by soldiers.
“It’s fine,” he said. “This is the way things are now. I just… forgot. Because…” Because he’d been within the hothouse confines of the hospital department, where things weren’t quite army standard. And Banders examined the fine head of anger she’d been about to vent, and let it go like poisoned dust sifting between her fingers.
“I’m sorry. This is a crap play. Let’s—”
“I’m fine,” he said, sounding more like he meant it. “Come on, I want to see how it ends.”
“You haven’t followed a moment of it, have you?”
“I mean, no, not as such. But I want to see that it ends. I don’t want to go to bed tonight and have nightmares about this nonsense still going on.”
It was, she had to admit, a fantastically graceful climbdown, and one he probably shouldn’t have had to make. But, like he said, it was the way things were. He had a place, and however unjust that was, it was something he needed to remember. Or else he’d be getting himself arrested a second time and how daft would that be?
He laughed, right at the end, when the nasal-voiced superior officer’s breeches fell down when he was giving his triumphal speech. Some things, Banders decided, were universal.
When the play was done, there was an enterprising quartermaster’s clerk frying heavily spiced strips of meat on a griddle, and they ate them off sticks. Not Pal cuisine, but a Shen custom the army had picked up and run with because you could basically do it anywhere you had a fire.
“You eat so much meat,” Jack said. Not a complaint, given how he was wolfing it down, but apparently Maric cuisine was heavy on the veg.
“And cook it to death,” Masty added, tucking in with similar gusto. “There was a soup, at the Battalion command dinner. I was serving for Prassel. Crunchy fried soup. I swear.”
They ate, and wandered, and found a star-shaped piste where some of the officers were sparring, some formal contest they’d organised for their own entertainment. Companions and Fellows, mostly Correct Conduct but with a few from the other schools. It struck Banders as a weirdly antique thing, the sort of practice that the next batch of revisions from the Commission of Ends and Means might do away with. Officers didn’t need to be good with a sword, after all. Good with orders and, if it came to it, maybe good with a baton. The days of armies clashing blades were long gone, and those of single combat between champions had probably never existed. Yet here was an echo of all that fool’s business at the very heart of the army, as a succession of the erudite and authoritarian stripped down to their shirts to prod each other with blunted blades.
They watched a little. Banders had a good eye for form, and won more than the cost of the meat skewers. It wasn’t as entertaining as the play, though, and they were about to head off when Prassel stepped up.
“Oh, now,” Banders murmured. “Hold on, this might be something.”
Their commanding officer jammed the end of her sword in the earth to re-secure her hair in its tight bun, her face without expression. A lean man was waiting at the other end of the piste, rolling one shoulder and then the other, but just as Prassel reclaimed her weapon, someone new stepped up. Maserley, having a brief word with her opponent, then taking his place. The demonist stripped off his jacket and handed it over to his succubus. As sweet a piece of poisoned meat as anyone ever dangled, that one. A thoroughly non-regulation adornment to the man’s uniform, but Maserley was a law unto himself, like most conjurers. The trade bred a certain attitude.
The adjutant called out the count and they squared off against one another. The crowd had hushed. The enmity between the pair was known across the battalion and everyone loved a grudge match. Especially this one, because both of them were a bit beyond the pale. The necromancer and the demonist, purveyors of suspect goods.
Prassel struck first and almost had him. Maserley backpedalled halfway to the end of the piste, then recovered, capturing the initiative somehow and driving her off. They were fighting to the compass, as the tradition went, circling round each other, launching into a new exchange each time they aligned with an axis of the star, circling again when the aggressor was pushed back to the centre. A ritual combat designed to be performed in the round.
Banders spotted quickly that Maserley was cheating. Cheating in a way that probably only another demonist could have called him on, which left him in sole charge of the field because there wasn’t another in the battalion. Something was up with his sword, though. She wished she had Alv here, because Divinati eyes could see all sorts of goblins invisible to regular sight. She glanced at her companions, and they were both frowning a little.
It was Jack who said, “He’s bound something into his sword, do you think?”
“You ever hear of that?” Banders asked.
“Old Allor stories,” he said. “They put demons in everything back in the day.”
“I guess back then it was worth it. Got you a long way, a demon sword. Nowadays, what’s the point?”
“Cheating,” Masty said.
Maserley’s sword, hand, arm and the rest of him were all moving with a jumpy unpredictability, as though each one had a separate fighter directing it. He had Prassel on the hop for three points of the star, forcing her into a tight, defensive game each time he attacked. There was sweat on his brow, but he was grinning. Less a fighter and more an owner of gladiators watching his champion get some exercise.
Prassel stayed calm, though. No sweat there. Banders wasn’t sure that the woman even could. And why the Fellow-Inquirer had decided to make this skill her practice, or whether she just had some innate and out of character gift for it, who knew? But Banders had seen the woman on the piste before, and Prassel was good. Disciplined, economic, her sword whickering through the air, cutting the world into neatly manageable segments so that none of Maserley’s ventures got within three inches of her, foxing him in the bind so that abruptly she had the inside line and he was giving ground again. Her face was devoid of expression. Yet she gave and gave again, each axis of the star Maserley’s to command, hers only to defend.
Until.
Banders saw it before it happened, the shift in her stance. The scholar who has learned all she needs to know. And the next time they circled to an axis Prassel stepped forwards a very precise distance and prodded Maserley in the chest, almost gently, his own blade kept out of the way by the angle of her strike. She stepped back, fell into readiness with the cynicism of someone who knew her opponent would strike before she was ready if he could get away with it.
