In the Council Chambers of Bar-Khos, the high glass windows had darkened with the blackness of night so that they hung like ominous portals over the assembly below, rattling with the strengthening gale outside. Oil lights had been lit in the great crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, bright and trembling. Directly beneath them, a pool of water sunken into the floor shimmered with the reflected faces of the gathered people, all of them turned towards the bald-headed priest in his robes of white silk, arms crossed within the warmth of his sleeves as he spoke.
The Peace Envoy for the Empire stood alone on the floor of the Bar-Khosian Council Chambers with a dreamy look in his eyes, as though he was intoxicated on something, or mildly concussed, or perhaps simply the kind of man who tended to look elsewhere when he talked, for he gazed over their heads even as his steady voice addressed the crowded, silent chamber, reciting his speech from memory. Something about peace and reconciliation at the reluctant point of a sword.
By the water’s edge, leaning on the ebony grip of his cane, Coya Zeziké stared down at the pool’s surface only half listening to what the Mannian priest was saying.
Coya was contemplating other things as he chewed absently on one of the hazii cakes he carried with him everywhere to relieve his pains. Thinking of his wife in fact, back on his home island of Minos. Reminded of her by the subtle aftertaste of hazii weed on his tongue, of all things.
Rechelle’s mouth had tasted of the herb the last time they had kissed, lying on her bed unable to rise from it, gazing up at him with her pretty features hollowed out with fatigue – his wife weakened dangerously by another late miscarriage.
Like a bringer of miracles, Rechelle had been the one to prescribe him the herb in the first place, releasing Coya almost instantly from a lifelong burden of physical agonies which had gradually been wearing him down to the point of immobility. Pains which hadn’t gone away, precisely, but were blunted enough that he could live with them while maintaining the momentum of his life. Rechelle swore by the effectiveness of hazii weed for all manner of ailments, from pain relief to melancholy to those rare cancerous tumours of the skin and organs. A natural herbalist like her mother, she cast the weed into honeyed cakes or as a refined oil, and used it to help her family, friends and neighbours alike with that same warmth of heart he had fallen so deeply in love with; a woman he would always revere, his life companion and lover. Thinking of Rechelle now made him miss her with an ache that overcame all his others.
Standing over his cane, Coya swallowed down the rest of the dry cake in his mouth, exhaling nosily through his nostrils while the Mannian priest’s voice droned somewhere just above the level of his thoughts.
Half a dozen steps away his bodyguard and lifelong protector glanced in Coya’s direction, checking to see that he was still alive. Marsh swayed on the balls of his feet, bored as Coya was.
It seemed as though the Peace Envoy would never stop talking. And the more he talked the hotter he was getting, despite the chillness of the air, so that now the priest dabbed at his brow with a handkerchief. Even the Michinè ministers, used to endless dreary pontificating, were beginning to cough and shift about in their growing restlessness.
Once more Coya drifted away from it all, buoyed on the soothing tide of the herb, thinking of Rechelle.
His wife had been warned about the risks of trying for another child, that she could lose her own life in the attempt. But she had tried anyway, and indeed she had nearly lost her life in the process, when miscarriage had caused internal bleeding that even now, weeks later, hadn’t entirely stopped. He should be at her bedside now back in Minos, reading her stories and tending to her needs, not here in these dank council chambers in the middle of a siege, risking his life again on yet another errand for the sake of the democras. What if Rechelle’s strength failed to recover and she faded away before he could return? How would he ever live with himself, with the grief and loss and guilt of such a thing?
He wouldn’t, he knew. Rechelle’s loss would be the end of him too.
Coya shivered, frowning unhappily. It was cold in this large hall used for banquets and the visits of important dignitaries, even with the several hearths roaring with fires. No doubt a result of all the naked stone walls absorbing the heat, typically Khosian in their austerity, a few hangings thrown up here and there to counter the sparseness of the place, a few rugs and curtains.
The rectangular pool was an ancient feature sunken into the floor. Around its edges grew copper-leaf creeper vines and bushy dwarf trees rooted in the cracks of the flagging, so that it resembled a little oasis of life within a vault of stone.
Not all oases are mirages, Coya recited obliquely, recalling a saying of the desert Alhazii.
At one end burbled a gentle, natural spring barely disturbing the surface, the famed Spring of Awakening. Before the revolution, this hall had been used for the crowning of the old kings of Khos. It was here that the newly endowed kings had imbibed of the waters in order to gain a state of enlightenment from their divine properties; a ridiculous tradition, Coya thought, considering the behaviour of the average Khosian king back then.
In those days, long after Khos had been settled, and the native Contrarè driven into what remained of the Windrush forest, the settlers themselves had seen the land they now lived on taken from them by force, by their own rulers. Open common lands that had been enclosed into vast estates in which they had been worked like cattle simply to survive. A system that had survived for so long it had become what was considered as normal.
