Chapter Text
Cliopher Mdang stood at the rail of the ship, watching the grey loom of the clouds clustering up above the pale silver line of the horizon. The evening was closing in, the shadows smoothing out the thick ocean swell into a series of dark bars against the soft evening light.
“We’ll sight land tomorrow morning,” said Captain Kzoku, stepping up beside him, “or possibly afternoon.”
It was far from the first time that Cliopher had been carried long distances on a velio vessel, but this was the first time that he had been the honoured passenger, not a crew member, and he was determined to be polite. “I am glad to hear it,” he said, therefore, and did not point out that that bank of clouds had the shape that suggested they were being formed by warm damp air rising as the ocean breeze carried it over land, nor that he was certain that the prevailing wind would not shift in the night - not this far out, though the coastal breezes were another matter. The harbour at Izharou should certainly be visible at sunrise.
“What are your plans? We would be glad to host you on board the Grey Gull while we shift cargo, if needed, but she must sail again within the twoday.”
“Thank you, but there is no need,” said Cliopher, recognising the extent of this concession. Half a dozen couriers, as many guards, plus his miscellaneous collection of pages and secretaries would most definitely be in the way on a merchant ship through a rapid restocking. “We are expected in Solaara.”
“Hands to the wheel, eh?” said Kzoku, brightening up, and surprised Cliopher with a clap on the back. Cliopher recovered his balance, his smile, and his willingness to dine at the captain’s table in time to satisfy his social dues, then turned back to the wind and the waves.
He hoped they were expected in Solaara. The strange twists of time and magic that had beset the world of Zunidh since the Fall of Astandalas had been preying on his mind. Time had passed, certainly, since they left the mire of mud and militarism around the town of Littleridge - now unwillingly a crux-point on the border of the realms of several of the world’s most powerful aristocrats, and suffering for it - and Cliopher was not, quite, able to say how many days it had been. Enough for him to plough through all of the boxes of notes that he and his assistants had taken through many weary days of negotiation, and to pull them together into a report. Enough for the secretaries to draft their own sections too, and to rigorously comb through and comment on one another’s, and for Cliopher to check every reference.
It was barely an hour since Cliopher had re-read the final version of his preamble, the great sketch of the future of the world that he had glimpsed in that moment when the weapons were first lowered, when the princes shifted down from threatening to haggling, when, heart-in-mouth, he realised that they were, en masse, still children of Astandalas, and that he could offer them legitimacy in the person of their last Emperor, now Lord Magus of Zunidh.
Cliopher hoped that the Emperor - his Radiancy - would not be offended at this interpretation of his wish for peace. He had not realised, until he finished drafting that premise, how much he was making a case for his audience of one. He wanted to see the frown lift from his Radiancy’s face, his lord’s golden lion eyes lighten with hope, looking forward to a future that was better than the past. He wanted - he dared think - he surmised that his Radiancy would find the proposed treaty acceptable, even if it did re-interpret his authority.
It was difficult to avoid the creeping suspicion that the ocean voyage had taken exactly as long as he needed to complete his work, and the creeping fear that time on board ship might have run at almost any ratio compared to time on land, or in Solaara.
Where time had splintered after the Fall, so had cultures, communication, relationships… there were people from neighbouring valleys whose languages had diverged to the point of incomprehensibility over a matter of months from the perspective of those living in the neighbouring lowland hills. The armies arrayed at Littleridge, and their commanders, were some of them from generations so far removed as to be mythical to the others. Cliopher had spoken at length with Princess Anastasiya Yra, whose personal voyage through time had taken her only two years out from the cataclysm of the Fall, and to King of Tlaxos whose great-great grandparents knew of Astandalas only through the legends of their ancestors.
Cliopher mentally shook himself. He would find out how long he had been away from the Palace when they reached Solaara. In the meantime, it was important not to be seen to be concerned. He went below to make sure that all their materials were packed and ready for the transfer to a river barge.
By the following morning land was in sight and Cliopher’s whole travelling party had joined him out on the deck in one form or another. He expected this from the guards, who had been sent by Indrogan to secure the sensitive materials from the Palace, and were inclined to interpret that brief to include following Cliopher around. The others seemed to mostly be manifesting the same nervous excitement that he was feeling. They knew (of course they knew) that the papers in their small strong box had the potential to change the world.
He had intended, at one point, to travel alone to Littleridge, reasoning that he had crossed the debatable lands of Zunidh successfully by himself before, that a lone man with little personal wealth presents a less attractive target, and that he would gain nothing before the princes from pretension to an grandeur that he did not, in their eyes, deserve. He had found it frustrating that first Princess Indrogan, then his own office, and then the Imperial household had insisted on sending people along, requiring extra baggage, requiring even more people. Now, though, looking along the deck at the secretaries and couriers playing cards, the guards lounging on and around the neat stack they had made of the entire group’s dunnage, the pages peering over the side into the slick dark water, he had to admit that he was glad of their help, and of their company.
