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Petersen had nearly had a heart attack when he’d found the reference; it had been pure serendipity, the universe providing to him above all others. There, in a crumbling journal belonging to his great-uncle, a missionary who’d spent his life in Peru, was an unambiguous reference to whitewood.
Trees tall, wood mst volatile. Sequoia? Natives say the flotation is natural, not a miracle, but I know the provenance of the Almighty when I see it.
Whitewood. Fucking whitewood. Everyone thought it had come from the Himalayas, and companies and governments were throwing gold at men who were willing to climb the treacherous mountains to seek out trees that grew above where any sane trees should, and against all sense exploded like bombs and bore far more than they weighed.
It was child’s play to get the Bay to finance an expedition; the rewards would be too great, if they could break the monopoly of the Great Plantation. Whitewood would rule the world, if there were only more of it to go around. Mr Emmanuel was excited; they’d had to pay through the nose for the meager scraps of it that helped shore up the mines, helped set up the floating barges that took people between Alaska and the lower states.
He told the others only once they were on the boat.
“I say,” said Simpson, who rather fancied himself a bit. “Are you sure it’s not a wild goose chase?”
“Where in Peru?” asked Ortego.
“In the mountains. A place called New Bethlehem.”
“Never heard of it.” Ortego looked pensive. “I used to know an India Company man, said to keep out of some parts of Peru. More things in heaven and earth, he said. Haunted by spirits that’d turn your hair white.”
“Don’t be a credulous fool,” said Petersen, and then a thought struck, horrible and beautiful all at once. “The whitewood plantation on the subcontinent is part owned by the Company.”
He watched as illumination dawned on the faces of his companions. How do you keep people away from a secret? Tell them it’s a haunted and dangerous secret. Yes; that was what they must have done. It was child’s play, and he’d worked out the rules of their game.
“Then it’s settled,” said Ortego. “If that’s what you want.”
“I’ve got seed-collecting gear. Nothing more sophisticated; we know the damn stuff strikes true from seed, so that’s all we need,” said Petersen, proud of himself, proud of his inferences and knowledge and the fact that he was going to fucking bankrupt the subcontinental plantations once he was done.
“We’re going to be rich,” said Simpson, softly. “Oh, how we’re going to be rich.”
_____________
Ortego knew someone in the foothills en route to their destination, because he’d been East India Company back when, and his contact had been a Company man until he’d been shot and his left shoulder wrecked where a bullet aimed for his heart had fucked up the rest of him instead. No one lived a quiet life, these days. Still, Ortego and Alvarez clutched each others’ forearms in greeting, and the dinner was surprisingly civilised; gin and tonic with their meals a sure reminder that Alvarez must have once worked in India.
“I am sorry to tell you, my friend, but you need to return to Azangaro and search elsewhere,” said Alvarez, after they’d all had enough of the bitter drink to coat the back of their teeth, to loosen their muscles and their tongues.
“Why?” asked Ortego. “It never stopped us before. The cinchona in these mountains is high-yield; you know that. A hybrid variety would be profitable.”
“Ah,” said Alvarez, “but all the land here belongs to an Englishman, and he doesn’t take kindly to trespassers. Especially not trespassers stealing plants. He’s something of a gardener.”
Petersen snorted. “A gardener,” he said. “Would this be for a certain pale kind of wood, friend?”
“Oh hell,” said Alvarez, stricken. “You’re planning to go to Bedlam.”
“Is that what the locals call it?” asked Ortego. “Like the hospital?”
Alvarez swallowed the rest of his drink in one swift, sharp draught. He rested the glass on the table, looking at the three of them with a wildness that hadn’t been there before.
“Turn back now,” said Alvarez. “If you take whitewood, you’ll be killed, or worse. And I’d rather not have more deaths on my conscience. Had enough of that in Java.”
“Your Englishman wants to keep his monopoly intact, then,” said Petersen.
“It’s not about monopoly,” said Alvarez. “Things in Bedlam aren’t like things here in the lowlands. You’re best to avoid it, in case you get swept up in it.” He steepled his fingers, and tapped the steeple to his lips. “It’s like -- fairies in England, or the Orang Pendek in Indonesia. In the high, rocky places of the world, things are different.”
Petersen laughed. “You don’t believe that, do you?”
