‘I doubt you can call it being in charge,’ Fulcrom replied with a dry chuckle. ‘Most of this has seemed so completely beyond my control.’
‘It often feels like that, doesn’t it? But I can assure you that’s quite natural. The skill comes from eventually discerning the planned chaos from actual chaos. I’ve heard remarkably good things about you. It seems that without your leadership we may not have had any people left to defend this evening.’
Fulcrom didn’t know what to say. Had he succeeded? It didn’t feel like much of a success.
‘Do you think the Okun will return?’ he asked.
‘Not at night, I’d say,’ the commander replied. ‘We found from the defence of Villiren that their military activities took place during the day. I can’t work out their response to daylight — perhaps it has something to do with their biology — but such things ultimately work in our favour. Though I cannot vouch for any of their kin.’
Fulcrom nodded.
‘Walk with me,’ the commander requested. They turned and began trudging back up the slope, military personnel surrounding them. There were quite a few stretchers being carried to the hastily set-up medical tents with several dozen injured soldiers, some of them clearly not human.
‘Now tell me, Investigator Fulcrom — what the hell happened to Villjamur?’
‘When were you last there?’ Fulcrom asked. ‘A lot changed, even before we were forced to flee.’
‘I left before the Empress and her sister were set up for a crime they did not commit and were due to be executed on the city wall. They escaped. Urtica became Emperor.’
‘Is that the official story now?’ Fulcrom asked. ‘That they were in the clear?’
Brynd nodded. ‘As much as these things still matter, yes. We’re annexed from the Empire now,’ he continued, looking around, ‘but that is a situation which seems out of date considering there seems little from which to be annexed.’
‘That’s putting in mildly.’
Fulcrom gave as accurate an account as possible, starting with Urtica’s crackdown on law and order. ‘In the Inquisition, we thought it would be good — that we’d have powers to do our job thoroughly. The crackdown went rather far, though. The military upped their patrols on the streets and started harassing those from Caveside. Crime, ironically, started to rise.’
‘Soldiers shouldn’t be on the streets like that,’ the commander observed. ‘They’re not trained to deal with civilians in that way.’
‘I agree with you on that. Well, given the tensions in the city, things were bound to escalate. A woman called Shalev arrived in the city and organized the Cavesiders. She came from the cultist isle and she was remarkably efficient in targeting structures of power. The rebels became so efficient, in fact, that the Emperor panicked. He was beginning his programme of repairing the city and didn’t want a revolution on his streets — and so he created the Villjamur Knights.’
‘And they would be. .?’
‘Cultist-designed heroes. I was in charge of them, as it happens. There were only three of them and they were each given special powers to help fight crime. A little like the Night Guard but more specialized. Only one survives now, and her name is Lan. At the same time the underground movement had swelled to a point where tensions were simply too much. I’ve heard talk that there was an attempt on the Emperor’s life and that he was assassinated, but that all became overshadowed by the presence of the sky-city.’
‘Indeed. .’ the commander said. ‘Do you know where it came from?’
‘I don’t know,’ Fulcrom continued. ‘One moment there was nothing but the usual grey skies, the next it was just there — dropping creatures into the city and massacring people.’
‘You seem to have handled it well,’ the commander observed. ‘Getting everyone out here like this, getting them all moving — that kind of thing isn’t simple.’
Fulcrom grimaced. ‘It just. . happened, really. No one knew what to do. I’ve not even mentioned Frater Mercury yet.’
‘Frater who?’
The man who invented the rules — you’ll see.
That’s what the rumel investigator had said — the man who invented the rules, and the man who could probably save them — if he chose to do so. This, then, would be the person Artemisia mentioned back at the Citadel, the one so important to their world.
Brynd walked with the affable investigator up the slope, a little exhausted now despite the fact that the battle had been relatively simple compared with Villiren. His mind was thoroughly engaged in processing the mess that the Jamur Empire had become. Although a staggering number of people had died, more deaths had been avoided, and he couldn’t help but feel satisfied that the battle had proven successful. The Okun had been comprehensively defeated, thanks to combining forces with Artemisia’s people — an important gesture. Also, his new armour was everything he had hoped for.
When they crested the hill, Brynd stared in awe at the scene below. Enormous, strange vessels were drifting out to sea, the crude, flat outlines more akin to floating islands than ships, and how they were moving without sails was anyone’s guess.
‘That is what Frater Mercury does,’ Fulcrom said enthusiastically next to him. The relief was clear on the rumel’s face. ‘He changes all the rules.’
‘What are they?’ Brynd asked.
‘They were land-vehicles,’ Fulcrom said.
‘We had reports of such things, but what are they?’
‘So far as I can tell, exactly that — they’re moving vehicles crafted from the fabric of the earth itself — quite literally. Frater Mercury — the man, being, thing I mentioned — possesses some qualities that we can’t fathom.’
Fulcrom then explained the emergence of this being as the result of a priest coming to Villjamur, brought through worlds by means of some arcane ritual.
‘What happened to the priest?’
Fulcrom shrugged. ‘Gone. Presumably killed during the events in Villjamur.’ Fulcrom hesitated before continuing. ‘The priest said some strange things, about our history not being as we believe it to be.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Brynd replied, looking around cautiously. ‘We have figures from the other realm who can confirm this was the case.’
‘These figures,’ Fulcrom said, ‘will they be looking for Frater Mercury?’
‘Yes, I’d say that’s very likely. That will need to happen before the next phase.’
‘What’s that going to be?’ Fulcrom asked. ‘The next phase.’
Brynd turned back to face the sky-city, which was defined only by the absence of starlight. ‘We’ll need to take that thing down and wipe out anything it’s brought to ground and that does not wish to exist peacefully. There are no gentle solutions, and very little room for negotiations. At the same time, we have to accept that we are going to have to share our world with other species. There is plenty of land, many islands that are sparsely populated, but I can’t imagine it’s going to be a smooth journey.’
‘How do you plan to take down the sky-city?’ Fulcrom asked. ‘It’s already obliterated Villjamur.’
‘First, we’re going to complete the evacuation, get ourselves to safety and, once we have time to build up enough of an opposition, then we can begin to consider our real options.’
‘In the meantime,’ Fulcrom said, ‘we lose the island of Jokull?’
‘The Empire may have collapsed, but we still have the people,’ Brynd said diplomatically. As he looked to the future, he had already lost his emotional attachments to the concept of the old Empire. ‘Life as we know it has changed and a new world will form — for better or worse. We need people to shape these events, however — people like you.’