John Wright - Fugitives of Chaos

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.

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.