Ison of the Isles (19 page)

“What’s the matter?” Talley asked sharply.

“Nothing.” He couldn’t give in. It had taken all the power of achra to allow him to transcend the other bonds, however briefly. A new one would make it all fruitless. Especially
this
new one.

Talley sat in the chair beside Goth’s, looking intentionally at ease.

Beyond the ship’s stern, the shoulder of Bellmorrow Head could be seen, and the smouldering ruins of the town below it. There had been a stone building on the headland, where the townspeople had fled for safety at sight of the Inning fleet. Its dead shell now stood blackened and smoky against the stars. They said the bones lay three feet deep inside.

Goth could not even remember how many ruined towns he had seen by now. Talley always brought him out to witness the devastation, watching with that calculating expression, as if daring him to forgive
this
. It was the sort of thing Harg had done as a child, on a very different scale. Constantly challenging, constantly trying to find the limits of Goth’s charity. It was different with Talley; it was not love he wanted. Goth wasn’t sure what the man wanted. He only knew he was as helpless to deal with it now as he had been then.

A lieutenant came up to them and saluted the Admiral. “The casualty list, sir,” he said, holding out a sheaf of papers.

“Thank you, lieutenant.” Talley took the papers, then sat reading the closely written list by lamplight. It went on for pages.

“Surely you didn’t lose that many men,” Goth said.

“Oh no, we lost no one. This is the list of natives.”

“You keep track of them, do you?”

“Yes. Names of all the ones executed, correct numbers at the least for the civilians.”

There was silence for a while as he sat perusing the names. At last Goth said, “I should think you would prefer not to know.”

Talley set the papers on the small folding table between them, putting the lantern on them to prevent the slight breeze from blowing them away. “That would be to slaughter them mindlessly, as if it didn’t matter. Killing is never a meaningless act, you know. Especially not this much of it.”

“I am surprised to hear you say it,” Goth said quietly.

“Are you? I thought we knew each other by now. I make them compile the list, and I read it, because it is a kind of moral discipline. I will send it back to the Navy office for the same reason. If ever we were to become unaware of our actions, we would have the scruples of savages.”

Goth sat silent, wondering what it was about the act of counting the victims that made killing them more scrupulous. Before he could say anything, Talley rose again from his chair and paced away across the deck. He was often restless like this nowadays, constantly in motion. It was hard to watch.

When he came back, Goth asked, “Aren’t you afraid of being blamed?”

Talley gave a cynical shrug. “Blame is like the uniform. You assume it with the office.” Then, as if feeling he had been too glib, he frowned. “A leader must be capable of facing the consequences of his actions. To be worthy of the role, he has to look honestly and unsparingly at reality, and be a match for it. He must face necessary evils without flinching, wade through horror without changing course.”

“You will be a moral cripple in the end,” Goth said. “You will loathe yourself. Perhaps you already do.”

“No, actually.” Talley gave a brittle smile. “I don’t loathe myself at all. I do occasionally loathe the things I am forced to do, in order to bring about good results. Rapine and carnage are not to my taste. Thank God I have people to do that part.”

Goth winced. “Your people are probably glad to have you as well, to remove the responsibility from their shoulders.”

“Oh, yes, no doubt. And there are lofty men back in Fluminos who are glad they have me, to give the orders that would stain their reputations if they owned up to them. We are all just tools, my dear saint. Axes sometimes harm people, but that doesn’t make an axe bad. I am just a tool my nation uses to make odious but necessary decisions. At some point they may come to regard me as too tainted to use any more, but I doubt it. Men who can do distasteful things so the country can feel pure are too useful.”

His tone was light, but the bitterness was sharp enough to cut.

“You are very different from your brother,” Goth observed.

“Who, Nathaway?” He gave a slight, dismissive laugh. “Well, I was the eldest, he was the youngest. We had different family roles. His was to stand on stages looking adorable. Mine was to get brutalized and shot at so my father could claim some vicarious military credentials.”

He seemed about to stop there, but then went on. “I was thirteen years old when my father sent me away to the Navy. His opponents were accusing him of being soft on support for the military, you see, and he had to demonstrate his toughness. He intended my career to figure in speeches, not battles. That was my whole purpose, you see. But it didn’t turn out that way.”

“So your father sacrificed you to the empire,” Goth said.

Talley gave him a sharp glance, as if realizing he had revealed too much.

“And ever since, you have punished yourself by taking on the empire’s guilt. You can’t continue forever, you know. Sooner or later, the accumulation of it will crush your will to keep acting.”

“Ah, well. If so, I will just join a long list of people who have given their lives for their countries.”

“It’s not your life in danger.”

Talley gave him an ironic smile. “You think I have a soul? You, of all people?”