Alvarez didn’t answer; he poured himself another drink, heavy on the gin.
“I can’t stop you,” he said, eventually. “But I won’t be the one who does. That place sits on sacred ground, and the Spanish aren’t the only ones with a history of putting heretics to death.”
“Enough ghost stories,” said Simpson. “There’s weird things in this world, certainly, but they’re all the product of people.”
“Either way you’re dead,” said Alvarez, flat.
“It looks like we’re going to have to travel up the river,” said Ortego, from where he was poring over Alvarez’s maps.
“There’s a regular salt barge,” said Alvarez. “They will take you, but they will not take responsibility for you.”
“That’s enough,” said Petersen. “We can take responsibility for ourselves.”
_____________
Aquila checked the pitcher he’d put the honeycomb into; yes, the honey had drained through the fine muslin fabric and the comb was ready to mix with oil to make a sweet-smelling liquid wax. As he worked, he mixed in a little of the sandalwood that Tremayne had left him into one of the small pots; this one was for Tremayne, and for the Old Priest, who didn’t like the smell of honey.
He wondered if someone would bring a spiced scent all the way from India for him, when it was his time. Perhaps.
Tremayne was up on Ivy’s roof when Aquila found him; there’d been an unseasonable hailstorm, which made the old people warn of bad things coming because the sky had thrown down ice as a warning. It meant that everyone who could help was shoring up roofs punched through by hail the size of fallen apples; Ivy was up there too, and she said something with her hands that made Tremayne laugh. They’d sent word to the monastery, but they’d said that the storm had passed beneath them, green-clouded and icy, and they’d warned of danger too.
The markayuq had gone in under the trees when the storm had passed over, except for the Old Priest, who had a home in the village. It was the kind of break with tradition that the people in the forest didn’t like, but Raphael was the sort of man who did what he liked, and damn all the rest. He’d explained to Aquila in his slow, gravel voice that there were so few of them, now, that they had less constraints, more freedom, as the world changed faster and faster. It seemed counter-intuitive, and Aquila said so, but Raphael shrugged and did not expand. To a mountain, Aquila thought, the pace the world was changing at must have looked like lightning flashing across the sky at night, illuminating everything weirdly, damaging where it touched down.
Raphael was a new kind of markayuq. Maybe Aquila would be the same, when the transformation came -- maybe there was something that this modern world gave them that hadn’t been given to their ancestors. The Old Priest was his name in the village; Raphael was for indoors, or for quiet walks with Tremayne and Aquila over the border, searching for plants for Tremayne to take back to his obsidian glasshouse, a ridiculous feat of engineering that had been only viable because his primary engineer had hands which would not be cut by sheets of thin volcanic glass, and who knew which rocks were safe to take, and which were alive and could not be touched.
As Tremayne and Ivy climbed down from the roof, little Carlos returned from the lowlands, running through the village like a wolverine determined on a kill. He sparkled with pollen, in his hair and on his eyelashes, caught in the weave of his clothing.
“Father Aquila,” he said, panting. “Father. There are men coming from Azangaro -- outsiders. They say that they are on an expedition to find cinchona.”
Tremayne laughed, and little Carlos whirled around. Little Carlos’s eyesight was greatly improved, but he still could not see from his left eye, which was milky with a cataract. His left side had always been weaker than his right, and it had shamed him even as late as two years ago, when Tremayne had returned. Aquila could still remember the boy’s face when Tremayne had rolled up his trouser leg to show a whitewood band, the same kind that Aquila had been trying to press on the boy for months beforehand. He wore it now, with pride.
“How times have changed,” said Tremayne, with a fond glance to the Old Priest, who had been supervising the roofing with the patience of stone.
“Yes, but--” said Carlos. “Mister Alvarez told them when they got to his farm that the land was all owned by a rich Englishman, and they just said that it was a long way from England. They’re coming here for whitewood.”
Tremayne crouched, so he was on Carlos’s level. “They won’t get any,” he said. “And they won’t tell other people. I’ll make sure of that. Raphael will make sure. The land and the mountain will make sure, too.”