The couriers had trickled in over the course of their time in Littleridge, and stayed at his request as it became clear that coordinating meetings between the commanders of rival camps was going to require a group of neutral and reliable messengers. Cliopher liked them, from the wiry and energetic Tix to the large and laconic Yayiva, but there was a certain distance imposed by their perception of his rank and connection to the Palace. His secretaries and pages were, thankfully, less distant, the secretaries having mostly come from Indrogan’s office and the pages from the Imperial household and all of them being inured to working with far grander personages than one Cliopher Mdang.
As if on cue, Angharad, who was the older of the secretaries and tended to take a mother-hen attitude, came past with a tray of hot drinks and looked at him meaningfully until he took one. “Last chance before we get to Solaara,” she said, “since you’re dead set on jumping the first barge we see.”
“What makes you think that?” he asked, shifting his weight against the rail and putting up his free hand to help steady the tray as a gust sent the Grey Gull pressing a little faster, heeling slightly further.
She laughed, “oh, nothing in particular,” she said. He turned back to leaning on the railing as she carried the tray upwind to the guards, heard one of them ask a question, and then Angharad clearly, saying, “no, he’s brooding again.”
The wind this morning was all that could be desired, and the long blocky buildings of Port Izharou were already becoming visible as distinct outlines. Drink in hand, Cliopher contemplated them, and tried to channel his Emperor’s serenity, without whatever it was that counted as ‘brooding’.
The port town ran to commercial warehouses, mostly, and half of them lay empty as the tensions between the provinces interrupted the anaemic recovery of trade since the Fall. The ceasefire would help with that.
The treaty - he had only the barest outline, so far, but it was in principle acceptable to all seventeen major parties in the ongoing slow-moving conflict - the treaty could do far more. The references to aligning tariffs and supporting trade were as yet only footnotes, but if - oh, if his Radiancy accepted the premise, and invited the parties to Solaara to hammer out the details, and was willing to take these threads that Cliopher had drawn together and start weaving a new world out of the fragments of the old -
- the tall ships would sail again between the harbours that ringed the Eastern Ocean, and the great luff-rigged trading vessels would once more circle from Csiven to New Dair and out to Nijan before running south past the City of Emeralds and along the coast of Jilkano, and some would regularly make the long trek across the Wide Seas, stopping in the Vangavaye-ve, bringing news and goods and letters to his family -
- if his Radiancy approved his actions (of course he would approve; he wanted peace), if no new crisis had arisen in Solaara (the most likely reason for the lack of news was surely that less time had passed in the Palace than in the Alixerian Sea), if - and here was the root of his fear, of his urgency - if his Radiancy was well, was recovered from whatever magical cataclysm had occurred on that horrible day when Cliopher volunteered for this mission (the Sun on Earth had looked so - staggered, grey with shock - his whole body braced against a weight that Cliopher could not even sense).
Cliopher had received precisely four letters from the Palace during the interminable ceasefire negotiations. Two from the Minister in Chief, Princess Indrogan, sharing carefully redacted updates from her briefing room under a magical seal. These had been reassuringly mundane, but covered only two one-week periods since his departure, both (as far as he could tell) relatively close to the day he left. Far more usefully, Conju, the chief groom of his Radiancy’s chamber, had written him a rambling screed of chatty court gossip with a number of pointed asides about the appropriate forms of address for various personages that he might meet in princely retinues.
Conju’s letter was undated but Cliopher did not think that it could be too distant in time from the date he had left, and the last letter, from his deputy Kiri, was dated a month after his departure. She was doing well, his office was holding together, Indrogan had agreed with several of their recommendations on her current restructure, and his Radiancy was absorbed in a great work of magic. Mending, presumably, whatever had gone awry.
(The Emperor, bent nearly double, holding onto his desk like a man winded by a blow to the gut, nails scoring the sandalwood surface. “Is there anything I can do to assist?” Cliopher had asked, regretting the - the blank bureaucratic inanity of the phrase - the moment it slipped out.)
The sea breeze was slackening by the time the Grey Gull slid between the long arms of the breakwater at Izharou, at the wide mouth of the river Dwahaii. Cliopher left most of his party unloading their baggage - mostly small personal bags, with the one large strongbox that held almost all their precious documents. He had, of course, kept one of the fine copies of his report in a folder in his own bag, furled tightly with his writing kit in a small leather case that was even more battered for the travel, and which he could not quite bear to let out of his grip.
(Reaching towards his lord, stepping towards him, but not daring, quite, to reach out - the taboos against touch were rigorously magically enforced - helpless. And his Radiancy had looked at him - eyes frantic with stress, with something teetering dangerously from hilarity to despair, and he had said “I don’t suppose you want to go knock some sense into those idiots at Littleridge, do you?”)
