world around with it, so that Minos drifted away to the left and the striking cobalt of the sea filled their eyes. Coya could see a hint of an island chain to the far east, little more than hummocks of rock extending south-east in the direction of Salina. He imagined the loose collection of islands beyond Salina, stretching all the way to distant Khos at its easternmost point over six hundred laqs from where they were now; the archipelago of the Free Ports and of the democras, people without rulers.
Along with the egalitarian participos of Minos and Coros and Salina, if you took the time to travel the Mercian Isles, you could come across islands that elected councils by lottery and believed in no personal possessions at all, or were based on administrative matriarchies of the old tradition, with simple cottage industries and tightly controlled tariffs on trade, or were free-for-all enclaves like those of Coraxa, fierce individualists living in loose tribes and scattered communities. Even distant mighty Khos was represented in the League, where the last vestige of Mercian nobility, the Michinè, had somehow held onto power following the sweeping years of revolution over a century before – albeit aided by many concessions to the people, and by endless centuries of sieges and invasions that had made the Khosians, as a nation, mutually reliant on those who paid and maintained much of their defences.
The varied democras of the Free Ports, based on the dreams of a political prisoner who had died centuries previously – a philosopher whose blood was running through Coya’s veins even as he thought of him now – were the same only in that they shared the common ideals of the League constitution, at least in principle if not always in action, and that they were all part of this unique experiment in rule by the people. It was hardly a utopia they had created here. No one and nothing was ever going to be perfect. But perfect or not, they had fought for a free and fair way of living, without slavery or exploitation of others, and on most islands they had achieved some working approximations of it.
And now this speculation of invasion, ringing in his mind day and night, a jangly disjointed series of anxieties and teetering hopes. It was hard to think of anything else just now. Only last night, Coya had experienced a dream that had caused him to awake in a shaking, sweaty panic.
In his dream, he had imagined the imperial capital of Q’os as a monstrous quivering thing pulsating at the absolute heart of Mann. Its tendrils had flowed outwards across the world of humans in the form of self-fulfilling credence, reaching deep into the minds of people as they slept, and even more so when they were awake; whispers upon whispers that told how life was a vicious competition and nothing more, how human worth was to be found only in those measurable effects of status and materials either gained or given, how man must prey always on man, how those who would be free must first of all enslave. In his dream, the whispers had flowed never-ending until it was all the listeners could do but believe in the words and follow them, and their neighbours the same, and their neighbour’s neighbours, so that the needs of the monstrosity were pulsing through them all, and they were inflating with the ugly power of it, becoming the words themselves and making of them a reality – and all the while the monster gorged, and the world itself grew crazed and barren.
All his life, Coya had loathed and feared the tyranny of Mann. And now this impending invasion, these Mannian fleets heading straight for the people of the League with their intentions of conquest; causing him nightmares in the coldest hours of the night.
‘There’s another matter I must raise with you,’ Creed announced, stirring from his own musings. ‘Something I can only discuss in person.’
‘Oh?’
‘If I’m right, and the Mannians invade Khos rather than Minos, then full martial law and all its powers will fall into my hands. I want your people in the Few to know that I will use that power only as intended, in the defence of Khos. Nothing more.’
‘Really, Marsalas. Not here.’
‘Then where else? Time is short. I need the Few to know that I harbour no plans of becoming a dictator.’
Coya shook his head. ‘I would not have supposed it, anyway. Still—’ Coya faltered, his