The Queen of Quill Read online

  Philip Hamm was born in 1965 in Suffolk, England. He went to school in the small town of Framlingham before going to the University of Keele to study English and History for his BA degree and then wrote a thesis on the last works of H.G. Wells for his MA. He has been a teacher and a college lecturer.

  By the author:

  Platinum Mind series

  Frim Folderol’s Short History of the Hundred Year War

  The Karasor series

  Quagga

  Sands of Arroba

  Barnooli’s Circus

  The Queen of Quill

  Philip Hamm

  For the teachers

  All rights reserved © Philip Hamm 2020

  For maps and a full glossary of Evigone go to:

  http://philipmhamm.wix.com/philip-hamm

  Chapters

  1 - Faam’s story

  2 - Nacyon’s story

  3 - The monuments to the Zarktek

  4 - Rimmon’s story

  5 - Zagan’s Ziggurat

  6 - Zizanias’ stories

  7 - The QMM Apus

  8 - Captain Tringa

  9 - Agnatha

  10 - The Quill Royal Navy

  11 - The University of Panadawn

  12 - The death of the King

  13 - The return of the Queen

  14 - Faux-Zizania

  15 - The Golden Eyrie

  16 - Faam and Taylia

  17 – Quillaia and Rani Rhus

  18 - The Holy Nidus

  19 - The rescue

  20 - The return of the Zarktek

  21 - The last voyage of the Cissoid Corindon

  22 - The fall of the Quill

  23 - The end of Zizania’s reign

  24 - The end of the story

  Post-script

  Glossary

  1 - Faam’s story

  “I want to talk about the Quill Empire,” said Faam, her basket-chair creaking as she sat back. “Mostly because you should know about it but also because I had a small part in their more recent history.”

  Her three students nodded but two of them looked less than enthusiastic. Fratris, the nephew of the great historian, Frim Folderol, tried not to yawn. Crotal Cucurbit, the heir to sultanate of Granadilla, merely stared at the bump of her pregnant belly. Only Fengtai, Shogun Penti’s huge bodyguard, bobbed his head up and down happily, his plum-coloured eyes wide with anticipation.

  Fratris, as politely as he could manage, asked, “Do we have to, Professor?”

  “I think it would be useful if you knew more about them...”

  “I’m not supposed to talk about Quill,” said Crotal. “They’re always at war with my people and we don’t like them.”

  “You don’t like them because you don’t understand them,” said Faam. “Besides, their war with the Saron Empire is over.”

  “But Professor,” Fratris said, “What’s the point? They’re completely useless and after your husband’s warship defeated their armada in the Sagan system, they’re not much of a threat anyone anymore, are they?”

  “Don’t you want to know why they attacked the Sagan?”

  Tentatively, he suggested, “They’re idiots...?”

  “They had their reasons,” she insisted.

  “But they’re not important, are they?”

  “Their founding fathers came from the Second Sphere to the Third five thousand years ago; you can still see their statues on Hamose and Redren, the worlds of their original empire, in the north-east of the Third Sphere. And Virgate and Rhizome in the south were first colonised two thousand years later...”

  “That doesn’t make them important – it just makes them old. Can they do anything well?”

  “You’re wearing Quill shoes,” she smiled.

  He looked at his feet as though they’d betrayed him. “But I bought these on Urbino...”

  “They were made on Nandu,” she assured him. “I recognise the style and I expect if you look at the sole, you’ll find a tiny feather-mark embossed into the leather.”

  He hauled his left foot up to look underneath, hoping to prove her wrong, but then his face fell, “You’re right,” he said.

  “I imagine everyone in the Southern Hemisphere has at least one pair of Quill shoes,” she said. “Only the Tun Empire makes more but they’re not as fine or well-made. When I was a student, if you didn’t have the heels from Nandu, the rich girls wouldn’t talk to you. But, no loss there, I think.”

  Crotal asked, “Did you have a pair?”

  “I did - but if anyone judges you on the quality of your footwear, they’re really not worth talking to.”

  Fengtai looked at his rope-soled sandals, “That’s probably a good thing.”

  To the boys, Faam was a higher form of being; not only was she beautiful but she was kind and clever too. Technically, as the wife of the Emperor of Panadawn, she was also an empress, which added a certain gloss. It was inconceivable to them that anyone could look down on somebody so good and the fact she had chosen to be their teacher had raised their opinion of her to a level far above mortal women – a position she had not been entirely comfortable with to begin with since it had resulted in none of them being able to say a complete sentence in her presence. But eventually they had realised, after hours of patient questions, she wasn’t going to have them fried for saying the wrong thing.

  “But apart from shoes,” said Fratris, still determined to argue his case against the Quill Empire and its importance to his general education, “Can they do anything else?”

  “Ceramics,” she answered.

  “Pots...?”

  “Porcelain,” she corrected. “They’re very good at chemistry and they know how to combine the right elements to make the finest china in Evigone.”

  “Pots,” Fratris repeated, thinking it was a great joke.

  She didn’t react but added, “And their knowledge is vital in the production of Pavonine generators; they use ceramics as insulators to keep the charge from escaping.”

