Fugitives of Chaos Read online

  Fugitives of Chaos

  John C. Wright

  NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

  FUGITIVES OF CHAOS

  Copyright © 2006 by John C. Wright

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  Edited by David G. Hartwell

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7653-5387-0 ISBN-10: 0-7653-5387-3

  First Edition: November 2006

  First Mass Market Edition: July 2007

  Printed in the United States of America

  0987654321

  For my mother, in memory of all the chaos

  I created in my youth.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments ix

  Dramatis Personae xi

  1 Interlude with Amelia 1

  2 Paper, Scissors, Rock 17

  3 Circuitous Acts 29

  4 Blackmail 53

  5 The Cold Stars Turn 68

  6 The Barrow Mound 85

  7 The Kissing Well 105

  8 Talismans of Chaos 122

  9 Wings 139

  1O Waters 154

  11 Talon, Tooth, and Nail 177

  12 North by Northwest 192

  13 Freedom and Flight 210

  14 The Crossing 228

  15 Blind Spots 249

  16 Remember Next Time Not to Look 266

  17 The Ire of the Heavens 280

  18 Festive Days on the Slopes of Vesuvius 296

  19 The Fury of the Deep 319

  20 Dies Not, nor Grows Old All Her Days 343

  Acknowledgments

  The translations of Herodotus used herein are based on the work of G. C. Macaulay, J. C. Wright, S.

  Felberbaum, and G. Rawlinson. Any errors or omissions are strictly the author's. The translation of Hesiod is taken from H. G. Evelyn-White.

  Dramatis Personae

  The Students

  (Primus) Victor Invictus Triumph • Damnameneus of the

  Telchine (Secunda) Amelia Armstrong Windrose • Phaethusa,

  Daughter of Helion and Neaera of Myriagon (Tertia) Vanity Bonfire Fair • Nausicaa, Daughter of Alcinuous and Arete (Quartinus) Colin Iblis mac FirBolg • Phobetor, son of Morpheus and Nepenthe Quentin Nemo • Eidotheia, child of Proteus and the Graeae The Staff

  Headmaster Reginald Boggin • Boreas, of the North Wind

  Dr. Ananias Fell • Telemus, Cyclopes

  Mrs. Jenny Wren • Erichtho the Witch

  Miss Christabel Daw • Thelxiepia the Siren

  Grendel Glum • Grendel, son of Echidna

  Dr. Miles Drinkwater • Mestor of Atlantis

  Taffy ap Cymru • Laverna, Lady of Fraud

  The Olympians

  Lord Terminus • Zeus

  The Great Queen, Lady Basilissa • Hera

  Lord Pelagaeus, also called the Earthshaker • Poseidon

  The Grain Mother • Demeter

  Lord Dis, also called the Unseen One • Hades

  The Maiden, also called Kore • Proserpine

  Phoebus the Bright God, also called the Destroyer •

  Apollo Phoebe, also called the Huntress • Artemis Lord Mavors • Ares Lady Cyprian • Aphrodite Trismegistus • Hermes Tritogenia, also called Lady Wisdom • Athena Mulciber • Hephaestus Lady Hestia Lord Anacreon, also called Lord Vintner and the Vine God • Dionysus

  1.

  I was dead for about half a day.

  There was still a "me," a girl who woke up in the infirmary, but she only had my memories dated earlier than a fortnight ago. She was a suspicious girl, yes, and she knew her elders were up to something, and she was pretty sure she was not a human being.

  But the last two weeks had never been, so she had never crawled through impossible secret passages with Vanity, never flown with Quentin, never seen the Old Gods sitting at their revelry at the meeting of the Board of Visitors and Governors, or learned the horrid tale of the Lamia. She never heard the ringing in a locked safe of the hypersphere shaking from the shock of the music of a siren. She never had a pancake fight with Colin on a morning when all the staff slept, the first day we ever made our own food for ourselves; she never followed Victor into the woods, walked across a snowy landscape that could not be the Gower Peninsula, and never saw a white ship from beyond the edge of the world.

