The Last Plutarch Read online

  “Gotchas?” someone asked.

  “Winged things. Half-demon, half-beast. Those big birds in the sky beyond the Fog? Those are their grandchildren. The real Gotchas scoop you up when no one’s looking–and without the man in front of you hearing a thing. They won’t take you if you’ve been blessed proper though. That’s why a Priest always blesses us before we leave the Fog.”

  There was a stir among the recruits.

  “Where’s our Priest?” a nervous voice inquired.

  “Oh, they don’t bless you until you earn your fogplate,” the legionnaire said.

  “He’s just trying to spook us. Never heard of no ‘Gotchas,’” Dominus said.

  “And you’re an expert, are you? Well step right up, fogbreath. I bet there’s some out there right now, just watching and waiting,” the legionnaire said, smiling. Dominus scowled and looked away.

  An Instructor arrived from further along the wall, a man named Boson. Short, barrel-chested, brown hair, arms like tree-trunks. His face looked like it had won a contest with a brick.

  “We’re going out,” he announced.

  Boson put a knee in the prayer-circle, muttered an incantation, and made the Sign of Fealty. One section of the perimeter-wall peeled aside like liquid putty, leaving a ten-foot breach. Fear choked Meric. Only the thinnest patch of Fog stood between himself and the outside world. He’d never left Panchaea. He’d fantasized about it as a child, but he could summon only terror now. The recruits were shouted into two lines.

  “Anyone may go inside at any time–but if you do, don’t come back,” Boson said. He turned and marched into the world beyond. Meric swallowed in a dry throat as the perimeter-wall slid past overhead…

  Godsblood, it’s really happening.

  Beyond the wall, the Fog all but disappeared. A grassy clearing surrounded the city, stretching a kilometer to the forest. The sky opened up, vast beyond knowing. Meric could see further than he’d ever seen in his life. He felt instantly and utterly exposed to every imaginable threat. And it was so bright. In Panchaea, the Fog scattered the light, softening shadows. Here the division was intense. Meric’s ears were ringing. An indefinable pressure was lifted, as though something had been squeezing his body all his life and was only now letting up.

  “Holy blood of God,” Dominus whispered. He began to laugh, of all things.

  “What’s happening?” a recruit shouted, examining his arms as though he’d never seen them.

  “You’ve been moving through the Fog all your lives. It pushes against you as you push against it. The air is thinner outside the city,” Boson said.

  It was a queer feeling. Meric laughed; a crazed, high-pitched outburst. The pressure of the Fog had been replaced by chaotic shifts in the air.

  Wind.

  He knew the word, but he’d never felt it–not like this. It ripped across the clearing in tempestuous gusts. The Plutarchs didn’t allow inclement weather in Panchaea. The tide of new sensations was overwhelming. Panic rose. A man ahead of Meric turned and bolted into the city.

  “That’s right, run back and suckle your matron’s teat. No shame in cowardice–no more than a decade’s worth,” Boson said.

  “The sun!” a recruit yelled, frantic. He was gazing in horror at the light bathing his hands. Meric tried to shield his skin with his shirt. More recruits broke and ran. One screamed as though a demon were on his heels.

  “Oh no, I forgot the protective gear,” Boson mocked. “Think again. The sun won’t burn you for hours, and sun-madness takes much longer to set in. Months or even years. Listen–I want groups of five. Now.”

  The recruits broke into groups. Meric and Dominus joined Athos and Harris, two neighborhood friends.

  “Mind if I join you folks?” a man asked. He was short and wiry with a dark complexion, almost unnaturally calm.

  “Don’t see why not,” Meric said.

  “Avigon,” the stranger said, falling in. The others introduced themselves.

  Boson turned toward the distant tree-line.

  “Twenty practice blades are waiting just inside those trees,” the Instructor said. “Each group is to retrieve one and only one blade. Do not go further than three meters into those trees, or anywhere these turrets cannot see you.”

  Boson pointed behind him at the nearest turret. The barrel loomed silent and ominous atop the perimeter-wall. The trees seemed impossibly distant.

  “You will be timed,” Boson said. A whistle blew.

  They ran.

