It was said that, beyond those hills, in forests and deserts he had never visited, there were crashed starships, the remnants of the wars that had been fought above Borial during Concordance's ascension to dominance. The stories had thrilled him as a boy, filled his dreams and his games. Later, it had troubled him that he was always the rebel, the outlaw, and never the soldier of Omn come to impose order out of chaos. No one was allowed to go near the hulks of those ruined ships. Perhaps that was why they had fascinated him so much. It was said that people came down from the Angelic Gaze to dig through them from time to time, for reasons that no one knew. Perhaps he would get the chance to do that himself, one day.
He walked to the great ironoak tree that stood at the front of his family's house, its outstretched branches on a level with the window of his bedroom. It occurred to him that he loved the tree beyond words. It had been a constant in his life. As a boy, he'd played around it, and later within it, making the familiar winding ascent of its crooks and knots until he reached the place where its boughs splayed wide and he could sit down and be alone, unseen, removed from the world. His ship, his mythical beast, his fortress; the tree had obligingly become whatever he'd wanted it to be.
His new life would not be so very different. It was simply that the distance, the separation, would be greater. And there would be no climbing back down when his game was finished.
He sat and leaned his back against the tree to watch the sun rising. The stars were a scatter of jewels on a velvet sky, their light fading. He picked out the one that was arcing across the sky in the south. There was his new home, the Angelic Gaze, and tomorrow he would be looking down on his world from up there, and he would no longer be Aevus Magision. He would be someone else.
His father was walking up the winding path from the gates carrying fresh bread bought from Henty, the local baker. It was a ritual his father had followed all of Aevus's life. The smell of fresh bread; the warmth and softness of it in his mouth were the sensations of his mornings. He wondered if they made fresh bread on a Cathedral ship.
His father, seeing him, came across from the path, leaving a trail through the wet grass. When he reached Aevus, he opened his mouth to speak but then closed it again, apparently unable to find the words.
Finally he said, “I have fresh bread. Shall we go inside to eat? Henty gave me extra today. She refused to take payment, saying it was the least she could do for an Augur of Concordance. Our own Augur was the phrase she used.”
There was an odd mixture of emotion in his father's voice. Pride, perhaps, but also sadness, as well as fear. Or perhaps they were simply Aevus's own feelings, colouring everything.
“I'll be in soon,” Aevus said. “I'd like to watch the sun come up one more time.”
His father nodded, and after a moment's awkward silence, he stepped away to leave Aevus alone with the tree.
Of course, it was a source of pride to be chosen. It was a huge honour for him and his whole family, and for everyone he'd grown up among. Only he, out of every person on Borial, had been chosen to join the Cathedral ship. In truth, he didn't fully understand how the process worked, why he'd been chosen. He'd always kept his doubts and resentments about Concordance to himself, but that was simply because he hadn't wanted to risk being identified. Everyone grew up hearing stories of what happened to people who openly criticized the church of Omn. Perhaps his timidity had been mistaken for devotion.
There were many who now resented him, of course. They scowled when they saw him walking about the lanes and streets. One or two of them had been his childhood friends, boys he'd trusted implicitly and absolutely. He was their enemy now. That was how it worked. He had been chosen by Concordance, and he was no longer Aevus of Borial.
In many ways, it was unfair. He could not have refused the summons even if he'd wanted; to do so was unthinkable. He'd grown up assuming his life would follow the same shape as that of his father or his mother. He'd work in the fields, start a family of his own, live a quiet life. That had all been swept away by the arrival of Hierarch Chalce at their door three weeks earlier. The sudden appearance of the highest official of Concordance in the system had been a huge shock. They'd all feared the worst, assuming some dire insult to Omn had been detected. The Hierarch had never been known to leave the Cathedral ship before. The truth of it had been a glorious relief at the time, and the full realisation of what it meant had grown only slowly since. And now the day of his departure was here.
He heard more footsteps approaching, swishing through the grass. But it wasn't his father come to tell him the food was ready; it was his mother. She sat down beside him and leaned her head on his shoulder.
“Ah, I'm going to miss you, Aevus.”
He nodded, his cheek brushing the top of his mother's head. “I won't really be gone. I'll be just up there, only a hundred kilometres away when we're overhead. And it's such an opportunity. I may even be summoned to the God Star one day, become a First Augur. Who know where this will take me?” These were the things they'd said to each other again and again over the
