him). With the wind in the wrong direction all the Boiling Sea had to offer was the sensation of being in a thick bank of fog; hardly a phenomenon worth walking out of doors to sample, let alone travelling for many days through frankly undistinguished countryside.
The Hyeng-zhar was far more striking and magnificent.
Tyl Loesp had seen the Boiling Sea from the shore, from the water in a pleasure steamer (as he was now), and from the air on a lyge. In each case one was not allowed to get too close, but he suspected even genuinely dangerous proximity would fail to make the experience especially interesting.
He had brought what was effectively his travelling court here, establishing a temporary capital in Yakid City to spend a month or so enjoying cooler weather than that afflicting Rasselle, allow him to visit the other famous sites — Yakid was roughly at the centre of these — and put some distance between him and both Rasselle and the Hyeng-zhar. To put distance between him and Oramen, being honest about it.
He had moved his departure from Rasselle forward only a day or so to avoid meeting the Prince Regent. Certainly it let the fellow know who was boss and this was how he’d justified it to himself originally, but he knew that his real motive had been more complicated. He had developed a distaste for the youth (young man; whatever you wanted to call him). He simply did not want to see him. He found himself bizarrely awkward in his company, experienced a strange difficulty in meeting his gaze. He had first noticed this on the day of his triumph in Pourl, when nothing should have been able to cloud his mood, and yet this odd phenomenon somehow had.
This could not possibly be a guilty conscience or an inability to dissemble; he was confident he had done the right thing — did not his ability to travel round this newly conquered level, as its king in all but name, not attest to that? — and he had lied fluently to Hausk for twenty years, telling him how much he admired him and respected him and revered him and would be forever in his debt and be the sword in his right hand, etc. etc. etc., so it must simply be that he had come to despise the Prince Regent. There was no other reasonable explanation.
It was all most unpleasant and could not go on. It was partly for this reason he had arranged for matters to be brought to a conclusion at the Hyeng-zhar while he was away.
So he was here, some rather more than respectable distance from any unpleasantness, and he had seen their damned Boiling Sea for himself and he had indeed seen some other spectacular and enchanting sights.
He was still not entirely sure why he had done this. Again, it could not be simply because he wished to avoid the Prince Regent.
Besides, it did no harm anyway for a new ruler to inspect his recently conquered possessions. It was a way of imposing himself upon his new domain and letting his subjects see him, now that he was confident the capital was secure and functioning smoothly (he’d got the strong impression the Deldeyn civil service was genuinely indifferent to who ruled; all they cared about was that somebody did and they be allowed to manage the business of the realm in that person’s name).
He had visited various other cities, too, of course, and been — though he had taken some care not to show it — impressed by what he had seen. The Deldeyn cities were generally bigger, better organised and cleaner than those of the Sarl and their factories seemed more efficiently organised too. In fact, the Deldeyn were the Sarl’s superiors in dismayingly many areas, save the vital ones of military might and martial prowess. The wonder was that they had prevailed over them at all.
Again though, the people of the Ninth — or at least the ones that he met at ducal house receptions, city chambers lunches and Guildhall dinners — seemed rather pathetically keen to show that they were glad the war was over and thankful that order had been restored. To think that he had once thought to lay waste to so much of this, to have the skies filled with flames and weeping and the gutters and rivers with blood! And all in the cause of besmirching Hausk’s name — how limited, how immature that desire seemed now.
These people barely knew or cared who Hausk had been. They had been at war and now they were at peace. Tyl Loesp had the disquieting yet also perversely encouraging impression that the Deldeyn would adapt better to the state of peace as the defeated than the Sarl would as victors.
He had started to dress like the Deldeyn, reckoning that this would endear him to them. The loose, almost effeminate clothes — billowy trous and frock coat — felt odd at first, but he had quickly grown used to them. He had been presented with a fine, many-jewelled watch by the Timepiece Makers’ Guild of Rasselle, and had taken to wearing that, too, in the pocket cut into his coat specifically for such instruments. In this land of railways and timetables, it was a sensible accoutrement, even for one who could command trains and steamers to run or not as his whim dictated.
His temporary palace was in the ducal house of Dillser on the shores of the Sea. The pleasure steamer — paddles slapping at the water, funnel pulsing smoke and steam — was heading for the much beflagged dock now, beating through waters that were merely warm and gently misted beneath a wind-cleared sky. Far mountains ringed the horizon, a few of their round, rolling summits snow-topped. The slender towers and narrow spires of the city rose beyond the ducal house and the various marquees and pavilions now covering its lawns.
Tyl Loesp drank in the cool, clear air and tried not to think of Oramen (would it be today? Had it already happened? How surprised ought he to act when the news came through? How would it actually be done?), turning his thoughts instead to dinner that evening and the choice of girl for the night.
“We make good time, sir,” the steamer’s captain said, coming to join him on the flying bridge. He nodded to tyl Loesp’s immediate guard and senior officials, gathered nearby.
“The currents are favourable?” tyl Loesp asked.
“More the lack of any Oct underwater-ships,” the captain said. He leant on the railing and pushed his cap up. He was a small, jolly fellow with no hair.
“They are normally a hazard?” tyl Loesp asked.
“Movable sandbanks,” the captain said, laughing. “And not very quick about getting out of the way either. Dented a few vessels. Sunk a couple; not by ramming them but by the Oct ship moving up underneath and capsizing the steamer. Few people been drowned. Not intentional, of course. Just poor navigation. You’d think they’d do better, being so advanced.” The captain shrugged. “Maybe they just don’t care.”
“But not a hazard to navigation today?” tyl Loesp said.
The captain shook his head. “Not for about the last twenty days. Haven’t seen a single one.”
Tyl Loesp frowned as he looked out at the approaching quay. “What normally brings them here?” he asked.
“Who can say?” the captain said cheerfully. “We’ve always assumed it’s the Boiling; might be even more impressive down at the bottom of the Sea, if you had a craft that could get you down there and back again and could see whatever it is that goes on. The Oct never get out of their submarine craft so we can’t ask them.” The captain nodded at the quayside. “Well, better get us docked. Excuse me, sir.” He walked back under the covered bridge to the wheelhouse, shouting orders. The steamer started to turn and the engine exhausted a plume of smoke and steam through its tall funnel before falling back to a steady, idling puff-puff-puff.
Tyl Loesp watched the waves of their wake as they curved away behind them, the last ragged, extended cloud of steam from the funnel settling over the creamy crease of sparkling water, shadowing it.
“Twenty days or so,” he said quietly to himself. He beckoned his nearest aide. “Strike our camp,” he told him. “We return to Rasselle.”
An uncanny stillness had settled over the Hyeng-zhar. Allied with the darkness, it seemed like a form of death.
The river had frozen across its breadth, the middle channel last. Still the water had continued to fall across the Nameless City and into the gorge, even if at a much reduced rate, appearing from underneath the cap of ice to plunge, wreathed in mist, to the landscape of towers, ramps, plaza and water channels beneath. The roar was still there, though also much lessened, so that now it seemed a fit partner for the glimmer that was the weak, paltry light of the slow-moving Rollstar Kiesestraal.
Then one night Oramen had woken up and known something was wrong. He had lain there in the darkness, listening, unable to tell what it was that was so disturbing. A kind of terror afflicted him when he thought it might be another device left behind from the Archipontine’s time here, awake again now, calling him. But there was no sound. He listened carefully but could hear nothing, and no winking lights, green or otherwise, showed anywhere.