  I do not know what it was that happened during those events or during the imprisonment that followed. I cannot point to the moment.

  But something had changed me. Amelia was a girl involved in playing an elaborate prank on her elders, keep-ing secrets from them, trying to find out about her past; serious, yes, but still a prank. She was doing it more to please Victor than for herself. Amelia occupied only the three normal dimensions, like everyone else.

  Phaethusa was a woman involved in a war.

  It was Amelia who woke up in the infirmary.

  2.

  Amelia spent about an hour simply lying in her bed in the infirmary while a thin and severe Doctor Fell and an equally severe Sister Twitchett fretted over her, took her temperature, bent their heads together over charts.

  Finally Dr. Fell said, "The medications I have been giving you once a month are for some reason ineffective. Are you certain you have been taking the doses as prescribed?"

  Amelia tried to hide her dread. Of course she had not been taking those damned medications. Victor did not want her to.

  She said, "But, of course, Doctor. You know what's best."

  "Znf I I also know you do not believe that. You have reached that unfortunate age where you have all of life's answers and you know everything more perfectly and more profoundly than your elders. But you are a bright girl; you get good marks in math. If I am 3.4375 times your age, and not cognitively deficient, surely I have 3.4375 times your experience and knowledge?"

  She blinked up at him. "I am sure I don't know, Doctor. How old am I?"

  "Sixteen. Now get up. The Sister will bring you your clothes. Obey instructions in the future or you will find yourself in this place again, or perhaps in someplace worse."

  3.

  Amelia saw two things that struck her as slightly peculiar and "sensed" one thing that was so very peculiar as to be without any sane explanation. Did she ask questions? Did she ask Dr. Fell for help? She did not.

  Amelia might have been a child, but she was not a stupid one.

  The first odd thing she saw, through the disinfectant plastic drapes hanging around her bed, and through a crack in the open door to the waiting room, was Sister Twitchett, carefully examining the pockets and inner lining of the skirt and blouse she had gotten from Amelia's room. She had an instrument shaped like a horseshoe (a metal detector?), and she was rubbing it slowly up and down the seams. With her other hand, the Sister was feeling every inch of seam with her fingers, looking for irregularities in texture.

  While Amelia watched, Sister Twitchett pulled a lump of fabric about the size of a walnut out of Amelia's skirt pocket. It looked like a ribbon or sash that had been knotted and reknotted into a snarl. Twitchett picked at it disinterestedly and, when she could not get it open, shrugged and replaced it in the pocket.

&
nbsp; Amelia wondered, Why are they searching my clothes? Nosy grown-ups.

  Amelia hurriedly lay down and composed her best innocent face as Twitchett came bustling through the door with the school uniform draped over one arm.

  "And remember to put on the necktie!" ordered the Sister.

  Amelia grimaced.

  4.

  The other patient in the infirmary had his hand wrapped in a bandage, and his little finger was clamped in a tiny banana-shaped tube of metal. He was a dark-haired man with sad, tired eyes. The second odd thing Amelia saw was that the man hesitated before introducing himself, as if he had forgotten his own name for a moment. His name was Miles Drinkwater, the new civics teacher. In the spring, he would serve as a coach for a swimming team to be formed. He had hurt himself, naturally enough, swimming.

  "I was out of my depth, Miss Windrose," he said.

  Amelia thought she detected a slight accent in his voice, as if he perhaps were Italian or Greek, despite his English up-country name.

  But what was that look of fear in his eye? Teenagers can sense fear like dogs, and Amelia somehow knew that she intimidated Mr. Drinkwater.

  She thought she knew why. Amelia, it must be recalled, was a little proud about her good looks, which she had wished upon herself in youth by staring into a mirror. So Amelia made a point of holding his hand a bit too long when shaking hands, and standing half a step too close, and dropping her eyelids shyly, toying with her richly hated necktie, and doing the little bits of stage business she thought of as "Vanity stuff."