Such hypocrisies in this world, he thought with a minute shake of his head, and he looked to the priest still spouting his nonsense to the gathered Michinè ministers. Steal a loaf of bread and you could have found yourself physically branded a thief; yet steal a people’s land and you were lauded as a king, a civilizer. Murder your neighbour and get strung up from the gallows; murder a dozen people, a hundred people, a hundred thousand people in the name of conquest, and your name became glorified in the history books.
The larger the crime, the more noble it seemed to become.
Coya smacked his lips together, glancing to the shallow waters near his feet. He was thirsty all of a sudden.
A few Michinè were watching him as he carefully bent down and dipped a hand into the surface of the pool. Expressions aghast, they looked on as he raised the holy spring waters to his lips and took a noisy slurp from them, washing down the last few crumbs in his mouth like some suddenly enlightened king of old.
The water tasted strangely bitter in his mouth.
Tasted like a lie.
*
‘I will say it again,’ echoed the voice of the priest through the long hall, finally piercing the space of Coya’s thoughts. Up on the podium, the white-robed Peace Envoy was at last approaching some kind of crescendo, some kind of point to his speech. ‘I will say it again, one last time, so you may remember these words when you formulate your reply. Should the people of Bar-Khos agree to open the city gates for the forces of the Holy Empire of Mann, and to accept our rightful reign, we swear to spare the lives of every man, woman and child.’
Coya grunted as he straightened over his cane; a young man carrying the burdens of the old, looking up from the water to stare hard at the imperial priest dictating threats to them in their own city.
It was just as he said it would be. The envoy trying to divide them with his words.
‘And if we do not surrender?’ called out Chonas, First Minister of Khos.
The envoy spread out his arms in a gesture of reasonableness.
‘Then when Bar-Khos falls, it will be on your own heads what happens to your people.’
Their voices rose like a surging tide even as hail hammered the windows along the northern wall. Chonas held up a hand to try and settle their protests. He stood with most of the Michinè Council behind him, or at least what was left of the Council, for some were missing, feigning illness while they were rumoured to have already fled the besieged city by ship.
‘You came here under flag of truce to tell us this?’ asked Chonas, raising his bushy eyebrows high.
‘I was sent here in the hope of speaking some sense into you, yes.’
More noisy protests sounded around the edges of the hall, where the rest of the gathering was comprised of citizens from the city Associations, those Khosian street societies which helped to keep the Council somewhat in check. Coya knew their presence here was a hard-won victory for the ordinary citizenry of Bar-Khos. It had taken a revolution and further decades of bitter struggle before they had gained a voice in the processes of power, a time in which the Michinè class had tried every possible means, including murder and subversion, to suppress their rise.
But now they were united, Michinè and Associations alike, in their hostility towards the lone priest standing in the centre of the floor, this supposed Envoy of Peace.
The Mannian was dabbing at his clammy bald head with his handkerchief again, looking flushed. But then he turned with everyone else, startled, towards a sudden commotion from the rear of the hall as someone flung open the double doors, injecting a rush of cold air along its length.
Behind it came the rap of hobnailed boots.
‘Surrender or die, is it?’ declared General Creed in his full armour and bearskin coat, striding past Coya’s position, reeking of the smoke and blood of the day’s action. ‘Your people made that same promise to us ten years ago. Yet here we are, still standing.’
‘Hear, hear,’ agreed Coya with a rap of his cane upon the stone floor, gladdened to see the Lord Protector making an appearance. Yet the Michinè only frowned to see him here.
Again the priest opened his arms wide in a magnanimous gesture. ‘That is hardly what I—’
‘Enough!’ Creed growled. ‘What more do we need to hear from this man? Why continue with this charade?’
‘Because we are not savages,’ replied one of the Michinè as he stepped forward into the light, and Coya recognized him as Pericules, the new Minister of Defence. A man barely qualified for the position, save that his ailing uncle had recently passed it on to him. ‘He has come here to discuss terms with us. The least we can do is engage with him on the issues at hand.’
‘Give me one good reason why?’ Creed asked, clearly as baffled as Coya.
‘I’ll give you fifty thousand good reasons. Encamped right now beyond the city’s northern wall, threatening to overrun us.’
‘Pah,’ spat Creed in disgust, casting that aside with a throw of his hand. ‘In this weather, in these temperatures, that army out there will already be unravelling at the edges. Diseases will be running rampant. Common illnesses from exposure and worsening morale. It’s all empty bravado and he knows it is. We need only hold on to our resolution here and they are finished. Why do you think they have sent someone to parley with us in the first place? Because they care about saving lives? Or because they worry that they’re facing defeat in the middle of a Khosian winter?’
‘They did not seem to be unravelling this morning, when I gazed upon them from the wall,’ said Pericules.
His words were not at all what Coya expected to hear from the Khosian Minister of Defence, particularly before a representative of their enemy. Perhaps it was only the man’s inexperience betraying his fears to them all, or the usual Michinè belligerence towards the Lord Protector himself for being a common man. But then Pericules spoke on, and what he said stunned Coya into stillness.