  “But we don’t use Pavonine generators...”

  “No,” she agreed. “Your people have to buy your Exarch technology from the Ulupan Empire. But Quill can make their own engines to power their ships across the Third Sphere – that’s a worthy achievement.”

  Crotal said, “But they didn’t invent them, did they, Professor? Saron uses the same technology but we were given the secret by the Zarktek...”

  The word ‘Zarktek’ had a magical effect. Fratris said, “Is this a story about them?”

  “In a way,” she nodded. “Whether by fear or by misguided loyalty, they do come into the story.”

  “I want to know more,” said Fengtai, beaming his big smile.

  Fratris nodded too, “I’ll be quiet – I promise.”

  Only Crotal looked slightly nervous, “It’s not going to be frightening, is it?”

  They were sitting in the shade of a geranium tree on the south side of the Academy of Civilisations, one of the eight islands of the University of Panadawn, separated by canals. Taylia, Faam’s friend and personal bodyguard, was lying on the grass behind her in the bright light of the dome’s artificial illumination. Faam’s first-born was in his cot closer to the tree, sleeping peacefully.

  A hundred metres away, other and older students were making their way to lectures in the theatres under the academy’s exhibition halls. There were visitors walking along the central avenue across the canal, between the two rows of university buildings, some going towards the library or the senate and the rest heading towards the other academies. But the corner of lawn where she was sitting with her tutees was quiet.

  Faam had never taught boys before. Fratris and Crotal were in their teens and at that age when everything was either boring or confusing. S
he had no idea how old Fengtai was but if he hadn’t been so big, it was easy to think he wasn’t much older than the boys. He had spent most of his life as a fisherman’s son on Penti Prime in the Second Sphere, cut-off from humanity and the rest of the constellation of Evigone. His knowledge of the Third Sphere was patchy at best and woefully inadequate at worst. The Shogun had asked her, as a special favour, to try and teach him more and he was a willing student. But he often found the lessons difficult.

  Fratris was thin and slightly ratty. He had dark skin and brown eyes and his long fingers were constantly fidgeting. He was bright but being the nephew of the great historian was too much to live up to. It was much easier to pretend to be uninterested even when he wasn’t. He had been sent to his uncle at the University of Urbino to get an education but Frim had fallen foul of the politics of the Zamut Empire and had sought sanctuary in Panadawn. Fearing the Zamut Senate would try to get to him though his nephew, Frim had brought Fratris with him. But the boy wasn’t happy and even though he wouldn’t admit it, he missed his mother.

  Crotal was shaped like a bell. He had been indulged from birth and it showed in the rolls around his middle. On Granadilla, capital world of the Saron Empire, he’d always had a servant to feed him and another to wipe his mouth. It had come as a terrible shock when he discovered nobody was going to help him dress in the morning. He complained constantly about his tiny feet being sore because he was used to being carried everywhere.

  He had been brought to Panadawn to save him from his own people. The Cucurbits had ruled the Saron Empire for three hundred years but their power was waning and the attack by the Quill had led to calls for a change in leadership involving dark nights and curved knives. If he’d stayed, he would be dead by now. But that wasn’t a fact he appreciated or understood with any conviction and he often expressed his belief that he was in Panadawn against his will. He thought his people would be missing him and he ought to return as quickly as possible or the servants would lose their jobs.

  However, he had a sweet nature. All his young life, even though he’d been spoilt, he had been treated with kindness and he didn’t know any other way to behave. He might have been useless at looking after himself (his buttons were never in the right holes) but he never lost his temper even when Fratris scoffed at Saron and said his own, the Zamut Empire, was the best of all.

  Faam had learnt quite quickly that she couldn’t teach them the same way she had taught the girls when she’d lived and worked on the university ship, Cissoid Corindon. Her former students had been older and already better educated but there was a more fundamental difference between them; the girls had always got on with whatever she gave them. They may not have been interested and they may have complained but during her lessons they simply obeyed. The boys, by contrast, had to be cajoled, persuaded, pushed and brow-beaten. And they would take nothing on trust; she had to justify every morsel she fed them. Even Fengtai, despite being ultra-alien, behaved like his human companions when it came to working independently. His mind soon drifted and she would find him drawing pictures of swords and warriors in his notebook if she left him alone for too long. She’d had to change her approach.

  To begin with, she had taken them down to a tutorial room beneath the exhibition halls and museum spaces, thinking it would a quiet place to study. There were tables and chairs and she could show them maps and pictures on the walls. But if she spoke to them for more than ten minutes, she noticed they would stop listening; their minds had wandered off elsewhere. They wrote down facts and copied the pictures but they wouldn’t ‘own’ what they were doing. At first, she’d put this down to the girls being brighter and more ambitious and she’d concluded the boys were simply slow and had no self-discipline.

  Then she’d listened to them talking to each other during a break. Fengtai was telling them about his experiences; about fighting giant insects on the planet Sarillon, about nearly suffocating on a ship during a journey to Thulia and almost drowning in a sea on the planet Larret. She had noticed Fratris and Crotal listening intently. They asked subtle questions and made useful comparisons and even though Fengtai’s words were all about swords and suffering, his story was still history.

