Resolution (25 page)

Finally, as the long ceremony drew to a close, the descent began.

Corduven!

Downwards the coffin slid, into the swirling acid whose piercing green glow was meant to be an affirmation of life, a memory of the homeworld, while all the time filling Tom’s heart with a sick dread in devastating reinforcement of the basic fact of life: that everything must end.

So it went; and Corduven was gone.

Tom lowered his head and closed his eyes.

Lady V’Delikona sat on a wide platinum lev-platform with some thirty High Lords and Ladies, some of the most influential nobles of this sector or any other. Tom stared at them for a moment, then made a small control gesture which caused his and Elva’s platform to drift back, over the crowd’s heads and past a ten-metre-thick stone pillar until they were above a clear area. They settled down upon the flagstones.

‘We don’t belong here,’ Tom said in a low voice.

‘What do you mean?’ Elva asked, but immediately added: ‘You’re right.’

‘Let’s go back to—’

Tom’s voice trailed off.

‘What is it?’ said Elva.

At the back of the gathered commoners, standing beside a stocky artisan whose attention was upon the nobles overhead, a small barefooted girl was working on a handheld holopad. Tom raised a hand, signalling Elva to wait, then crept closer until he could read the glowing yellow-dominated stanzas.

Shadow forms a caravan

With darkness leading one dead man

Through sombre crowds beyond belief

Whose souls bear witness to their grief.

Tom shook his head. The second stanza, in progress, was more ambitious in its overlaid hues, attempting a counterpoint between grief and irony which was not entirely successful.

Fear the dragons, bravest heart,

Scorn the banners at the start

For he has met his end, you see

The same that waits for you and me.

The girl looked perhaps eleven Standard Years old. Lacking nourishment for growth, she might have been as old as thirteen, but no more.

And who exactly does she remind me of?

Tom touched the artisan upon his shoulder.

‘Excuse me, sir.’ Tom roughened his tones, softening the edges of the patrician accent which he adopted in formal surroundings. ‘Is this your daughter?’

‘Um—’ Wide-eyed, not fooled by the accent, the man gulped. ‘Yes, sir. But what... ? She
is
my daughter, my Lord, and we intend to be getting home right now.’

Tom wondered what tales of noble high-handedness had popped into the man’s mind, and just why he thought a strange Lord would enquire about his daughter.

‘That’s how it should be.’ Tom looked down at the girl. ‘And what’s your name?’

She looked up at her father, who nodded his permission.

‘Sadia, an it please you, sir.’

‘And you write poetry. Well ... So did I, and at your age, too.’

‘You did?’

‘Yes. Is that all you do?’

‘Well…’

She opened up a logosophical model describing a children’s game called Hunt The Narl, with fully coded strategy advisers and conflict/ cooperation equilibria for multiple players, drawn in bright primary colours. Tom smiled wide with pleasure.

Fifteen minutes later, he rejoined Elva, who was patiently waiting at their grounded lev-platform. She was staring at the artisan, from whose eyes tears streamed without shame, while his blocky hand clutched the young girl’s shoulder.

‘Chaos, Tom. I don’t even want to ask.’

‘I just spent the last of our credit.’

‘You bloody fool.’

‘I know, but... It was the right thing to do.’

It would make a small difference to Tom and Elva - it was a tenday’s rent for a guest apartment up to noble-house standards - but the change it would make in Sadia’s life was radical. For formality’s sake, Tom had put safeguards in the account he had set up, to legally ensure the funds were used only for the girl’s education ... but in fact he trusted Glekin, her father, straight away.

In three days’ time, when the official mourning was over, Sadia would be presenting herself at the local Akademia Antinomios as a day-pupil. What happened after that would be up to her. If she performed well, she could earn cred-points in much the same way that Tom had earned merits as a Palace servitor; those points could fund more education. It was an opportunity, no more than that.

Elva kissed his cheek.

‘Bloody fool,’ she said again.

‘You knew that all along.’

‘I suppose I did.’

They slipped out along a quiet colonnade, and left the crowds behind.

There had been mourners they recognized, among the lesser nobility: Falvonn and Kirindahl, old friends of Avernon’s (Tom had never seen them looking solemn before); Colonel Milran, formerly of Darinia Demesne, standing beside Sylvana’s cousin, the dark-haired Lady Brekana.

Neither Tom nor Elva was in the mood to talk.

They passed along the floor of a vast cavern, where massed lines of arachnargoi shone with carapaces of every hue. Blue-grey and polished brown speckled with black were most common; but there were resplendent royal-blue arachnargoi and iridescent scarlet vehicles among them. Here and there, a blinding white arachnargos, larger than the rest, stood motionless on tendrils like marble.

High above on the ceiling, smaller arachnabugs hung upside down: shining yellow one-person sports bugs, alongside hard obsidian military models with side-mounted graser cannons.

There were thousands of them in this one cavern alone.

No more than you deserve, Corduven.

Not a thousandth of the recognition that Corduven deserved.

That night, Tom and Elva looked through the list of positions posted for the coming Convocation. It would be held quickly, on Shyed’mday, before the gathered nobles and their retinues dispersed to their own realms.

Flensed Pilot, screaming silently ...

The thing was, there was more than their domestic life to worry about. If Tom was right, the world was at risk; but judging by Surtalvan’s and Trevalkin’s reactions, no-one was ready to hear his story.

Hopelessly, Tom checked through the procedure for proposing a motion before the Convocation. There were so many preliminary stages to pass through, Tom did not even think his evidence (such as it was) would go to a general vote.

He started making notes.

It was on the evening of the fifth day after Corduven’s funeral that the full depth of Tom’s failure became clear. Sadia would have just finished her second day at school.

Without bitterness, Tom thought:
I
hope she succeeds better than I have.

From where Tom sat on a silver seat at the very highest level of a cup-shaped auditorium designed to seat thousands, it seemed that all his efforts had come to nothing. He was at the Convocation, but the advertised positions in the public list had gone to other nobles. Tom had also put up a general posting indicating his willingness to work in any demesne: perhaps someone would grant him a private position.