The land and the mountain were their own people -- yes, Tremayne owned them in the sense that foreigners owned things, because that was how they could be left alone, but Aquila also knew that Tremayne understood that the mountain and the land were owned by no-one, because they were people, and one did not own people if one was a man of any honour. Tremayne reached and embraced little Carlos, an almost paternal gesture. Aquila wondered if he had wanted a son, but had never had one because of Bedlam.
“It will be all right,” he said, releasing the boy and standing, his front now dusted with tiny pinpricks of light.
The Old Priest had approached while the conversation was happening, with the eerie silence of the markayuq. He reached out a hand, quietly using the back of stone knuckles to brush the pollen from Tremayne’s cheek, where he must have pressed it comfortingly to Carlos’s hair. He always reached for Tremayne with closed hands.
Tremayne smiled at him, folding his fingers around that curve of stone, and Aquila led Carlos away, lest he disturb something too intimate, or too sacred.
_____________
Aquila went to the Stacks to meet the men and to trade salt and obsidian mirrors for flour and alcohol; he spoke the best English other than Big Carlos, who operated the pulley system to get people aloft, so couldn’t be the one to greet them.
Also, the people trusted their priests.
Tremayne had declined to be one of the first to meet them -- best, he said, if they heard from the villagers about the salt line, and not from some addled old foreigner. He had crossed the salt to check the mercury pans; they made the mirrors with the mercury from the graves, because the land needed to be rid of it and because people in the lowlands were vain enough to want to look at themselves in poison glass.
“How did you make those great glass pillars?” asked one of the men, as he led them across the gantries. His Spanish was heavily accented, but understandable. Aquila smiled in a manner that he hoped was serene.
“We did not,” said Aquila. “Come. You must meet the mountain.”
“Is that… a person?”
“Yes,” said Aquila. Of course these men didn’t know about mountains. He led them along the gantries and up to the salt line and the cemetery, to where the village was guarded and where people went for blessings. There was both a good view of the mountain, and a good number of people there to see the foreigners arrive.
“So,” said the party leader, an American man who looked at Aquila as if he was looking at a particularly clever animal. “Is there cinchona in the woods, or just those bloody great whatever those are?”
“Well,” said Aquila. “Depends what you think are bloody great whatevers, I suppose.” He walked lightly on the gantries, and the whitewood gave his step a spring, like walking on soft ground after rain. Tremayne and little Carlos had been right — they were foreign, and they wanted whitewood. How had they known? Merrick had said that he’d done all he could to make his countrymen believe that whitewood was a secret of the Himalayas.
Aquila wondered if they’d try to cross the salt, and what the Old Priest and Tremayne combined would do to them if they did. It wouldn’t even matter, waiting for the watching eyes in the woods, not when Bedlam had a mad Englishman and a markayuq who wouldn’t stay still to defend it.
Tremayne had returned first. Aquila had offered the church, but Tremayne had asked instead that they allow him to build a his own house, instead, with a thick double-layer of whitewood flooring that could bear the weight of someone many times heavier than a human man. Aquila would offer the church to the travellers, as was expected of him, and tonight he would sleep in that strong-boned house that Merrick had built and the Old Priest had returned to. The place was a demarcation line of its own — inside the treehouse, things were different. Aquila visited often.
“Those trees,” said the leader, Petersen, gesturing. “Those bloody great trees the size of a cathedral.”
Aquila gave their Quechua name, both wanting and not wanting to lie. It was a mistake — their eyes went golden and greedy, and he knew that they’d do what they could to get their hands on the wood, and they’d tell the world, and that, worse, they’d probably told the world where they were coming, so it wouldn’t be as easy as an accident in the highlands stopping others’ interest. When he’d gone to Rome, he’d seen just how valuable whitewood could be to people away from the mountains. He knew they’d kill to get it.
“They are not cinchona,” he said. He would not be the one to call their bluff.
“Fabulously interesting anyway,” said another of the men, and Aquila’s stomach tightened in something that was part-anticipation, and part-alarm.
_____________
The trees just beyond the salt border were enormous, needled like pine and as broad-based as the giant sequoias that grew back home. The village was connected by gantries that held more weight than they should. Petersen was practically salivating; Bedlam was full of whitewood. They’d found the grail.