  A great bird circled. Meric was pretty sure “Gotchas” didn’t exist, but other demons surely roamed the Wildlands–demons even a savage would fear. Ahead, Athos slowed with a moan, his eyes on the bird.

  “Keep going,” Meric shouted, shoving him forward. Exhilaration competed with terror. Each step took him further into the world than he’d ever been. What would Reed say? Toward the edge of the clearing, the recruits slowed. No one had ever seen trees so close. Swan would’ve relished the sight. There was an astonishing amount of movement in the branches. Every leaf shifted with the slightest breeze. Things had always looked still from the distance. The forest possessed a life of its own, wild and mysterious and fraught with hidden menace.

  “What about savages?” Athos whispered.

  “Don’t reckon they’d be this close to Panchaea,” Dominus said quietly.

  “This close? We’re pretty fogging far out, in case you haven’t noticed,” Athos said.

  Behind them, the massive gray cloud of Panchaea was shockingly distant. To the southeast, beyond the city, the Obelisk was visible. A towering white pinnacle with a pyramidal point, it had been built by ancient savages for an unknown purpose. Inside Panchaea, one could see its silhouette only at the edge of the southeastern fields.

  “We’re barely a step into the Wildlands,” Dominus told Athos. “Besides, you heard what Boson said. Stay where the turrets can see you. Why do you think that is? They’re covering us. If a savage leaps–bam! Dead before they land. You ever see one of those turrets fire?”

  “I’ve seen ‘em. They got beams red as a demon’s eyes,” said Harris, a big man with a shaven head, nodding fervently.

  “Wrong, fog-breath. The beam is invisible. I’ve seen them shoot. Saw it once during harvest. The air gets fuzzy-like. You can feel the heat from ten steps away.”

  “What’d it shoot at?” Athos asked.

  “Something at the edge of the clearing.”

  “You mean where we are?”

  “We’re wasting time,” Meric said.

  “Agreed. The Plutarchs honor the brave,” Avigon said.

  Meric started forward. He couldn’t wait any longer. The trees made him nervous, but the exposure was even worse. He couldn’t shake the feeling that someone or something was watching him. He passed the first tree. The others followed. It was surreal, the leaves overhead, the branches cracking underfoot. Swan had to hear about this. Strange sounds enveloped him–high-pitched whistles, distant calls. Beasts or demons or both. Something small and brown exploded through the leaves on a high branch, scurrying into another tree.

  “Godsblood, what was that?” Harris asked.

  “Do I look like a beastmaster?” Dominus asked.

  “Find the blade,” Avigon said.

  Meric searched the foliage. Athos was trembling, barely under the outmost branches. Harris was a step further out, frozen with fear. A sudden burst of rustling and chirping saw five small birds take flight from the branches above. Harris bolted with a moan, legs pumping like pistons.

  “We’ve lost someone,” Avigon said.

  “Bloody birds are no bigger than my hand,” Dominus said, though he too had flinched.

  “Could be poisonous,” Athos whispered, looking up.

  “There!” Meric said.

  A practice blade was thrust into the ground behind a low-hanging branch. He pulled it free, a triumphant gleam in his eye. He glanced up into the forest–and froze. Deep in a shadowy recess of a tree, a pair of eyes stared back. H
uman eyes. Wide and green and predatory. They melded into the depths of the foliage. Meric swallowed. The eyes held him entranced. Nothing else in the face was visible. He blinked. The eyes were gone.

  “Well done,” Avigon said.

  “There was … There was…” Meric stammered, pointing vaguely.

  “Let’s go, for Marthuk’s sake,” Athos said, urging him toward Panchaea. Meric glanced back. Had he imagined it? No. Someone was out there.

  They were the third group to return to Boson with a blade. They gave their names to a record-keeper and caught their breath as the others returned.

  “Someone’s out there, patruus,” Meric said. Patruus meant “uncle,” the semi-formal honorific for one’s superiors.

  “Eh? What did you see?” Boson asked.

  Meric told him.

  Boson grunted. It wasn’t until everyone had returned that he commented. Twenty-plus recruits had fled into the city. Some had never left the perimeter-wall. Boson gathered the remainder around himself.

