show. He stepped forward to shake Coya’s offered hand.
Coya scented hair oil, and that awful spiced goat’s cheese so beloved of these Khosians.
‘I’d hoped you were joking when you suggested an underway transfer,’ remarked the old general. ‘We couldn’t have met on the ground, eh?’
Before responding, Coya caught the eye of Marsh, his own bodyguard. Marsh scowled at the gang of crewmen still pressing for a better look at this living legend from Bar-Khos, and shoved them without ceremony towards the rest of the crew gathered on the opposite side of the deck.
‘Too dangerous,’ Coya admitted when they were at last beyond earshot, while Marsh stationed himself close by, watching everyone on deck through his dark-tinted refractors. His eyes could be seen blinking through the lenses on the back of his head.
‘Someone else was hit?’
‘Last night in Al-Minos. The visiting League delegate from Salina had the misfortune of being strangled in her sleep. That’s eight assassinations in the last two weeks. Which would suggest a coterie of Diplomats is now at large within the city.’
The Lord Protector nodded without expression, keeping his thoughts to himself.
Together they watched as the transfer line was reeled back aboard the Khosian skyship that had borne him all this way from Bar-Khos. The vessel fired its tubes to assume a patrol around the Minosian vessel they now stood upon. In the silence, Coya studied the man’s profile in an attempt to judge his present condition. Creed had visibly aged since they’d last met over of a year and half before. The greying at his temples had spread into streaks of silver; the lines deeper now around his eyes. All of it from grief, Coya knew from the reports he’d been hearing.
‘How are you, anyway?’ he asked the Lord Protector. ‘I hope your journey was a smooth one?’
‘Smooth enough. I only regret that our meeting must be so brief.’
‘Yes,’ said Coya. ‘The Khosian council must fret whenever you are gone from the Shield for so long.’ At that they both smiled, knowing it to be true. As their eyes met, unspoken between them lay the question of why Creed was here at all. ‘Still, it’s good that we can meet for this little while at least. A meal is being prepared for us in the captain’s cabin. If you wish, we can retire to some comfort and be out of this wind for a while.’
Creed responded with a look that said he was seldom accustomed to thinking of his personal comforts. He glanced towards Marsh and the many crewmen still watching them, the captain of the ship included. ‘I’m too old to be skulking around in fear of a few assassins, if that’s your concern,’ he said. ‘Let’s enjoy the fresh air while we talk, and then we can eat.’ He paused as he looked at Coya, who was stooped and wrapped heavily against the cold. ‘Unless of course it would be better for you… to be inside.’
‘I’m fine here, if you are, thank you,’ Coya replied crisply, and bowed his head politely.
The motion caused him pain, as all movements did. Even at his relatively young age, Coya had the arthritic bones of an ancient man. ‘Please, at least allow me to indulge you in some chee while we talk.’
Creed welcomed the offer. Within moments the ship’s galley boy was standing before Marsh with two steaming leather cups of chee in his hands, the lad’s mouth hanging open in wonder, looking between the impressive figure of the Lord Protector and the curious display of Marsh dipping a goyum to sample the chee. With a single tendril dangling in the hot liquid, the fist-sized bag remained the same neutral colour of greyish brown. Satisfied, Marsh allowed the cups to be passed into their welcoming hands.
‘How’s that pretty wife of yours?’ Creed enquired through a waft of rising steam.
‘She’s well. She sends you her blessings.’
How generous, Coya thought, to ask after my wife while still grieving for his own.
‘You never did tell me how you hooked her. Blackmail, I’m supposing?’
‘No need. She’s crazy about me. And I of her.’
‘Love then. Mercy help you both.’
Creed’s dry wit caused Coya to blink in amusement.
‘You must come and stay with us when circumstances allow it. You would like it there. Rechelle ensures the house is filled always with life and other people’s children.’
For a moment Coya thought he had said too much. But then Creed replied, with warmth, ‘Yes. I would like that.’
They sipped their chee as they stood by the railing gazing down at the vista of land and sea below, the coastline of Minos slowly sliding by as the ship drifted around in the wind.
The city of Al-Minos shone in the afternoon sunlight, the greatest Free Port in all the Mercian islands. Around it swept the arms of the bay, the white beaches darkened by crowds of people and clouds of red kites flying. The cityport was enjoying a festa this week, and even the presence of the First Fleet in its harbour, outfitting for battle, had done little to dampen the holiday spirits of the populace. Coya’s wife was down there somewhere in the heaving streets of the city, with his parents and his sisters’ many lively children – or perhaps by now they were watching the horse flapping on Uttico beach, and placing bets with their spare chits while wolfing down fresh quaff-eggs from the communal feasting pits.
He felt a pang of regret that he wasn’t with them today. Coya had been dearly looking forward to spending the day with his family, of forgetting it all for a short spell at least.
‘Zezike Day,’ Creed announced suddenly, as though noticing the kites and the thronged beaches for the first time. ‘You know, I’d all but forgotten.’
Coya shrugged. ‘You’re a Khosian. It’s to be expected.’
‘We do celebrate the man, you know. Just not quite so fervently as you fanatics here in the west.’ He spoke lightly, but as he did so he observed the distant celebrations with something unspoken in his expression, a kind of longing, perhaps. Coya could only imagine what it was like for the man and the rest of the people of Bar-Khos, huddled as they were behind walls unceasingly subjected to bombardment and assault, living day and night on the edge of extinction.
‘I’m only chiding, Marsalas. It’s hardly as though you haven’t enough on your plate already.’
The general straightened and cleared his throat. When he met Coya’s gaze, it was from one lonely height to another. ‘It must be hard on you also. They must expect a great deal from you, your people. The living descendant of the great philosopher himself.’
‘Hardly a burden compared to some.’
Coya desired to change the subject, for he was not comfortable discussing his famous ancestry to the spiritual father of the democras. He observed the many warships in the harbour, and was reminded, though he hardly needed a reminder, of the Mannian fleets now heading their way.
‘The revolution is one hundred and ten years old this year,’ Coya stated. ‘One hundred and ten years since we toppled the High King and the nobles who thought they would take his place. Yet I wonder, sometimes, when I’m alone and feeling not quite as hopeful as I should, whether our waking dream of the democras will survive for very much longer.’
‘The Free Ports are hardly beaten yet.’
‘Come, now. We’re not far from it, Marsalas. We hold on by the skin of our teeth. The Mannians strangle our trade routes to the outside world so we are forever close to starving. Zanzahar remains our only life thread, and subsequently exploits us for all the resources that it can. Bar-Khos barely holds the line in the east. League fleets barely hold the line at sea. And in our collective resistance, we become each day a greater threat to the Empire’s dominion. Because of us, every morning the world wakes to the knowledge that there are other ways to live than Mann. It is why the Empire loathes us so fiercely. It is why it will not cease until it has defeated us, or is finished itself – and Mann hardly looks as though it’s about to fall.’
‘It has happened before. Great empires have been resisted and cast back upon themselves. It can happen again.’
‘Yes, of course. And even then, if that were to happen… would the ideals of the democras still survive, I wonder? Or would we have paid too much for our victory? Would we have too much a taste for war by then, and a need to exact our revenge?’
‘After the Years of the Sword, we settled again in peace. We can do so again.’
‘We settled because our victory was itself our revenge. We were sated because the nobles had been overthrown. And even then the creation of the democras was a close-run thing. Such times of transition are always chancy, Marsalas.’