“They’ve done well to keep this secret,” said Simpson, quietly, as the village priest led them forward. Unusually for trees of this size, the underbrush was fairly thick; vines hung from tree to tree like decorative bunting, and bushes filled in the thickness of the place. A burned line of salted grass and plants cut a firm border, and dotted in the jungle and on the plateau full of people there were huge stone statues, taller than men, dressed in human clothes. Aquila-the-guide stopped, and pointed at the dead vegetation as if it were a meaningful thing.
“See this line,” said Aquila. “The salt line? You must not cross it.”
“Or what?”
“Or you will be killed by the local Indians,” said Aquila.
“There’s...treaties and things.”
“Not with this group,” said Aquila. He pointed beyond. “And you must greet the mountain, or the locals will not talk with you.”
Petersen looked at the mountain, unable to tell if the smug-faced priest was having him on, testing the foreigners. Aquila smiled gently, not giving anything away. He gestured again. Petersen became aware of eyes on them from over by the statues; the human figures weren’t all made of stone.
“Hello, mountain,” said Simpson, with a bow and condescending grin.
“I’m not greeting a fucking mountain,” said Petersen.
“It is not a request,” said Aquila, as Ortego greeted the mountain. “There is an Englishman in the village -- he will explain to you.”
“An Englishman?” asked Simpson.
“There,” said Aquila, pointing.
The man was older, with sunshine-yellow hair tending to grey, and his sleeves rolled up so that a naval anchor was visible on his forearm. Probably not a pushover, then.
“Fucking fuck!” Simpson had practically frozen. “Fucking fuck, that’s Merrick Tremayne.”
Aquila looked at them with sharp interest -- he wasn’t as good at hiding his reactions as he perhaps thought he was. So Simpson had the name right.
“You know him?” asked Petersen.
“You don’t?” asked Ortego, and oh, now things were getting interesting. “I went on an expedition with him ten years ago to the Javanese highlands. When the guide turned on us and shot two of the party, Tremayne knocked him flat with a punch and then used some damn herb to staunch the bleeding so we could get the boys back to the town. He’s a legend in the plant trade.”
“He’s a cold-blooded snake is what he is,” said Simpson.
Said cold-blooded snake was currently lifting a child on his shoulders and laughing, following an ancient woman to a small cluster of statues. The child had one withered arm, and three fingers on their other arm, and the alleged cold-blooded snake held a pot of -- something -- for the child to dip a brush into and spread on the shoulders of the statue. The clothed shoulders of the enormous statue, which obediently raised its damn arm to get more of what had to be wax on its dark leather sleeve.
Petersen couldn’t stop himself. “What are those things?”
“People,” said Aquila, who damn well seemed to be enjoying himself. He called out, and the man set the child down into the woman’s care and then jogged over to them, easy and unfazed in the thin air of the mountains. “Tremayne, perhaps you can explain in English why Mr Petersen must greet the mountain.”
“Ah, that’s easy,” said Tremayne, in Spanish. He switched to English. “Mr Petersen, you must greet the mountain, or the locals will sacrifice you to it.”
Petersen stared him down. “Pull the other one.”
Tremayne showed every sign of ignoring Petersen. He put the little jar of wax away, and looked at the others in the party.
“Ortego!” said Tremayne, cheerfully turning back to Spanish. “Good lord, man, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.” He shook Ortego’s hand; he wasn’t wrong, Ortego had a rictus smile.
“I heard you were no longer working,” said Ortego.
“You’re right; I’m not,” said Tremayne. “I live here.”
Petersen felt a presence behind them, and turned to see one of the stone statues had moved. It was shorter than the others, and looked like it could punch a lion into submission, if it had need to.
“Petersen,” said Tremayne. “Aquila here is going to let you stay in the church tonight, but you must respect the beliefs of the people here or you will not survive this sojourn. The first is to greet the mountain. The second, never cross the salt. And the third is respect for the markayuq -- the stone people. If you don’t want to be tossed off the cliff to wash up on those lovely little glass shell beaches, you must make even a perfunctory effort.”
It wasn’t the mountain that made him do it; it was the dangerous look in Tremayne’s eyes, and the worried looks of his party. It was the feeling of all those eyes on him, and the stone statue that was somehow walking, silent as mist.
They’d need pinecones from the whitewood trees, and possibly cuttings; as much as they could for the best chance for survival and shooting, and they didn’t have time to check whether the seed would be viable.