  “One among you has seen his first savage,” he announced, gripping Meric’s shoulder.

  There were murmurs among the recruits.

  “He didn’t attack you?” someone asked Meric.

  “What makes you think it was a he?” Boson asked.

  Frowns. Confusion.

  “The savages have women warriors too. And this one didn’t attack because they were there to watch. They’ve learned the hard way that the clearing is off-limits. But they do watch us–oh yes. I had a feeling one might be out there. The bastards blend in so well you could almost step on their toes before you see them. You’ll be training outside, so stay alert.”

  “What if we run into one, patruus?” Athos asked.

  “I’m not worried about that.”

  “Why not, patruus?”

  “Look around you–I’ve got plenty of replacements.”

  Not everyone returned the next day. Athos was among the absentees. Meric and Dominus had met him at a spirithouse that night, where’d he’d informed them of his intent.

  “Out there all the time? All that open space? My nerves just can’t take it,” Athos said.

  “I’m sure we’d get used to it,” Dominus said.

  “I’d rather get used to this.”

  Grinning, he raised a mug.

  “You boys enjoy yourselves though. Think of me when you’re scared fogless in the Wildlands. I’ll be warming my blood with the wild brats of Goshu Dius!”

  Each day the recruits were whittled away. The Instructors tested their bravery, their loyalty, their willingness ability to obey. Meric’s group was cut in half. They merged with another group and were whittled down yet again. Meric was worried Dominus might have a problem with the loyalty test. He was painfully irreverent when he spoke of the Plutarchs–always a source of friction in their friendship.

  “They’ve got their place and we’ve got ours. That’s all there is to it. Am I to worship the Plutarchs because they were born lucky?” Dominus had asked him once.

  “They weren’t lucky. God chose them to speak to the Fog,” Meric had said.

  “Which makes them lucky. How else was that ‘choice’ made? Did they cry less as infants? If I’d done that, would I live in a floating palace? No. I was born to a Plebian, so I’ll always be a Plebian.”

  “We can’t know the mind of God,” Meric had said–albeit quietly, because his secret desire, his fantasy of being a Plutarch, had been brought uncomfortably close to the surface.

  “Yeah, well you know what else the Priests say? ‘The created reflects the creator.’ That means God’s mind is all around us. And do you know what that says about Him? It says, ‘God loves to gamble.’ He gambles with our lives all the time, from the moment we’re born. Better yet, He gives us each our own set of dice, sticks them right in our heads, and we just keep on rolling them, even when we try not to.”

  “How can you say such things? You’ll shadow Marthuk.”

  “Wrong, Meric. Because I still know who’s in charge–and I’m not dumb enough to go against them. I’ve never seen God floating through the Fog, but of the Plutarchs I’ve seen plenty. You, you’re different. You actually love those cloud-hopping bastards. I obey for a different reason–I understand them.”

  Meric had barely spoken to Dominus for three days after that conversation. He’d been infuriated, offended, and somewhat scared for his friend. But once again Dominus had gone unscathed for his blasphemy.

  He passed the loyalty test as well.

  *

  After his own loyalty test, Meric went to try Swan again. It seemed like forever since he’d talked to her, and he still didn’t know why she was being so elusive. Reaching her house, he paused. He was steeling himself for resistance when Swan’s mother opened the door.

  “Matron Pelius–” he began.

  “She’s not here, Meric,” she said.

  “Oh. Where is she?”

  Swan’s mother pursed her lips in a tight smile, but there was pain behind it. Her eyes began to water.

  “She’s … been honored,” she said, her voice breaking.

  “Honored?” Meric asked. Something twisted in his stomach.

  “Yes,” she said, blinking rapidly.

  “What–”

  “Let him in, Nycenea,” Swan’s father growled from a higher floor. Absorbed in some personal battle, the Matron Pelius stepped aside.

  Swan’s father was in Swan’s room. That in itself was alarming. The man had always been remote and vaguely intimidating. Now he was sitting in a chair, his elbows on his knees, holding a child’s white dress. His eyes were glazed. The children of Goshu Dius had a hold on him. He was very still–except for his fingers, which moved gently over the dress.

  “I heard you answered the Calling,” he said, following a heavy silence.