The longing had returned, sharper than ever. It was an aching compulsion this time; it took all Goth’s attention to force it back. When he said nothing, Talley sat again, restlessly drumming his fingers. Goth watched the profile of his face—so cool and cultivated, hiding such a blazing anger at the world.

“You can’t make me stop forgiving you,” Goth said softly. “I have no choice. It’s how we were created. It would be physically impossible for me not to love someone . . .” He paused, realizing how reckless the admission was, and how helpless he was to stop it. “. . . someone in as much pain as you.”

Talley looked like an ice sculpture of a man. For a long time he said nothing. Then, at last: “I am virtually certain I did not hear that.”

It was a warning. It meant,
Stay away. Do not reveal your vulnerability, or I will be forced to use it against you.

But it was too late for caution. “I have wanted to give you dhota ever since I saw you,” Goth said. “In all my life I have only known one other person who needed it as badly. You are my last, my worst, temptation.”

A shiver passed through Goth’s body. Talley was looking at him distantly. “What is it, a kind of lust?” he said.

Goth clenched his trembling hands to help him get control. “It’s very like lust,” he answered. “But more like love.”

“You get pleasure out of it, do you? This dhota?”

“Oh, yes! But we pay. It’s like the achra, only we get addicted to the people we cure. I thought the achra was freeing me. But you see how weak I am.” He gave a strangled laugh. “My downfall seems to be the people who least want me.”

Talley rose and paced away again. For a moment Goth thought he was going to leave. But he turned back and stood, his hands clasped behind him.

“Who was the other person?” he said.

“I think you can guess that.”

He gave a slight nod. “I am beginning to find that there are a good many things I resent Harg Ismol for. You are one of them. I can see I will have to destroy him in front of you before I can claim to have won.”

This time, Goth couldn’t hide his flinch.

“Is that something you could not forgive?” Talley said, a smile frozen on his face. “Have I found the boundaries of your sainthood?” He snapped erect then, and said, “We have two more islands to deal with here. Then we will set out for Yora.”

“Yora! Why?”

“Because it is Harg Ismol’s home,” Talley said. “And I want to drive him mad.”

He bade Goth a courteous good night then, and went below.

Goth was left with only the stars for company. They twinkled at him maliciously out of the sky.

Dear Rachel,

A fortnight ago, news began to arrive here in Lashnish about the actions of our Navy in the South Chain. I was reluctant to believe it at first. The reports seemed exaggerated, like the rumour and distortion of war. But in the past week, refugees have been arriving here, bringing such disturbing eyewitness accounts that I have been forced to believe them.

Rachel, what is going on? We are a decent, fair-minded people. Who has authorized this effusion of blood? It is beyond my comprehension what policy is being served by the wholesale depopulation of the South Chain. When did butchery, rape, and slavery become tools of statecraft? I would understand severe justice against the rebels, but islanders are being executed in droves, without even a mock trial, without evidence or defence, while the most barbarous behaviour in our own forces is allowed to rage on unchecked. If the intention is to create deep hatred of Inning and contempt for law, then the Navy is serving its purposes admirably. If the intention is to strengthen Harg Ismol’s appeal, and make everyone look to him as a saviour, it is also succeeding. But if we ever wish to govern this place, or spread civilization among these abused and dispossessed people, then I am at a loss to understand how the Navy’s ferocity can be justified.

As you can imagine, the actions of our fleet have made my position here far more precarious. The news has raised the most frightening emotions in the city. It is no longer safe for me to go out without a Lashnura escort. Nor is it possible any longer for me to leave. Quite apart from my unwillingness to abandon Spaeth, I am aware of certain things that they cannot afford to have revealed, and which I cannot even hint to you, or this letter would never reach you. Tiarch is convinced that I am a spy, and while I believe Harg would not harm me, things have been unpleasantly tense between him and me.

And so I watch, and wait. The events around me have taken on an unreal quality, as people make plans, absorbed in all their rivalries and revelries, while the end of all they know approaches slowly from the south.

If you had gotten to know Lashnish, as I did, before the investiture of the Ison, you would barely recognize it as the same place today. We have become a frontier town, besieged by every opportunist, well-wisher, fundamentalist, charlatan, and refugee in the Isles. The political avalanche set off by the rise of an Ison is beyond anyone’s power to control. Everyone here is improvising. There is no recipe to follow.

The Palace and the Pavilion, which adjoin each other, both facing the Isonsquare, have become rival centres of power, vying for control of what the Ison and the Onan represent. Tiarch, who still controls much of the Navy and the apparatus of state, understands the role of opulence, public appearance, and graft. Her palace is continually crowded with people seeking favours, contracts, and posts. She handles it with a wily opportunism, as the Ison’s
de facto
prime minister. We have all been grateful for her well-disciplined Torna militia patrolling the streets, but of course that only adds to her power.