Maserley took it in his stride, nodded to acknowledge the hit, stepped back and then went back in.
She did it again, the exact same step in, the prod to the chest, as though they were walking through what had happened before so as to understand the exchange.
Maserley’s nod, this time, had a bit of the snarl to it. They reset. When they clashed again he stepped out from the lunge he expected, stepped back in to retake the initiative. Except Prassel had just stood still, saving her lunge for his advance. This time her sword bent against his chest with the force of his step and he hissed and stumbled sideways.
There was a little cheering. Three strikes was the win. Then there was a great deal more cheering, albeit localised to Banders and Masty and maybe Jack a bit, too. And then considerably less because Maserley had looked over at them, and there was the promise of fire and demons in his glower. Suddenly having the malign attention of the battalion’s only demonist didn’t seem such a grand idea.
Prassel had already shrugged her jacket on, receiving the compliments of a couple of her peers as though she hadn’t wanted them and didn’t have anywhere to put them.
“I suppose,” Banders speculated, as they walked away, “you can put all the demons you want into a sword. Doesn’t mean they know crap about fencing.”
*
It was getting dark by then, and Banders rubbed her hands together and cast about to see where the lights of the Gallete village were. “Time to dip our wicks, I reckon.”
“What now?” Jack asked.
“What?” Banders raised her eyebrows. “I mean I know you weren’t getting any in the camp, Jack. Mother Semp said you hadn’t even used her services when you were with her.”
“I… you… what?” he demanded. “Are you talking about—”
“She means—” Masty started, and Jack hastily waved him to silence.
“I know what she means, thank you. I mean… what?”
Banders frowned. “I mean it’s something you Marics do, right? You don’t, what, lay eggs or poop out sex bees or something?”
“I, we, yes, we… sex bees? Is that a thing?”
Banders shrugged. “Dunno. Might be. Somewhere. Look, it’s simple. There are way too many soldiers on this rock, and suddenly they’re not fighting anyone, so it’s basically nature.”
“Are you saying this island is a flying brothel?” Jack demanded.
“Not just that,” Banders said. “But, look, there’s always some house where a bunch of nice-looking Galletes are very keen to take some army pay in return for… services.” And despite the dark she could see his expression. “Or, you know, you could probably have a nasty-looking Gallete if you asked. Damn, Jack, are you judging again? Look, nobody rounds them up and marches them out there at baton-point. It’s free money for an hour lying down. Or five minutes, depending on the caller.” He was still staring, and obviously Banders didn’t know what would happen if there was some Gallete village that didn’t fancy its youngsters putting out for the army. Probably nothing good.
“Look, it’s just…” she said. “I mean, it’s not as though I’ve got…” Because sometimes there was someone in the battalion, for a little while, until the inevitable falling out. “I’m not defending myself to you, Maric. You can hooley-hooley-hailey at me all you want.”
For a moment she thought that was it. Bridges burned and one more person who had finally got sick of Former Cohort-Broker Banders. Then he laughed. Not exactly a happy laugh. Desperation and horror and despair somehow getting together and making the sound between them. But a laugh even so and she was powerfully glad of it.
“Look,” he said, “I can’t.”
“I mean you can watch, but you still have to pay.”
“No, I mean. It’s forbidden.”
She considered that. “I mean, technically, by very strict army rules, probably yes. But that’s the kind of regulation that only marches on paper, if you know what I mean—”
“No, I mean. I can’t. I’m a priest. I’m forbidden.”
She actually stopped dead so that Masty walked into the back of her. “What, never?”
“I mean it wouldn’t be much of a forbiddance if it was only every third day or something.”
“Wait, look, when you got brought in you were pretty clear you weren’t actually a priest any more,” she pointed out.
He looked as though he felt this was a fine time for her to demonstrate a perfect memory for detail. “Yes, all right, technically that is the case, but…”
“Come get the sanctity rubbed off,” she offered. “Come lose your theological cherry. Show Higher Orders you’ve cast off the shackles of outdated superstition.” She registered the expression, the inward way he was holding himself. “I’m sorry, Jack. I’m not making fun. Talk to me.”
He was very obviously not going to, and then Masty put a hand on his arm and that seemed to communicate that he was amongst friends far more than anything Banders could say.
“It’s just, all my life I was a priest. And it was forbidden. And I thought that, after I stopped being a priest. Then it would be different. But then I… I went to… there was someone who… and. Couldn’t, basically. Because it was still forbidden. In here.” A finger to his head. “Sorry. You go on.”
Banders opened and closed her mouth. “You poor son of a bitch. Religion really does screw you up, huh? One more reason to bring the Perfection.”
“There is literally a two-thousand-page book on proper conduct between the sexes,” Masty observed.
“Right, well, maybe some things don’t need to be perfected just yet,” Banders admitted, and then three large men turned up out of the night and said, “Accessory Maric Jack? You’re under arrest.”
Jack looked almost relieved. “Ah. Well. Right. Yes. I was expecting this.”
“You can’t arrest him,” Banders told them. “He already got arrested.” And as she herself had multiple infractions on her permanent record that wasn’t much of an argument. “What for, though? He’s been with us all day. He’s not had the chance to do anything arrestable yet.”
“Murder,” said one of the big men, and then all three of them were bundling the unresisting Jack off while she and Masty just stared.