Guard Diego followed Cliopher across the docks to the wharves on the other side of the breakwater where the river boats tied up to take on cargo. Cliopher had stopped outright objecting to the guards’ insistence on dogging his steps after the second time they intercepted a group of unbadged soldiers intent on waylaying his party between warring camps (the first time, he was still convinced had been a minor misunderstanding, and the presence of the guards had made it harder than it should have been to defuse the situation). At least today Diego was wearing his civilian clothes and made himself useful arguing with the boat owners over the price of their passage.
(Cliopher would have said yes to anything his lord asked him - anything that might help lift some of the load crushing that slim dark figure - that might take some of the strain from his Radiancy’s face - let alone something that so powerfully in alignment with his own dreams and desires.)
To his satisfaction, by mid morning they were all crammed aboard the barge and gliding upriver at the steady pace of a pair of gentle barge horses. If he had been alone, Cliopher could not help reflecting, he could have taken a horse at the courier station in the harbour. A smaller group could have taken passage on a smaller, swifter boat. And yet - he met Bezzin’s eyes, and saw the glint of satisfaction in the young secretary’s smile - he could not deny these people their triumph. Each of them had been invaluable.
(And he had done his best - done more than he had dared hope, at first - but it would not hold unless the Sun on Earth was recovered and the magic restored - and on that there had been no word. Kiri had not even been admitted to the Presence, by her account, and Indrogan said nothing, and Conju was far too professional to let slip the slightest hint of a reflection on the Emperor’s wellbeing.)
He would always remember Bezzin, panting with pink-faced exertion, thrusting himself into the middle of a crowded tent full of half-drawn swords and hollering that Sayo Mdang had an urgent message from the Palace. The interruption had defused a terrifying spiral of claim and counterclaim that threatened to rip his fledgling cease-fire apart at the seams, and it had been entirely Bezzin’s initiative and (to Cliopher’s keen, if unspoken, disappointment) the message had been his invention, too. The moment had served to remind the Duke of Zborowanda of Cliopher’s association with his Emperor, be it as ever so lowly a secretary, and had given the Shark Queen of Dinezi a reason to leave the discussion without losing face.
(And his Radiancy had asked Cliopher to bring him peace, with that extraordinarily broad remit. Princess Indrogan had subsequently done her best to reimagine it for him into a tidier, more plausible ambition - a series of notes on who should agree to what, and how to achieve it - and Cliopher had nodded and smiled and thanked her for her insights and been deeply glad that the Emperor had not sent her with him to lecture all the aristocrats on how they should get along.)
The weather was warmer, inland, the air still and damp and full of the thick musty fragrances of the marshes. The sun wavered through a haze that deepened into a mist across the expanse of the notorious Solamen Fens. Cold tongues of it rolled down over the old dykes where the Fens crowded close to the banks of the Dwahaii, stretching out with uncanny coherence to lick along the path and cradle the people and horses on the bank. The horses seemed unaffected, but the humans shuddered and stepped away from the clinging mists.
(There was so much work - so much magical restoration - piled up in front of the Lord of Zunidh. Cliopher could help with the government, but the magic was beyond him. What use was a ceasefire in the face of an arcane catastrophe that could shake the Lord Magus of the world?)
The river wound across the plain before Solaara, slow and sinuous, but the horses were sturdy and their steady pace persistently ate up the distance. Already he could see the gold glinting from the roofs of the two grand habitations raised together by the Emperors of old - the Necropolis, home of the dead - and the Palace of Stars, built on another world entirely but returned in the Fall, along with the volcanic plug that served it as a foundation stone, to stand next to its twin, bringing the sleeping Emperor to lie alongside his dead.
(His Radiancy was a great mage. He had withstood the collapse of Astandalas, survived that mysterious century asleep, reclaimed his power. It was - wrong, it was irrational - to worry about the health of a man served by the greatest physicians in five worlds. It was treason even to think of him as a man, and not a god.)
Cliopher accepted a swig of water from a flask the guards passed along the deck. The barge was piled high with cargo bound for Solaara. Barrels of salt fish, from the smell. Most likely preserved with the purified salt released by the priest-wizards when they finally bowed to his Radiancy’s authority and allowed their resources to be shared.
The salt works at Littleridge were being rebuilt, as he left, promising to restore a vital source of protein that would ease the hunger round the Alixerian sea, as the release of salt from the Palace was bringing nourishment, if not plenty, back to the lands around Solaara.
(His training as a tanà of the Wide Sea Islanders, the holder of the fire of community for those who found and settled islands, had included a great deal of lore about the essential needs. Shelter, fresh water, food. Fire. He had seen with his own eyes how scarce and valuable these things had become, after the Fall. How scared everybody was, from the ragged children following at the heels of the soldiers begging for scraps, to the gloriously clad petty rulers in their gleaming armour.)