  Mr. Drinkwater did seem mildly taken aback, puzzled, and then amused. As if he had been locked in a cage with a raging lioness, only to discover her to be a circus animal, quite tame, doing gentle children's tricks, balancing on balls or leaping hoops or something. He visibly relaxed.

  It was the opposite of the expected reaction. Amelia did not know what she did wrong, but she knew she did not do "Vanity stuff" as well as Vanity did. Vamping takes practice, and Amelia (usually) thought such tricks were beneath her.

  Humiliating.

  Amelia thanked the new teacher, was excused, and walked down the corridor away from the infirmary.

  She did not bother swaying her hips or darting coy glances over her shoulder back at him. She knew already that she had endangered her grade from Mr. Drinkwater for that quarter, and she had not attended a single lecture yet. Great, just great.

  It was just one of the little arbitrary things that can ruin a young girl's morning. Adults forget what it is like not to be able just to shrug things off, not to have any of the important things in your life under your own control.

  5.

  Outside, Amelia leaned against one of the leafless trees lining the carriage circle before the main house. It was a spot she liked, out of direct line of sight of any windows either from the Manor House or the Great Hall.

  She shrugged one shoulder out of her coat, rolled up her sleeve. Amelia rubbed her upper arm and stared at it. She saw nothing out of the ordinary.

  And yet, clear and persistent, there was a sensation coming from her upper arm. Not just a sensation, but an emotion. Her arm liked her. Her arm was friendly. A warm, tail-wagging, puppy-like, unabashed friendliness radiated from one motionless spot above her elbow.

  6.

  Vanity was overjoyed to see her; the two girls met with hugs and little hopping dances of joy. "I didn't have anyone to talk to for a week! It gave me the screaming meemies!"

  Vanity had apparently suffered a bout of pneumonia, as well, but recovered four days ago. The only odd thing about her recovery was that Dr. Fell had prescribed "alternative medicine" for her. Instead of just being injected with some drug, Vanity had spent a day drinking odd herbal tea and sniffing candles of incenses concocted by Mrs. Wren ("aromatherapy") and listening to Miss Daw play her wonderful lilting violin ("music therapy"). It was odd, but it seemed to work, for Vanity felt refreshed and content afterwards.

  "I think it was just that I got out of classes for a day! Of course I felt better!" Vanity exclaimed, giggling.

  Amelia said, "Have you ever had a body part of yours feel… well… friendly?"

  Vanity's huge green eyes glittered. "Colin has. Let me tell you the filthy thing he said about his you-know-what. We're sitting in seminar, and he's holding his pencil in his pocket, and poking up the front of his trousers every time Miss Daw walks by. You know. So his zipper is like… You know!

  Looks like it's throbbing. I couldn't keep from giggling. So Miss Daw spots him. He says, bold as brass,

  'Why, Miss Daw, I find lectures about high-energy physics to be most exciting! And my fellow student, Mr. Lovejoy…'"

  Amelia stood up and stared out the window. Outside, moving with slow, painful hops among the dry bushes and the leafless trees, trying to push a wheelbarrow, was Mr. Glum, the groundskeeper.

  "What happened to the groundskeeper… ?" asked Amelia in a voice of horror.

  Vanity said, "Chopped his own foot off with an axe or something. Pretty clumsy, if you ask me. I say he deserves it. Filthy old man. He's always giving me such looks!"

  Amelia said quietly, "You're a horrible person, Vanity. Pitiless and cruel. Go away and leave me alone."

  "Well, what's wrong with you? He is a dirty old man! Is something wrong with you?"

  "I suppose there is. I don't want to talk to you just now. Go away."

  Vanity's lip trembled, and she ran off, tears in her eyes. It was just one of the little arbitrary things that can ruin a young girl's morning.

  7.

  Amelia had Miss Daw for astronomy that morning. She could not shake the feeling that there was something odd about Miss Daw. Every now and again she was staring at Amelia, and her normally cool, china-doll-perfect looks were shadowed with a hint of emotion. Sorrow? Fear? Amelia did not know what to make of that; perhaps Miss Daw was afraid of catching pneumonia.