“Hello, mountain,” said Petersen, feeling like a damn fool. “I hope you like sharing your secrets.”
________
“I do not like having these men in the church,” said Aquila, to Raphael. The markayuq had sat opposite at the kitchen table, and was drinking cacao -- another expensive gift from Tremayne, and Aquila wondered if Raphael even tasted it now that he was slow and changed.
Raphael used the knots instead of his voice. Let them cross the border.
“I do not want them polluting the forest,” Aquila replied. “Bad enough that there’s mercury there.”
Raphael laughed, a chuffing sound like the pleased noises of a jaguar. Aquila was not frightened of him. Sometimes he thought that he and Merrick were the only ones in the world who thought of Raphael like a person, not a saint. Outside these walls, he was the Old Priest. Inside, he was their friend.
“Once word gets out that there is whitewood in Bedlam, then it will all be over,” said Aquila. “Merrick can do what he likes, but he’ll never stop the poachers. Or the armies.”
“I would hope you’ve a little more faith in me than that,” said Merrick, from behind him. Raphael’s laugh was louder, this time, and Merrick leaned to kiss his cheek before helping himself to the cacao that was still warm on the stove.
“They seemed to know you,” said Aquila.
“I know Ortego. He was with me on a bad expedition -- we all nearly died. He was just a boy; probably the same age as you were when they sent you to Bedlam. I think I frightened him. Simpson is-- well, I always wanted to cultivate a reputation.”
“Do you have a plan, then?” asked Aquila. “Do you think they’ll cross the salt tonight?”
“I don’t think they will,” said Merrick. “I gave them a bottle of rum as a welcoming gift. The trip up here is exhausting, and combined with the altitude…” He mimed sleeping. “Although you’ll learn, young Aquila, that once you get old like me, everything makes you sleepy.”
“You should try that line on someone who will actually believe you, old man,” said Aquila.
“Can’t blame me for trying,” said Merrick.
Aquila joined them for Merrick’s nightly reading of a book -- this one was a new translation of the Odyssey into English, and Aquila didn’t get every word, but allowed Merrick’s voice to wash over him like a hot spring, the story familiar but new all at once, with men being turned to pigs for their behaviour, and lurkers in the deep. Eventually, they retired, Merrick offering a hand-patched quilt to Aquila, and a fine pollen lamp that he said he’d bartered with an old friend of his back in England, and Aquila was too tired to question why there’d been pollen in England.
Next morning, he was the first up. He said morning prayers, made a pot of coffee, and then, hearing movement outside, went to wake Merrick. It was perhaps indelicate, entering another man’s bedchamber, but Merrick had said that when they were in the sky monastery they were never alone, so perhaps he was used to it.
Asleep in the narrow bed, Merrick was curled around Raphael’s back, holding him in his arms. Aquila wondered if it was cold or uncomfortable, but if it was, Merrick didn’t say so when he was awakened; he just got up, stretched, and came to the kitchen.
“Thank you for waking us gently,” he said, with a somewhat wistful smile. “Make sure there’s someone there to do the same for you, won’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“The guards used to separate us,” he said, testing the coffee with his finger. “Ugh, this is barely warm.”
“Put it back on the stove, then,” said Aquila. “Why would they separate you?”
“Because if he freezes, then I might be trapped. I’ve told them I’m willing to sacrifice a hand, if that’s what happens, but I think they’re convinced I’m some altitude-sick foreigner.” He smiled, wry. “Eventually we learned that if I was the one to hold him, then we wouldn’t get woken up at some ungodly hour to make sure we weren’t accidentally stuck.”
“Oh,” said Aquila. He’d seen the statue of the doomed lovers, and heard the stories. A vow of chastity had seemed logical, but he’d also seen Raphael and Merrick. He poured himself another coffee, and wrapped his hands around it, feeling the warmth of the mug, and the hardness of the fired clay like a markayuq’s arm, sun-warmed and almost human.
________
“Right,” said Petersen, head a little foggy. It didn’t take much to get drunk at altitude, and the thin air made hangovers sting worse than usual. “We need to get some of the locals to tell us about growing conditions, and we’ll obviously need to go into the jungle to get samples.”
“That would mean crossing the salt,” said Simpson, who was much more subdued than he had been earlier in the trip.
“What, you believe in fairies and mountain men now?”
