Chapter 55: Vivianne – Chambert
‘I have to find the mage of Lune,’ said Pierre. ‘Do you know where he is?’
Vivianne didn’t know and Pierre excused himself. He stood up, picked up the empty tray and went back to the kitchen. He took his backpack with him and didn’t come back. Vivianne found a broom and removed its handle to use it as a staff so she could walk and look for Rimbaud’s Caravan. She needed to get out of Tuen with Coalim and the other survivors.
Outside the Plume, Tuen slowly opened its eyes. Windows yawned out to the street, the smell of coffee stretched in shreds of vapour, heavy curtains frowned into the white morning. In Lune Vivianne had na old map of Tuen, from a time before the War. The layout of the streets had changed little and she managed to find her way to a square large enough to accommodate Rimbaud’s Caravan, but all she found was a dozen people and a few wagons with sacs full of grains going toward the gate.
Then again, it couldn’t be grain. Not so soon after the winter storms. It was too soon to plant, let a lone harvest, but Vivianne wasn’t interested, so she didn’t pay attention to the wagons. There were other squares and possibly even a park in the original maps of Tuen. Most cities from the Second Empire had parks.
The houses in Tuen were mostly empty and ruined. Vivianne recalled a conversation she had with the Wraith years ago, about the beginning of War, the death of many. He was right: those cities and fortresses were empty.
Tuen had barely changed from its original map. Vivianne wondered if that was normal or a consequence of the War. She busied her mind drawing a virtual map of the city to distract herself from the pain in her leg. With the broom handle she was able to reach the park, but Rimbaud wasn’t there either. The undergrouth (during the Empire there was grass and ornamental plants) still showed where the wagons had been, but the Caravan was gone.
‘If you’re looking for Rimbaud, he’s been gone a while.’
A man said that. He had very dark skin, eyes that popped up from his face, and he wore leather clothes, a sword on his belt. He must be a captain, for a silver medallion shone on his chest, with a frog and a fox sitting together.
‘I am Gaul, captain of Tuen,’ he said. ‘You must be Pierre’s friend. Are you feeling better?’
‘I am, thank you. The Caravan: when did it leave?’ If she managed to find horses for herself, Coalim and the two burnt soldiers…
‘They’re gone four days,’ said Gaul. ‘You can’t reach them anymore. Only the storyteller remained, to Joanna’s good fortune, for she’s never seen the Plume so full. Rimbaud is getting away from Franária. He’s going to Anjário.
‘Come. I’ll walk you back to the Plume. I need to see Pierre.’
‘Pierre is gone,’ she said.
Gaul became tense.
‘Where to?’
‘I think he’s headed back to the Frontier.’
Gaul walked away quickly, then began to run. What did he want with Pierre? It didn’t matter. Vivianne had missed the Caravan. She thought a moment about what she could do. Nothing. Since she could solve no problems, she decided to give in to her desires.
They were cnear Chambert. She had never seen a map of that castle, not even illustrations. She dragged her leg up the street, the pain showing on her face, hands sweating on the imprvised staff.
Vivianne was being imprudent, she needed rest, but she had never seen a castle from the Second Empire before. There were only two of those in Franária: Chambert and the Halls of Snow. She would never see the Halls, home to Fulbert and Margot of Patire, but she was so close to Chambert! And Chambert had been built after Gorgath joined the Empire, bringing all the complexity of their literature to the West. Vivianne might never have another chance.
She followed the map in her head to the bottom of the city wall, where she knew ther must be a stair. Her leg hurt so much that her vision went black at the corners. She leaned her back on the wall and waited for her sight to get back to normal before she began climbing. First one leg up the step, then the other. Good leg, bad leg. The long skirts got on the way. When she got back to the Plume she’d have to find a pair of trousers. Sweat ran down her spine and she breathed hard. Tuen’s wall was one of the highest in Franária. According the Vivianne’s maps, she would have to climb three hundred and fourteen steps to the top.
Eleven… twelve… thirteen. Vivianne had to stop several times to rest. Seventy five… seventy six… Soldiers and civilians passed her by bareli noticing her. A hundred and one… They walked around her like she were a rock without asking any questions. Two hundred. Weird: if anybody started climbing the steps of Lune, someone was bound to ask why. She stopped counting the steps and focused on not fainting from the pain. She used one of the hands to lean on the stairs and nearly crawled her way up the last steps.
The top of the wall was wide and sunny. The inner side was taken by stands with fruit, cakes and gadets. There were also lines where laundry hung to dry. The soldiers moved on the outer side, but there were civilians walking up and down as well. Children played on the crenels, a boy and a girl sat sharing an orange with their legs dangling out of the walls. The whole city had access to the walls, that was why nobody questioned Vivianne’s presence.
She leaned on her broom and crossed to the outer side of the wall. Her heart beat like crazy, she helf her breath. Vivianne was about to see a castle from her dreams. She feared it was ruined, that war, time and negligence had turned it into a rickety shadow of what it once was. Vivianne opened her eyes.
Chambert, a sand coloured castle sprawling on green fields, with walls ten meters high covered in carvings that reminded of dunes, wind, waves. Vivianne couldn’t believe her eyes. While Tuen’s walls crumbled with the bites of time, Chambert’s seemed to have been finished just that morning. Vivianne saw three twoers, all in the Franish style, but, by the size of the walls, Chambert must be at least the size of Tuen, with other towers hiding in the distance.
Vivianne fell in love.
‘The advantage of loving castles is that they can’t be jealous,’ she said once to Clément.
‘Neither can they love you back,’ replied the king of Deran.
Five wagons were crossing the distance from Tuen to Chambert, the same ones Vivianne had seen at the main square before meeting Gaul of Tuen. It those were grain sacs, they needed a mill. Tuen had one but, as far as Vivianne knew, it was moved by sorcery so it probably didn’t work anymore. Chambert was a Scond Empire castle. At the time it was built there was a wave of nostalgia where people romanticized the past and life before Satironese magic. It was common, at the time, to build old gadgets and machines, pre-sorcery mechanisms. The wealthiest castles even built old style mills. Nobody used them, all they did was look pretty in somebody’s backyard, but in theory they worked. Chambert must have on such mills.
Before returning to Lune, Vivianne had to find a way to visit the castle. She narrowed her eyes and thought she saw people manning the walls in Chambert. Was the castle inhabited? As far as she knew, Chambert had the stigma of being cursed. There were a few places like that in Franária, the Rock was one of them. Adelaide always kept locked the door that led to the mountain’s inside. THere were ghosts crying in the mountain’s entrails. Chambert was also famous for being cursed. Some type of magic had to be at work there because it was in better shape than Tuen, which remained inhabited throughout the four hundred years of war.
War, thought Vivianne, with a capital letter.
In spite of the architetonical marvel under her sight, Vivianne wasn’t exultant, not even content. SHe was worried. How to defeat na enemy like that? How to defeat a War?
She noticed a rider leaving the city to the south. It was Gaul of Tuen, riding fast to reach a lonely figure far away walking south with a backpack and a cape.
Gaul was after Pierre. Vivianne, it seems, was not the only one who wanted but wasn’t allowed to leave Tuen and couldn’t.