Tower of Mud and Straw Read online

  Tower of Mud and Straw

  by

  Yaroslav Barsukov

  ISBN: 978-1-64076-189-6 (e-book)

  ISBN: 978-1-64076-190-2 (paperback)

  from

  Metaphorosis Publishing

  Neskowin

  Table of Contents

  Tower of Mud and Straw PROLOGUE

  I. THE DUCHY

  II. THE ADVERSARY

  III. THE TULIPS

  IV. THE TOWER

  Author's Notes

  Copyright

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  PROLOGUE

  Shea Ashcroft stepped from a carriage into the low-lit cul-de-sac as a mongrel lifted its door knocker of a head from a garbage pile.

  Dogs. They’d taken over the capital a week before. The wind dragged garlands of crushed glass and everyday commodities across the pavement, and the dogs picked out anything they could chew: meat from the decimated butcher’s shops, greens, someone’s shoes.

  Those animals had guts. It was the humans who tended to stay indoors—half of them cursing the one person who’d had the chance to ‘stop the violence at its inception’. Him.

  Three people at the royal court he’d previously considered friends had already advised him to issue an apology. He’d told them to go to hell.

  The hound ran to the middle of the street. It barked and leaped in place, snapping its jaws at something it couldn’t quite reach.

  “Atta boy,” Shea said. “Though that bone’s a bit too big for you.”

  The ‘bone’ hung at the second-story height, the post of a gas lamp stretched like a strut between the opposing buildings, comically, inconceivably. There were reports of looters getting their hands, heaven knew how, on one or two Drakiri devices—tulips, his sister used to call them; his sister, when she was still alive—which reduced the weight of anything they touched to that of paper.

  Apparently, once you were in possession of something like that, you tried to steal a street light—or had it been a refined vandalism, or a weird attempt at a joke? Shea’s gaze grazed the walls for signs of damage.

  “Idiots playing with fire,” he said to the dog. “If only they risked their own lives alone.”

  The dog barked and jumped again, heedless of the rubble beneath its feet.

  Third door on the right, carved oak. Shea pushed on the doorknob and descended the steps into the basement vestibule.

  The valet who took his coat said, “Thank you.”

  He looked vaguely familiar. Square jaws, eyes sunken into crow’s feet.

  “Do I know you?”

  The man didn’t answer, but Shea’s memory did.

  …the crowd, a huge condensed mass of arms, legs, and throats, rolling toward him, and back, back, drive them back, the scent of blood, a lieutenant bending over the balustrade, twisting her body trying to peek into the russet sky—where’s the bloody airship?—then, the great elongated balloon sailing over the terracotta roof tiles.

  Minister, we need your permission to gas the crowd. Snap out of it. Minister. Lord Ashcroft. Shea.

  Hands had touched him, shaken him, poked him, but his vision shrank to a girl, pink dress, huge eyes taking in the world as though for the first time, the world in the airship’s shadow.

  Fall back.

  Minister?

  Fall back…

  The man put his coat on a hanger.

  “You were there,” Shea said. “In the crowd, next to the girl in pink.”

  He nodded. “We’re all alive because of you, Minister.”

  But half of the city lies destroyed—also because of me.

  He wondered why his title still applied.

  Past the inner door was a pocket-size theater, eight or nine rows, six of them empty. Still, a dozen faces—because entertainment had to continue even in times like these, and because, for tiny venues, this was the moment to shine.

  All the big ones lay crippled.

  Shea lowered himself next to a slender man in black gloves. “Weird place for a meeting. You wanted to see me, my lord?”

  “Just Aidan, if you would, my lord. I know we haven’t interacted a lot, but I much prefer my own name.”

  “Why the theater?”

  “To make sure we could talk undeterred.”

  “This week, the street would’ve sufficed,” Shea said.

  “Yes, but it isn’t safe out there this week. I—”

  Applause cut him short. The curtains parted, revealing the scenery: a starry expanse behind something dark and cylindrical. An actor in orange darted onto the stage, doubling up in a bow.

  “Queen Daelyn built a tower, took gold from every man, breast milk from every mother…”

  So it’s about the Owenbeg tower, Shea thought.

  He’d seen the official daguerreotypes—a vast column, more of a growth than a human-made structure—but the details were always blurry and the inscriptions read more like statements. ‘Biggest building in history’—try imagining that.

  Shea half-turned to Aidan. “Another play about the tower?”

  “The construction effort isn’t going well. Something’s happened there. People pick up on rumors.”

  Onstage, the orange man made a leap. “Queen Daelyn sent her servant—to oversee the deed…”

  Another, in a silk jacket, appeared from behind the curtain’s crimson.

  “…the servant wasn’t smart enough—and he got promptly killed,” the first one declared.

  “I heard that rumor, too,” said Shea. “That Daelyn is sending someone from the court there. Poor fellow, whoever that will be.”

  “Actually.” Aidan pointed his finger at the silk-jacketed guy. “Actually, that’s you out there, Shea. May I call you Shea?”

  “What?”

  The woman right in front of them turned her head. “Would you please keep your voices down?”

  “What do you mean, it’s me?” Shea whispered.