Agave, on the other hand, understands the role of reverence, aloofness, mystery, and belief. She is the shadow minister, the Onan’s spokesperson, the invisible power. This is possible because there is a spirit of religious revival sweeping the land. The teachings of the Grey Folk, real and imagined, are being proclaimed as an antidote to the godless immorality of Inning. The appearance of support from the Lashnura justifies any enterprise, no matter how suspect. Since many of the Grey Folk have lived lives of isolation, they are susceptible to manipulation by the unscrupulous and deluded. All manner of faith healers and fundamentalists have sprung up.

This volatile mix is glued together only by the public’s infatuation with two people who have been taken completely unawares by being thrust so suddenly into the most public roles. A life where they cannot stir without being mobbed, observed, and commented on is utterly unnatural to them both. But their awkwardness and discomfort only endears them to the crowd. I believe both of them could grow into their new roles, but no one seems disposed to give them a chance. There is too much power to be seized.

In fact, the people don’t really want sober governance from their new leaders. In their desperate need to shake off bondage and poverty, they want inspiration and salvation, spectacle and symbolism. At Tiarch’s instigation, we have had parades, performances, banquets, and receptions to distract the populace and sort out the invited from the uninvited. Those who grumble about the expense at a time of war are regarded as sulky and envious.

Harg is besieged by contradictory expectations. People want him to be as grand and opulent as any Torna, but also plain and populist. They want him to be resolutely Adaina, but guided by the Lashnura in all things. The Adaina expect a shower of jobs, largesse, favours, powers. They also expect scrupulous honesty.

He has finally announced that he is leaving Lashnish to return to the fleet—but where they may be bound is a closely guarded secret. Naturally, I am not privy to their councils of war. But it does appear as if they are scraping together every ship available for some major action. Everyone is perfectly confident that Harg will save the Forsakens, and all the might of the Inning Navy will be no match for him.

Meanwhile, there is a terrible darkness approaching. I watch a thousand comings and goings from the window of my room, and I want to shout out warnings, but it would only make me absurd. They all believe that they are at the beginning of something—a newborn nation, a time of hope and ambition. They think that they are busy building something great and good. This is exactly what we wanted from them, once. We wanted them to hope and plan, just as they are doing, but now we have become the wall that blocks them from the future they have chosen. Their new world is ending, not beginning, and we are the reason.

Rachel, what have we become? I still love my country, especially here where its nature seems most contested. I want to stand up for what we
really
are, not what empire and arrogance have made of us. It is painful to see us as the brutal heel descending on these people’s hopes.

I do so hope that I am wrong.

*

A deep rumble came through the fog. Harg felt it in his boots almost as clearly as he heard it. He glanced uneasily uphill, in the direction of Mount Embo’s summit, and thought he saw a flicker of orange light through the mist.

“How close are we to the crater?” he asked the man who was leading him, a native Emban.

“A couple of miles, maybe,” the man said.

Close enough to wipe them all out, if the mountain chose. Harg squinted through the mist, wondering if the rumble had been a warning or a greeting. The men in the party ahead would be wondering the same. It was a good thing he had brought mainly Torna troops on this expedition. Adainas would be panicking at this sign of the Mundua’s presence, seeing firesnakes in the fog. Tornas would not see firesnakes. Not even if they were there.

It wasn’t why he had chosen Tornas for this risky venture. If all went as planned, natives of Tornabay would be the first to enter the conquered city, and it would be easier to prevent them going out of control in their own home. They would have a stake in saving it.

Everyone had told him that Tornabay was unapproachable by land. To its south lay farmland, but no landing spot for ships except at Croom, where the Innings had recently fortified the cliffs to repel invaders. To the north lay rough, mountainous forest. And at the city’s back, to the west, glowered the protective bulk of Mount Embo. Tornabay’s defenders had no reason to worry that any attacker could cross the roadless lava fields and come upon them from the west.

And so that was what Harg had decided to do. His ships had landed in the tiny west-coast community of Inlet. They had unloaded the artillery and mules first, and sent them off to get a head start on the rough route across the island. Harg had stayed to see the rest of the men and equipment unloaded, then set out to catch up with the vanguard, leaving Drome Garlow in charge of the rear.

In the planning, he had worried that the landing force would be discovered in time for the Innings to send out a sally and catch them on the mountain. He had never considered that the mountain itself might attack.

It was several hours past dawn now. Harg and his guide had come to the edge of the pine forest, where the road ended. Ahead lay the first of three lava fields they would have to cross: a jumbled terrain of twisted black rock from some century-old eruption. The mist had a yellow cast, and smelled of sulphur.