  “I did,” said Meric.

  “I fought for the Plutarchs once,” Patron Pelius said. His grip on the dress tensed. His hands trembled. He relaxed them, sighing. Meric waited, incapable of broaching the one subject he’d come to ask about.

  “Swan wore this dress on Giving Day. She was five or six. I should’ve offered it at the Temple afterwards, gotten something we needed in return. I knew she’d outgrow it. But she begged me to keep it. She kept it all these years. And I allowed her to. Why did I do that?”

  He looked up at Meric, or through Meric, puzzled.

  “Patron Pelius, where is Swan?” Meric asked.

  “Where indeed. You were close. You have a right to know. Nycenea says it’s an honor. That’s what they told us, so that’s what she tries to believe. But I don’t see any honor in it. Not one bit. Not one scrap.”

  Meric stared at him.

  “He saw her in the fields. When she came back, her dress was torn. She wouldn’t tell me what happened, but she was different after that. Scared. Jumpy. Why would she be scared unless it was something bad? She knew he would come back. But what could I do? Who am I to stand in their way? Power corrupts, Meric. The servants of God are men after all.”

  “What are you saying?” Meric whispered.

  The Patron looked at Meric, and his eyes blazed with fury.

  “She’s gone,” he said, and cold dread washed over Meric. “They took her. Up there. To their goddamn floating palaces. To their goddamn–”

  His last words were drowned out by the crash of a dresser, which he kicked violently aside as he sprang from the chair. Chest heaving, he stared at the wreckage with a rigidity as abrupt as the movement.

  “The Plutarchs took her?” Meric breathed.

  “Not the Plutarchs. A Plutarch. That curly-headed youth,” Patron Pelius said quietly. “Youth? No. He hasn’t aged in decades. The one always playing tricks at festivals. Gallatius.”

  CHAPTER 5

  “They’ll be showered with gifts,” Dominus said.

  He was sitting with Meric at the spirithouse on Market Ave. Meric couldn’t remember leaving Swan’s farm. He felt dazed.

  “Showered
?” he asked absently, swirling his mug.

  “Oh yes. For months. Then it’ll slow down, and there will only be an annual gift. Ration tokens, status goods, fashionable things. Messages about how happy she is up there in the clouds. It makes it easier to accept. To forget. For some,” Dominus said, staring darkly into his drink. He threw it back and blinked hard as the spirits invaded his body. Meric stared at him…

  Of course. Dominus would know.

  How foolish he’d been not to think of it. Dominus’s sister Desi had gone to stay with the Plutarchs when she was ten. Stay–as in permanently. The event was ingrained into their personal histories, yet so singular that he hadn’t connected it with Swan’s disappearance. Plebians were sometimes “invited” to live in the floating palaces. It was a rare honor. Only the purest and most comely were considered. And who would dare refuse? Who knew what calamity a rejection might inspire? Those who Spoke to the Fog were not to be denied. Besides, who wouldn’t want to live in the clouds?

  Anyone who wants to see their family again, thought Meric, because those who left for high places were rarely again seen in the low. This, undoubtedly, was what had happened to Swan. Gallatius had espied her in the strawberry fields. He’d sensed her purity. He’d judged her worthy of a higher calling. And he’d taken her to fulfill that purpose.

  Why had she been afraid?

  “I must not be angry. She’s serving the Plutarchs,” Meric muttered. He was talking to himself, but Dominus overheard.

  “Still? You still think they’re the dawn’s own light, don’t you? They stole her, Meric. Just as they stole Desi.”

  “They’re carrying out God’s Will. We have no right to judge them,” Meric said angrily. He needed to believe Swan was called away for something good. He needed to believe it was justified. If not, the whole world would break.

  “Why? Because they have power over us? Because they were born in the clouds and we in the dirt? They’re people, Meric, and people can make mistakes. People can be greedy. People can want things–and what a Plutarch wants, a Plutarch takes.”

  “Swan is too pure to work in the fields. That’s why they took her. She’ll have a better life in the clouds, a higher calling,” Meric said. He was grinding his teeth, leaning over his elbows on the countertop. He couldn’t stand the whisper of doubt that echoed Dominus’s words.