“I believe that if someone like Tremayne says not to fuck around, then you don’t fuck around,” said Simpson. “My brother was on an expedition with him. He came back...different.”
“And it was Tremayne’s fault? What did he do, hit him over the head until he got some brains?”
“No,” said Simpson. “He said there’d been an attack on the camp by some sort of blood sucking creatures. Tremayne used one of the party as bait and then killed the creature with his bare hands. Willie was always a bit funny after seeing that.”
“Pragmatic, I suppose,” said Petersen.
Tremayne was an annoying bastard, Petersen quickly discovered. He showed them the village in minute detail, from the carver’s workshop to the glass beach; he offered them some time in one of the hot springs, and said very seriously that if they needed cinchona, he’d fetch them cuttings. Which was infuriating, because they couldn’t very well say no, but then that meant that there was no reason to cross the salt in search of cinchona. Petersen was starting to get the sense that his bluff had been called.
They ate quinoa and some sort of leaves for lunch, and then Tremayne fetched a pair of pineapples, sweet-smelling and exotic. After the nutty, slightly soapy taste of the quinoa, the pineapples would go down a treat.
“I’m afraid there’s not much more to Bedlam than this,” said Tremayne, pulling a knife from his belt. “I’ll cross the salt this afternoon to fetch you your cuttings. They should last three weeks if you’re careful with them -- plenty of time to get to the lowlands. I used to be a cinchona trader myself, so I know what I’m looking for.”
“Would be quicker if we could just get them,” said Petersen.
Tremayne raised one greying eyebrow. “You said you weren’t experts in their care,” he replied. “It’s not respectful to kill cinchona cuttings just because you don’t know how to do it right.”
“It’s a tree; respect doesn’t figure.”
“Ah,” said Tremayne. “Perhaps I’ve been in the mountains too long.”
Tremayne cut the pineapple with an expert’s ease; the knife melted through the hard skin as if through the air. He split it into cheerful yellow chunks, the smell of sweet flesh and juice filling the small room.
“You won’t cross the salt,” said Tremayne, almost conversationally, as he wielded the knife. He had the grace of a big cat in repose; he seemed at ease, but under his loose manner was hard muscle, and an alertness that made something ancestral and small in Petersen’s chest want to flee him.
“You can’t stop me,” asked Petersen, more bravely than he felt. “Besides; you’re back and forth over the salt all the time.”
“It won’t be me who kills you if you venture over there,” said Tremayne, unbothered. “Pineapple?” He held out a slice stuck to the blade, the scent of the fruit almost cloying. “Petersen, how about you stop lying to me, and tell me what you really want. Because you need to understand that there’s some things that will be impossible for you to get, no matter how much you want them.”
“I want whitewood,” said Petersen. “I want whitewood, and then I won’t tell the world about your little Indian toy-town up here in the highlands.”
“This is not a negotiation,” said Tremayne, almost pityingly. “You can’t take whitewood. The blessed stuff won’t grow from cuttings, and the seeds aren’t ripe.” He took the slice of pineapple from the knife. “Besides, no-one here will let you. You know the stuff explodes, yes?”
“Why do you think we want it?” asked Simpson, looking longingly at the pineapple. Tremayne cut him some more slices with that wicked knife. It was the strangest threat Petersen had ever seen.
“Because money makes the world go round,” said Tremayne. He sounded tired. “Excuse me. Think on my cinchona offer, gentlemen. There’s still money to be made from it.”
“Are you seriously pitting cinchona against whitewood?”
“Better to be slightly less wealthy and living, than dead in a highland forest,” said Tremayne. “And you will be dead. I’ve seen men die from crossing the salt. My best friend was one of them.” He cocked his head, as if listening to something only he could hear. “Gentlemen, my apologies. I must go.”
________
The expedition crossed the salt at night, because no-one had told them about the effect of the pollen; Aquila had seen them waving their hands in it and admiring the trails left behind, like comet-tails. It was strangely beautiful, the stars wheeling overhead against the velvet backdrop of the sky, and down here, the pollen sparkling in return.
“That’s that, then,” said Merrick, from beside him.
He walked out into the pollen, over the salt, Raphael keeping pace with him in that odd way he walked -- swift as an avalanche, silent as mist. The sentries would come to stop them, soon, and if the village was lucky, a sky-boat would come, take the bodies far away.