  Later, in second-period language tutorial, Mrs. Wren had them translating passages from Book IV of Herodotus, the one called Melpomene.

  Vanity read: " Many battles were fought, and the Scythians gained no advantage, until at last one of them thus addressed the remainder:"

  Amelia read: " What a thing is this that we are doing, Scythian men! We are fighting against our own slaves, and we are not only becoming fewer in number ourselves by falling in battle, but also we are killing them, and so we shall have fewer to rule over in future"

  Colin read slowly: " Now therefore to me best it seems spears on the one hand and bows to drop; to take, on the other hand, everyone the horse the whip, sorry Mrs. Wren, I mean his horsewhip, and to go near self? Um, Himself to go near? Lemme try again, Teacher: It seems best to drop the spears and bows and take up every man his horsewhip, and go near the foe and get like right up in his face, and open up an industrial-strength can of whup—"

  Mrs. Wren said, "A little less license with the translation, please, Mr. mac FirBolg."

  Victor also read slowly, puzzling out the Greek declensions. Or perhaps he was interested in what the passage said: " For, while they were seeing we had arms, then they considered they were similar to us, and born of similars, but whenever they see for themselves we have whips instead of arms, having learned that they are our bonds-men and admitted that, they will not abide our onset."

  "On the other hand, Mr. Triumph, you need to take more license. The thought in the original Greek is fluid and logical: the language in many ways superior to our English. Try to capture some of that elusive grace. For example, not born of equals would have been better than born of similars "

  Quentin, the best student in Greek, sight-translated without sparing a glance at his lexicon: " The Scythians followed this counsel, and the slaves were so astounded that they forgot to fight, and immediately ran away."

  In the seminar discussion afterwards, Amelia made good points, for which the teacher praised her. "The decision of the Scythians was not based on morality; it was economic. No matter what his values or his philosophy, a man who fights h
is own slaves during a rebellion suffers an economic loss. Whichever slave owner damages his slaves the least gains the advantage."

  It was Quentin who said, "Notice that the bonds involved were not physical, but spiritual."

  For third period, they had to don cap and gown to attend Headmaster Boggin's philosophy lecture.

  The Headmaster was in a more relaxed mood than was his wont, and he plied his lecture on Kant's Prolegomena with many digressions; and he darted sudden questions to the startled students. One question led to another, and eventually Boggin left the lectern, drew up a chair, and turned the class into a round-table seminar. He seemed particularly gracious, almost charming, whenever he spoke to Vanity or Amelia.

  "Mr. Triumph, you seem, may I say, unduly critical of the Great Father of Modern Philosophy! What in general seems so to annoy you?"

  Victor answered, unabashed, "If you will forgive me, Headmaster, I prefer our own English philosophers to these German metaphysicians. Hobbes spent his first sixteen chapters defining his terms. In Kant, I do not see one single definition at any point. Kant speaks of moral imperatives so abstract that a man is defined as 'immoral' if he takes any pleasure or gets any reward for following moral law; Hobbes speaks of the fear of violent death at the hands of others, and recommends a very logical strategy for avoiding that danger, i.e., combination with those in like danger with yourself. The rewards he offers are immediate and practical: peace; commerce by land and sea; letters; mechanics; agriculture; and the prospect of living a life which is rich, companionable, refined, civil, and long."

  "Mr. Triumph, some would say these German metaphysicians offer an almost religious motive to fight on at any cost. If you seek no reward and fear no loss, nothing can deter you. Whereas the cynical common sense of our English Mr. Hobbes would have us submit to any form of tyrant, rather than risk anarchy."

  "Who fights more wisely, Headmaster? The zealot who fights without knowing or caring what he stands to gain or lose, or the free man who knows his home and property and personal safety are at stake?

  Which wars did more damage to the country and the common people, the cynical Wars of the Roses, or the idealistic Thirty Years' War? Forgive me if I prefer the practical to the…"