Cliopher caught Yaviya looking across at him and realised that he was brooding again. He was not the only one, he thought, looking along the length of the barge. Even the guard’s card game seemed to have ground to a halt. He stood up, as if to stretch, then looked up and down the line.
“What’s the first thing that you’ll be doing when we get to Solaara, Yaviya?” he called down the row.
“Washing my hair!” Yayiva called back, grabbing a handful of its short, fluffy length as if in illustration.
“Really?” that was Il Asca, one of the younger guards, in mock surprise. The laughter at this running joke was louder than usual, but it broke up into a friendly argument over who used the last of the soap on board ship.
Bezzin, who was sitting closest to Cliopher, looked up at him sideways. “And what are you doing as soon as we get to Solaara, Sayo Mdang?” he asked quietly.
“Delivering my report,” said Cliopher, since that part was non-negotiable. “After that…” he shrugged. He had not really thought beyond that. “Catching up on the dispatch boxes, probably. How about you?”
“Hmm. I was going to take a nap in my rooms and find some clean clothes,” said Bezzin, ”but I think I’ll have a word with Saya Kalikiri too.”
“Does that mean you’ve given some thought to your next career move?” Cliopher asked. Bezzin had been on an analyst track in the Treasury before being seized upon by Princess Indrogan’s office a month or so before they left, and Cliopher had some hope that he was not too firmly attached to the Minister in Chief’s staff.
“I’m thinking about it,” said Bezzin. Then, more hesitantly, “do you have any advice?”
Cliopher resolutely squashed his desire to offer Bezzin a job on the spot, and instead led the younger man to talk more about where he saw his future. He was good with numbers, but not overly absorbed by technical details, and during their expedition he had revealed an impeccable grasp of interpersonal dynamics. Explaining the strength of that combination - and discussing the many, many different directions it could take an enterprising young secretary - gave Cliopher a welcome distraction from his thoughts.
(The job of a tanà, faced with a knot, was to untangle it. He had remembered the lessons he learned from his Buru Tovo, from his Uncle Lazo, about people, and what made them afraid, and what they wanted. Security. Comfort. Peace, for all that so many of them came ready to fight. He had listened, he had asked questions, and he had found that the security they craved was the echo of Astandalas, anchored in the person of the Emperor. And he, Cliopher Mdang, with his Radiancy’s wish for peace ringing in his ears, had taken it upon himself to offer the princes and princesses of Zunidh what they craved.)
They reached Solaara early the following morning, stiff and chilled from a night bivouacking on the deck of the barge. They took it in turns to tuck down into the hold and change in the dark, narrow spaces between the cargo, stinking of salt fish. Then the guards shouldered the strongbox again; everybody picked up their bags, and the whole group stood in a tight huddle on the docks while Diego thanked and paid off the barge crew.
The city was colourful, cheerful, and far too loud. Cliopher found that he was gaping like a foreigner at the bright clothes of passers-by, the cafes and shops with their wares on display, the curious looks he and his companions were attracting. He blinked back tears. He knew, with a fair degree of precision, how many families there were in Solaara making desperate calculations about food and clothing - and yet despite that knowledge he could not help seeing how much more settled and prosperous life was here, where war was just a rumour on the other side of the world.
They all walked together up the winding streets, falling quiet again, until they reached the main courier station in the city and the end of all their travels together. The mood shifted as they stood together in the street - half-blocking it, though Cliopher could not blame his young folk - and broke into an eruption of laughter, tears, promises to meet up. There were a few shy hand clasps and gift exchanges (and one or two wolf whistles).
Then the couriers were gone and the smaller party - just guards, secretaries, and pages - reached the great pagoda that wound up the long stair to the Palace of Stars. The white walls and gleaming roofs loomed before them like a mirage, coming in and out of sight from different angles as they climbed.
The guards at the gate looked askance at their travel-stained robes. As had become routine in the army camps, Cliopher stayed back and let the pages show the documents that granted leave of passage.
The last leave-taking inside the Palace halls was relatively restrained, cowed by the reminder of their respective ranks and duties, and the scornful faces of the officials and pages going past. The pile of baggage was handed over at the closest pages’ station for distribution back to rooms and barracks. The guards opened the strong box long enough to let the secretaries remove the papers they needed, under Cliopher’s supervision, and then four of them bore it up and away to the Minister in Chief’s private office to withstand whatever scrutiny Princess Indrogan deemed necessary.
And then it was just, Cliopher, the imperial pages, and the final pair of guards, bound for the Tower at the heart of the Palace, the great central complex where - up many flights of stairs - the Last Emperor of Astandalas lived and worked at the centre of his seat of government.