Merrick stopped in the cemetery, and touched one of the gravestones, the pollen outlining him like a magic lantern show.
The arrows came from the trees, zipping through the pollen so fast they left straight lines, and a howl came from the undergrowth.
“Don’t kill them,” said Tremayne, in Quechua, audible even from where Aquila stood in the still air. “Don’t.”
Aquila didn’t think that this exhortation stemmed from any gentle sensibilities. He’d seen Tremayne close to killing before, when an amateur historian had tried to test how the markayuq “worked”.
The soldiers melted out of the night, their golden armour reflecting the pollen-light. Aquila held his breath -- he’d so rarely seen soldiers in his life, and they were magnificent as he remembered them.
“Thank you,” said Tremayne, as the trespassers were dragged forward. One of them was clutching a green pinecone, as if it would give forth seed. “We can’t kill them. I’m sorry.”
The soldiers looked at him, impassive as markayuq.
“If you kill them, people will come looking for them. There’s other ways to make sure no-one ever comes here.” Tremayne opened his palms to show a knotted quipu, and the Old Priest loomed behind him, strength in stone. One could always argue more elegantly with a saint in your corner.
He handed the string work over, and the guards clustered, gold-ringed fingers reaching out to read it. Aquila wondered what it was; he didn’t even know what it might say. This wasn’t what they’d talked about -- even after all these years, Merrick and Raphael were an enigma. Yet the guards stepped back, and there were noises of assent.
“Thank you,” said Tremayne, softly. “Believe us, this will help.”
The slumped bodies of the thieves had been carried out -- none too gently -- to the graveyard. They looked like they belonged below ground; loose, dead, unmoving. If Aquila didn’t know better, he’d have assumed they were corpses. A high, piercing whistle split the air, and a thick rope was lowered through the low-lying clouds, planks tied firmly into it to make a strong ladder.
“Aquila,” said Merrick. “You’re going to have to tell the others what happened. You’re going to have to explain why we didn’t kill them, and what will happen if the world outside discovers whitewood in Bedlam.”
“I know,” said Aquila. “You tell me my job, will you?”
Merrick laughed, and hugged him tightly, pressing their foreheads together, his hand like a vise on the back of Aquila’s neck.
“Take care, my friend,” he said. “I hope— I hope that what I do now will deflect suspicion for many years. I’ll be back soon.”
One of the soldiers held the base of the rope, as the three foreigners were hefted up onto the backs of others, and carried up into the clouds. Merrick was the last; he climbed the rope ladder himself, but as he got up only one or two rungs, he turned back, as if he knew a markayuq had moved up close to see him go. Rough stone hands anchored the ladder, steadied it so that it was safer to climb.
Merrick smiled in the soft light of pollen lamps, and leaned down from his perch on the ladder to kiss the Old Priest -- no, Raphael -- softly, tenderly. Aquila wanted to look away but he couldn’t.
“Don’t fuck it up,” Raphael rumbled, in English.
Merrick laughed. “I won’t, dear,” he replied. “Now tell me to come home safe.”
________
Petersen woke in an unfamiliar room, in an unfamiliar bed. It wasn’t uncomfortable -- it was just very clean, and very antiseptic. And it was not at all Peruvian. He felt the fuzz of altitude still at the edges of his perception; mouth dry, breathing just a little difficult.
A nurse bustled in, and smiled when she saw him.
“Ah, you’re awake!” she said, in Spanish.
“E-english?” he rasped.
“I’m sorry,” she said, in accented English. “You’re awake. That’s good.”
“What—?”
“You’re safe, sir,” she said. “You’ve had a terrible time—“
“We were just in the mountains--” he said. “In Peru. Peru?”
“Sir,” said the nurse. “There is no way you could have made it from the mountains of Peru to here. You’re in Orizaba.”
“Where?”
“Orizaba,” she said, kindly. “You were on the mountain. Altitude sickness, sir.”
It took a different nurse getting an almanac from one of the doctors to get the information to stick. Oriziba, which was emphatically not in Peru. Oriziba, which was in Mexico. They thought he was mad, and he thought he might be mad, too, until they rolled Simpson into his room in one of those big wicker invalid chairs, because he’d lost three toes to frostbite on the mountain that was thousands of miles away from the mountain that they’d climbed to find whitewood.