  “Nothing official yet,” Aidan said, “but I was told Daelyn would issue the decree tomorrow. You’re to give up your office and become her intendant in Owenbeg. You’ll be overseeing the tower’s construction.”

  “What the hell?!” The woman turned again, and Shea said, “Sorry. What the hell, Aidan?”

  “I told you—something’s happened there, and she needs—”

  “I can defend my every action during the riots. And what’s an intendant, anyway?”

  “The position is relatively new. Honestly, I wouldn’t consider this a punishment, rather an opportunity, and that’s why I wanted to talk to you—”

  He went on, but Shea didn’t listen anymore. People onstage jumped, danced, sang in funny voices. Someone behind laughed in irregular intervals. The woman in the front row produced a hand fan.

  At some point, he simply stood and made his way out.

  “My lord!” Aidan called out, but he continued to the exit.

  Outside, the hound had given up on things it couldn’t reach and gone back to rummaging through the waste heap.

  It seemed like a dream—the slow ride from the city’s edge, unloading baggage that all looked the same. Climbing the pier on which the airship perched.

  A lady with a southern accent she desperately tried to mask told Shea the first-class suite had been taken, but ‘their second class was just as good’. The door she led him to opened into a cabin which resembled a theater prop room, with a couch that stank of sweat, a table, and a vase of flowers overdue for a burial.

  “Would you fancy a drink?” the southern lady asked.

  He said, “I don’t really drink.”

  “Tea, then?”

  “Yes, please.”

  She brought a lone porcelain cup together
with a kettle, ice-cold. Shea had no idea if it was another affront or simple negligence—and, frankly, he didn’t care anymore.

  As the airship slid into a farewell glide over the capital toward where the horizon squeezed the sun of its last drops, he sat and sipped the bland brew. Behind the window, the palace swam by, the Red Hill, the honeycombs of the guard towers’ lights. ‘Consider this an opportunity,’ Aidan had told him.

  “I sure hope, Aidan,” Shea said now, “that you don’t mean suicide.”

  His sister would’ve been proud of him, were she still alive: he could’ve refused the assignment, he could’ve begged. But there was something noble, romantic even, in accepting an unjust punishment. There, I made a decision. I would do it again. I bear the consequences.

  If I am to ensure the tower gets built, he thought, it will be the swiftest and most efficient construction ever.

  And I’ll find a way to return, to get back what they’ve taken from me.

  He raised the cup in a mock salute as the palace swam out of view.

  There goes my life at the capital, Lena, sis, my dear thing. After you passed away, I tried to let go, focus on my career—and look how well that came out.

  Please forgive that I’ve stopped speaking to you. I guess the turning point for me was that reception, when someone asked me who you were, at which point I realized I was talking out loud. They thought I was bonkers, and of course it’s bonkers conversing with an imaginary dead person—but we’re all crazy in some way or another, aren’t we? The trick is figuring who’s at ‘some’ and who’s already at ‘another’.

  I wish I had your strength, and I wish you were here now.

  I. THE DUCHY

  1

  Shea awoke when the ship made a leap toward hell.

  Under the daylight’s varnish, the cabin took a dive, jolted, plunged. Maybe we’re passing through a pocket of air, his brain whispered. Lie still for a minute, it will blow over.

  He tore his hand from the mattress and raised it to his face: the pinky trembled lightly. The next jolt threw him off the couch, and somewhere in the gondola’s bowels, two dozen throats produced a collective sigh.

  Shea was about to join them when a thought sent him into nervous laughter—a fall from grace. Perhaps a literal one this time.

  Well, he refused to go out like that.

  Still buttoning his shirt, he peeked into the corridor. To his right, the door to the luxury suite swung open, spewing a man in a smoking jacket who sized him up and, in a shrill voice, said, “Are we going to die?”

  So, the southern lady didn’t lie—first class really was taken.

  Shea squeezed himself past the guy. “Don’t stand here. Go back to your room and hold on to something.”

  Behind him, the shrill voice repeated, “Are we going to die?”

  “If we are, I’ll let you know.”

  The corridor widened into the dining lounge, pristine white, shards on the floor, cutlery quivering in unison with his own pounding on the bridge door.

  “Skipper? What’s going on?”

  After a good ten seconds, a muffled voice said, “Who is it?”

  “Ashcroft.” A new dive slapped him against the wall.

  The door half-opened, and an acned face appeared in the gap. “Minister?”

  “A former one. Let me in.”

  “Let him in, Jonah,” another voice said.

  The control cabin was more like a slice of a lighthouse’s lantern room than a naval ship’s bridge; four would’ve been a crowd here.

  The captain, wearing an olive dress coat of Owenbeg, their destination, stood at the helm—for Shea, he came across as a collection of unconnected details: a wide nape, a sideburn, a crease on the trousers—and the acned face, probably the first mate, clutched a second wheel.

  “How may I help you, Minister?” said the captain without turning.

  “By telling me what the hell’s going on.”

  “First time in the duchy, I presume?”

  “Me and a bunch of other folks, apparently. The passenger cabins are learning to sing opera right now.”

  “It’s just turbulence.”