It was easy to see the path the artillery had taken. The cannon barrels, lashed to sledges and heavy carts, were being dragged forward by brute force, with sandbag bridges and timber skids to ease them over the roughest parts. Now broken rock, splintered wood, and burst sandbags littered the way. Harg and his guide followed the trail, scrambling up and down over snakes of ropy rock that coiled underfoot and bit into their boots.

Farther into the waste, black shapes began to loom over the path—old lava piled into twisted towers, dammed by some obstacle. Harg felt his neck prickle as the path skirted one rock that seemed to be leaning forward to scan him. Echoes of Embo’s muttering came from several directions at once.

The path plunged into a cleft like a valley formed by a stream of stone. As they proceeded, the streambed became deeper, till high ridges towered on either side. Only the path they were on looked passable.

When they overtook the advance party, the men were sitting in exhausted little clumps amid the rocks. The mules were corralled in a huge pothole, their heads hanging dejectedly. The sight of Harg stirred the men, and the shouted news travelled on ahead.

The Torna captain Harg had put in charge, a stubble-headed bear of a man named Brixt, came hurrying up.

“The men are spooked,” Brixt muttered to Harg. “We’ve been in this rotting fog since dawn, and it’s hard on them, not knowing where they are.”

“It’s not their job to know where they are,” Harg said. “That’s why we’ve got scouts.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Brixt said. “They were starting to ask for some proof we were still in our own circle.”

So the Tornas were not as immune to such fears as he had supposed.

“Well, I’m proof,” Harg said. “I’ve just walked up from Inlet. And pretty soon the rear detachment will be catching up with you too, if you don’t get moving.”

Brixt told him the problem then. The path had led them into a cul-de-sac; the way was blocked by a hill of lava ahead. They were just discussing whether to go back or try to scale the ridge.

Harg felt a coal of impatience burning inside him. “Where were your scouts? Didn’t they check out your path?”

Brixt’s face turned stony and defensive. “They did, sir. But in this fog . . . well, the scout says the landscape changed since he came through. It’s shifting all around us.”

“Blood and ashes! You accepted that excuse?”

There was a series of booming explosions from the mountain. It sounded for all the world like laughter.

“Yes, sir, I did,” Brixt said stiffly.

Harg took a deep breath to calm his nerves. He had to appear steady and in control. With Brixt following, he walked on down the path. When he came to the front of the stalled line, he saw the problem: a tall, knotted cliff blocking the way. A group of men was standing there arguing about it. The engineers, such as they were. When Harg came up they fell silent.

“So who has a solution to this?” Harg said, scanning them.

They all began to speak at once, till Harg ordered them quiet and extracted, one by one, their answers.

There were three solutions: build a causeway, rig a makeshift crane, or turn back. The causeway would take explosives, the crane would take timber, turning back would take time.

“We can’t use explosives,” Harg said. “It would give away our position.”

“The Innings probably know we’re here already,” Brixt said.

“But they can’t know where. Not in this fog. Ashes! We hardly know where we are ourselves.”

“But we don’t have any timbers,” one of the soldiers said.

Harg wondered what the man was talking about. “It’s barely a mile back to the forest. Go fetch some.”

They all looked at him in astonishment. “A mile?” Brixt said. “We’ve only come a
mile
?”

“It wasn’t any more when I walked it,” Harg said.

They looked dumbfounded, then depressed. “I’ll send some men back, then,” Brixt said.

“No, wait. What will it gain us?” Harg asked. “What’s beyond this ridge?”

The scout was a fox-faced Adaina man whose eyes were mere slits. He was squatting on the slope, his wrists on his knees, knobby hands dangling.

“Stand up!” Harg ordered him. The man gave him a long glance, then obeyed.

“The path beyond is clear enough now,” he said. “It would be. The mountain wants us to climb the ridge. Don’t ask me why.”

Harg would have rebuked him for demoralizing everyone, but it would only waste time. “Show me,” he said.

The scout turned and led him, climbing zigzag, up the ridge. At the top the mist seemed thicker, and Harg coughed when he got a lungful of fumes. For a moment they made his head spin.

“The ridge goes on like this for another mile or so,” the scout said.

Harg walked along it for a few yards. It was like the back of a giant snake, winding through the tumbled landscape. The going was not exactly smooth, but it would be better than what they had already been through.

“Which direction?” he asked the scout.

“South and east.”

It was perfect. As if it had been built for them.

“There’s got to be a better way up onto it,” he said.

“Not that I’ve found.”

“Go look again.” Harg turned back and scrambled down to where the others were waiting. He said to Brixt, “Send your men for the timbers. If we don’t find a better way up in the meantime, it will be worth it.”