  After that, she abandoned the tutorial room and chose in a different place to teach them every lesson. Sometimes it would be in one of the exhibition halls where they could move among the exhibits as she wove a narrative around them. Or they would go to the great library and see the great histories for themselves while she talked about the humans and quasi-humans who had written them. But most of all, they liked to be outside where it didn’t feel as though they were trapped in a place they didn’t want to be.

  “I want to tell you the story of Nacyon, the Rao of Sapadilla,” she said.

  Crotal said, “Who’s he?”

  And Fengtai said, “What’s a Rao?”

  “A Rao is like a prince,” she replied. “But Nacyon didn’t have a principality; Sapadilla wasn’t part of the Quill Empire...”

  “It was part of the Zamut Empire,” said Fratris, pleased to make a connection.

  “I’ve never heard of it,” said Fengtai.

  “It was on the map we studied last week,” said Crotal, trying not to upset his friend.

  “Oh,” said Fengtai.

  “Next to Damocles – do you remember? We were talking about prison planets and how Damocles and Exitine in the Zamut Empire and Marlag in the Xramarsis Empire are the three most important...?”

  “But we didn’t talk about Sapadilla,” the Penti insisted.

  “No, but it was nearby...”

  “I didn’t see it...”

  Faam said, “But you know where we’re talking about?”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “I remember where Damocles is.”

  “Well, Sapadilla is to the east and the Rao and the other princes wanted it to become part of the Quill Empire which is to the south...”

  “But why…?”

  “Because they already had a colony there…

  “But it’s a Zamut world,” said Fratris. “I told you they were stupid.”

  Undeterred, Faam continued, “Our story begins over twenty years ago when Nacyon was middle-aged...”

  “Is he a ‘man’ or is he a ‘bird’?” said Crotal suddenly. “We’ve always been taught to think of the Quill as quasi-humans and not real people at all...”

  “He’s a man,” said Faam.

  “I saw them once,” said Fengtai, suddenly remembering. “I was on Gemote for the millennium celebrations and they were in the parade. They had little wings made out of paper and sticks.”

  “They’re not real birds either,” said Crotal. “And neither were the ultra-aliens who made them.”

  “The Junopta,” said Fratris.

  “I’m sure I should have heard of them,” Fengtai said, frowning. “Do they have wings?”

  “Yes,” said Faam. “But they found it difficult to fly in our atmosphere so they created the Quill to serve them.”

  “But they’re not like the Ortolan or the Florikan,” said Crotal.

  Fengtai looked blank, “Who are they?”

  “They’re quasi-human birds in my empire but the Genetric made them.”

  “Can they fly?”

  “Some of them...”

  “Cock,” said Fratris. “Isn’t that the word for a male bird?”

  “The Quill people are 90% human,” Faam continued, trying not to grind her teeth. “So, based on that, I’ll call Nacyon a man.”

  “The 10% is their bird-brain,” he sniggered.

  Faam gave them her ‘benign smile’ which meant they had reached the edge of her patience. The boys were quiet and waited to hear more. “As Fratris says, Sapadilla was part of the Zamut Empire, defended by their powerful navy, but there was a colony of Quill living there. It had existed for five hundred years despite the Zamut colonies around them and Nacyon’s family were its leaders. After the Hundred Year War against the Zarktek, the Council of all the victorious empires m
ade Sapadilla part of the Zamut Empire in exchange for officially recognising Aphyllous and Kvike as part of the Quill Empire. Quill also gained the former Zarktek world of Kaimakam. But that meant Nacyon’s father lost control of their colony and they had to move south, back to the Quill Empire. Nacyon was quite bitter about this. Even though he was a distant cousin to the Quill Royal Household and they took him in, he felt they looked down on him because he didn’t have anywhere to rule and never would unless he did something to get his world back.”

  Crotal asked, “Have you met him?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “When I was a student on the Cissoid Corindon, he used to visit the future queen, Zizania, who was also a student.”

  “What was he like?”

  “He seemed like a nice man – nicer than Zizania. He used to wear these long coats with two tails, like a swallow’s, and the breast was covered in medal and awards. We thought he must have had the patience of the Lords because Zizania didn’t make his life easy; she was always disobeying the rules and getting into trouble. She was very selfish...”

  Fengtai said, “Was that because she knew she would be queen one day?”

  “I think it was,” she agreed. “She knew that once she took the throne, she would lose her freedom completely and so, while she was with us on the Cissoid, she was as wild as she could be.”

  “Did you like her?”

  “I confess, I really didn’t. She could be spiteful and cruel and even though I feel sorry for what happened to her later, I can’t say she didn’t deserve some of it.”

  “Girls,” said Fratris, shaking his head. “They can be really horrible to each other.”

  “They can,” Faam agreed. “But anyway, I met Nacyon a few times and I liked him. However, as I said, our story begins twenty years ago when he was an angry middle-aged man feeling bitter about being the poor relation, dreaming about getting Sapadilla back and becoming a real Rao instead of one in name only.”