  “I know turbulence.” The room made another dance move, and Shea grabbed an iron lever to steady himself.

  “Please let go of that, Minister,” the acne boy said.

  “I know turbulence. This feels like a drunken sailor party.”

  “A bad day today, that’s what it is,” the captain said. “It’s the air. The air hits it, gets pushed in all directions, gains speed. Roughs us up.”

  “The air hits what?”

  “To starboard, Mr. Ashcroft.”

  Still not turning, the captain waved his hand, and Shea looked. Gasped. Took a few uneven steps toward the windscreen.

  Behind it, there was something vast, something dark, a stretch of an evening sky pasted onto midday. To say the tower was colossal was to compare a volcano to a matchstick: it was a mountain’s trunk, freed from the foothills, and the scattering of villages in its shadow could’ve been cardboard toys.

  His responsibility? How could he do anything to it, ensure anything about it?

  “Gosh,” Shea said, “what altitude are we at?”

  “One thousand two hundred feet.”

  “How high is the damn thing?”

  “A thousand, give or take. And I hear they’re planning to put another thousand on top of it—but really, I should ask you that, no?”

  “Pardon?”

  “No fools here, Lord Ashcroft.”

  At that moment, Shea saw himself from the outside: a noble, barging into the bridge, pushing aside a man who’d probably been saving for a year to book a ride in a luxury suite. The tone, the words. Skipper.

  He stretched out his hand. “I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced, Captain.”

  “Liam Salas. Welcome to the border, Minister.”

  “I’m not a—”

  “I wanted you to know—I’d actually planned to visit your cabin before you so gracefully waltzed in—I’m happy you’re here. It’s a difficult subject, of course, politically, but my son was among the protesters.”

  The handshake lasted longer than custom demanded, which was helpful because, otherwise, the next plunge would’ve sent Shea to the floor.

  “I did nothing a normal human being wouldn’t have done,” he said.

  “You would be surprised.”

  “One’s got to suffer from serious empathy issues to use gas on people.”

  “And yet the queen gave the order, didn’t she?”

  The mammoth structure outside grew closer, and Shea squinted. “What are those pink spangles? There, and there. What are those dots?”

  “Oh, that. That’s the tech.”

  “The tech?”

  “Drakiri devices.”

  Shea opened and closed his mouth, and the bridge squeezed around him while memory served up an image of a different room, gray walls, soot stains, chairs with twisted legs, the odor of something unknown, something foreign, and another scent that turned him inside out—of charred flesh. “This is insane. You’re using Drakiri technology to build that thing?”

  “I’m just steering this airship. But yes, the builders use the tech.”

  “Why wasn’t it in the reports?”

  “How should I know? You must ask the duke—or Brielle.”

  “Brielle?”

  “The main engineer.”

  “Why wasn’t it in the reports?” Shea whispered.

  Lena, Lena, look at what they’ve done.

  “I have nothing against Drakiri, or refugees in general,” the captain said. “Half the duchy still curses the day Daelyn’s father granted them a settlement with us, but I think it was about the only thing the old bastard did right.”

  “Mr. Silas, believe me, I have nothing against Drakiri, either. But this…” Shea drummed his knuckle against the windshield. “How long have you been using the, the tech?”

  “Again, you must ask Mis
s Brielle.”

  “Who the hell had the bright idea? … Drakiri stuff is a ticking bomb. I’m talking from experience.”

  They both looked out the window, in silence, at the approaching giant.

  The worst thing is, sis, I don’t always remember your face. Sometimes I see you in a dream, and when I wake up, the details dissolve, dissipate into what the daylight brings: the warmth and the glow and the dust. That’s what makes me, a grown-ass man, bawl—the fact you’re becoming a memory.

  They told me it was all part of the ‘healing’, Lena. Can you believe that?

  2

  A yellow trail extended from the airship pier in a relatively straight line; not a proper road, more like a track plowed in the field by a huge finger. At the end, four carriages waited.

  Shea let the luxury suite guy pick his horse first; the other passengers, in white and brown trousers and dresses, went on foot. Half must’ve spewed their guts an hour before, and faces wore a shade of pale, but the eyes glowed: look at it. Look.

  The tower blocked the sun, throwing a mile-long blanket over the fields, the poplars, and the village cowering at the root of the hill on which the caterpillar of the castle slept. Ants cluttered across the tower’s vertical body, half of them suspended by threads at such height that Shea had to raise his chin. Construction workers. Some crawled in and out of the spots leaking pink glow.

  The thin band at the horizon was the kingdom of Duma, with their perhaps less advanced, but plentiful, aircraft, and his imagination painted a different sky, crimson, ships raining down in fireballs, the tower’s artillery barking. No wonder Daelyn had invested so much into the construction—it was her legacy, the most radical defensive structure ever attempted by man.

  His head swam.

  In a dash of normalcy, a gaunt driver, leaning against the fence in a kind of transfixed state, stared at the people walking past.

  “I’m here,” Shea said. “They didn’t, by any chance, send a welcoming cortege for me?”

  The man shifted his eyes to him. “What?”

  “Did they send a carriage for me from the castle?”