It wasn’t long before Tremayne showed up.
“You,” said Simpson, from the confines of his chair.
Tremayne didn’t reply, just stood in the doorway and watched them. A different nurse bustled past, only stopping to cheerfully pat Tremayne on the arm.
“Mr Tremayne,” she said, in swift Spanish. “You should be resting.”
“I’m fine, Gloria,” he replied. “I’m used to altitude.”
“Mr Tremayne is the one who found you,” said the nurse — Gloria — in English. She talked with her hands, which meant she was waving a small slip of paper as she spoke — a message, or telegram, most likely. “Good thing — if you hadn’t been found, you would have died of exposure.”
“Really,” said Simpson, with more venom that Petersen had ever heard from him. “And how did he come to find us?”
“Expedition for the Company,” said Tremayne. “We’re looking to set up a new whitewood plantation closer to the new world.” He looked at them consideringly. “It’s dangerous, scaling mountains without the right gear.”
Simpson raised from his chair. “You fucking—“
“There’s ladies here,” said Tremayne. “Gloria, you look like you have a message?”
“Oh!” she said. “There’s a gentleman arrived from Chicago for you. Shall I show him up?”
She didn’t get the chance. Mr Emmanuel had come, in a whitewood-framed dirigible, all the way from up north, and he wasn’t going to let a damn hospital rule stop him. He stalked in, and the others melted away, leaving Petersen sitting with Emmanuel. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling, being alone with this man and his waxed moustache and the disapproving set to his features. He had the same aura of leashed ferocity that Merrick had had.
“I thought,” Emmanuel said, “we paid for you to go to Peru.”
“You did,” said Petersen. Perhaps the altitude really had nearly killed him.
The waxed moustache twitched.“So what are you doing in Mexico? Were you that lost?”
“No-- I--”
What could he say? He cast around desperately, and saw his possible saviour on the bedside table — his seed pouch, nestled against a water jug and a rather sad flower in a bud vase. He fumbled for it.
His seed-pouch was heavy. Too heavy. He tipped it up, and a shining rill of glass shells tumbled onto the bedclothes in front of him.
“All right,” said Emmanuel, sitting back in his seat like this was his office, not some sickroom hundreds of miles from home. “I can see that the mission was too difficult. Tell me, did you fabricate the evidence of whitewood in the Andes?”
“I--” Petersen started, and then realised that no answer he gave would matter. Any answer would seem to be yes. “No. I didn’t.”
Emmanuel stared him down. “Is that really your answer?”
“Yes,” said Petersen, as the light played on the glass shells, casting little pools of blue and green onto the clean white quilt. “But.”
“But.”
Petersen breathed in a slow, deliberate breath. “But, upon reflection, I think that regardless of whether you believe me… under no circumstances should anyone go to the mountains near Bedlam.”
________
The village was quiet without Merrick.
“Stop moping,” said Inti. “They’ll bring him home safe.”
“I’m not moping,” said Aquila.
She looked meaningfully over his shoulder to someone standing behind him. “I wasn’t talking to you.”
The Old Priest had a quipu in his hands, and he handed it silently to Inti.
“Really,” she said, after a while of her hands moving quickly through the knots. “What a clever pair you are.”
And then Ivy ran to them, excited because the sun had hit the stacks just right to make the grey-scaled fish turn red and the water berries ripen, and all hands were needed to gather the food to make a feast. The world turned inside Bedlam, just as it did outside — little wonder the markayuq became so unanchored in time.
And then Merrick was back, like he’d never left. He would leave, Aquila knew. Sometime when Aquila’s hands began to look more dusty grey than golden, sometime when his eyes went clear and lost their hue. Sometime when the Old Priest was supplanted by the New Priest, and the turning world outside Bedlam would claim both he and Merrick both.
Merrick greeted the mountain and the markayuq, and kissed the stone lips of the Old Priest like he’d been born to the people in the clouds. He’d brought back presents for the children, and embroidery for Inti, who tutted at him but pressed him close anyway.
“It’s taken care of,” was all Merrick said about the matter, when pressed on it later. “You don’t have to worry.”
“I won’t, then,” said Aquila, and he meant it.