‘Come now. All of you. There is no one rushing to our aid here. We are alone in this. If we do not make these hard choices to save ourselves, who will?’
Enough!
In the flickering light of the hall Coya rapped the steel tip of his cane hard against the stone flagging, stunning the entire assembly into silence.
‘My dear Pericules,’ Coya said as smoothly as he was able. ‘You are hardly alone here. The rest of the Free Ports support you wholeheartedly in the defence of your island. Or have you forgotten the thousands of Volunteers now shoring up your city’s defences? Or the squadrons of skyships patrolling your skies? And all of those medicos and their supplies? And the League navy even now engaged with imperial forces off your shores, trying to keep your shipping lanes open? Need I go on?’
‘Yet still the enemy shells rain down on our northern districts,’ retorted Pericules, supposed Minister of Defence. ‘Still our defences could be overrun at any moment. What good will your words be to us then, Coya Zeziké? Can we even take the chance of annihilation if another option is available?’
He sounded desperate, almost babbling. General Creed was glaring at the man with a mixture of disgust and suspicion. He tore his gaze away to look around him, meeting Coya’s eyes at last across the width of the pool. Something of meaning passed between them.
They’ve bought him off somehow. The Empire has bought the new Minister of Defence to their side!
In his bearskin coat the Lord Protector took a step closer to Pericules. His voice was dangerously quiet for all that his eyes flashed with fury.
‘You really think it worth discussing, our surrender to the enemy?’
Pericules licked his lips while he glanced to his fellow Michinè.
‘I would hardly have expected such talk from our notable Minister of Defence, of all people.’
It was as though in that moment the whole gathering grew suspicious too. Coya felt the change in mood. Chonas and the other Michinè exchanged subtle glances of query, confusion, muted alarm. The people of the Associations muttered amongst themselves around the walls.
‘Bahn,’ announced the Lord Protector’s voice. ‘Open a window there, if you please.’
The chamber was deathly silent as a Red Guard lieutenant stepped out from the general’s entourage. The officer crossed the room to the nearest high window on the southern side, where he paused and looked about him a little uncertainly, then fetched a chair and brought it back to stand upon. He strained to tug open the window’s latch.
A stiff gust blew in against all their faces, bearing with it a few shots of hail that scattered across the floor like chipped diamonds.
It was a coincidence perhaps, or merely the fact they all held their breaths in the same instant of silence, that they heard just then the crash of a wave from far below the building, perched as it was on the heights of the city right on the edge of a sea cliff.
‘You wouldn’t dare!’ erupted Pericules as the general came for him across the floor. The Minister backed away, horrified, and when he ran out of floor he splashed into the knee-deep pool, falling in his robes before struggling to his feet again.
‘Help me!’ yelled the man as Creed jumped down into the pool and waded after him. But no one moved, only watched on in grim uncertainty.
‘Wait, no – gghrrrrk!’
Creed had seized him by the throat. Grimacing and bloodstained, he dragged the fellow from the water and marched him across the room straight for the open window. No one tried to stop him. Instead they looked on like a jury of the damned as the general roughly grabbed the smaller man, and with a great heave lifted him up over his head, defying his fifty-odd years.
‘No!’ screeched Pericules.
In a handful of steps, Creed ran at the open window and launched the Minister of Defence clear through it.
‘You have our answer, priest,’ he told the Mannian envoy, even as the screams fell away behind him.
For his own part the bald-headed envoy drew himself up to his full, considerable height, and stepped towards them. He was sweating profusely now, alarmingly so, like a waterbag stuck with holes. From the side, Coya noticed how unusually plump the fellow’s belly was beneath his white robe, as though he carried a cannonball inside him, or was rapidly filling up with gas. How had he not noticed that detail before?
The priest’s face seemed to have become a struggle for composure.
‘I can’t say I’m surprised,’ sounded his strained voice as he came nearer, and the man started scratching at the inner wrist of his left arm as though bitten by a flea.
Even as Coya watched on, Marsh stepped close to his side, alert and sensing trouble. The priest was scratching so hard now that bloody welts were forming on his skin.
What’s he doing there? Is he mad?
Marsh uttered a low growl, hand reaching for one of the pistols beneath his longcoat.
‘Look after that wife of yours,’ he remarked as he brushed past Coya in a hurry.
‘What’s that?’ uttered Coya like a fool, even as his bodyguard and lifelong companion charged for the envoy in quick animal bounds across the flagging.
Marsh took a desperate running leap, firing the pistol in his hand at the same time. The priest screamed, tilting his head backwards to release a blast of blue flame from his open throat, another erupting from his belly.
Together he and Marsh tumbled into the pool with flames engulfing them, a roaring fireball spilling across the water even as the priest violently exploded, showering everyone in roiling fire.