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CHAPTER 25

RAMANTHANU


“What you came here to do?” Valeriev said, repeating my words with a sudden venom that astonished me. “And what—pray tell—is that, my lord?

“I have to get back to the landing field,” I said. “Cassandra.” I turned to go.

A hand closed on my wrist, and turning to look down, I saw Valeriev had seized me. There was dry blood on him. I wondered how it had gotten there, what horrors the poor doctor had endured that night.

“What is happening?” Tiber Valeriev demanded, not letting me go. “Why are the Cielcin here? Why us?”

I rested my free hand on his and made gently but firmly to break his grip. He squeezed the tighter. “The beast that killed the deserters,” I said. “The thing that killed Doctor Mann. The Cielcin worship it. They want it for the war. We’re here to kill it.”

Valeriev’s eyes had turned hard as glass. “Why weren’t we told?”

“You know what you know about the Vaiartu, and you have to ask?” I said, and broke his grip. The doctor winced and shook his hand.

“I’m a xenologist, Marlowe! A scientist!” he said, taking a step back. “I’m not a soldier! I didn’t sign up for this!”

“Neither did I, doctor!” I roared, and it was six hundred years of roaring that flattened the little man against the wall. I had not wanted to be a soldier, had not wanted to lose my friends, my family . . . everything but my daughter. I had not wanted to leave Jadd. “Neither did I. But we’re all pawns in the great game. We can only move forward. Now, forward for you is with these men, out into the desert. You get these people clear! Do you understand?” Rather than wait for a response, I cast about, eying the men in Gaston’s uniforms. “Which of you has command?”

“Me, sir.” The speaker was a hard woman with short, red hair.

“What news of Commandant Gaston?” I asked. “Is he lost?”

She shook her head. “Not last I heard,” she said. “Comms are bad. Worst I can remember. Last I heard he’d been driven back to the landing field. Heard your commander’s dead.”

“I told them,” Cassandra interjected.

“If Gaston is alive, he has command on the ground,” I said.

“And if he’s not?” the woman asked, looking to Valeriev.

“I guess I have the command,” I said, “I have to go back. There’s a weapon aboard the Rhea designed to kill the monster.”

The shirtless man lurched to his feet. “Monster?” he asked, face white. “What monster?”

I chewed my tongue. There was too little time. I had no way of knowing how long it would be before Ushara returned her attention to me, or what she would do when she did.

“A god,” I said, and let the words resonate like a shot.

The woman in her nightclothes laughed nervously, but when I did not, she blanched.

Valeriev spat. “A god? Do you think I’m a fool?”

“I’ve wasted enough time already,” I said. “Cassandra, we’re going!”

The red-haired woman put herself in my path. “I can’t let you go alone, sir.”

“Then get behind me,” I said, and shouted back over my shoulder. “The rest of you get clear!” I made to brush the woman aside, stepped up the sandy slope that led out the half-filled door. The light of a shot split the night without, and I paused in the arch, peered out at a world lit as by lightning, hard edged and cold. A knot of our men—legionnaires in the full plate of the HAPSIS garrison—stood a little way up the slope, firing down. I saw the Cielcin pouring through a side tunnel from the neighboring boulevard. They outnumbered our troopers four to one at least.

I fell back from the door, and turning to look at the red-haired commander and at Tiber Valeriev, I said, “Enemy’s outside. Downslope.”

Something collided with the ruin’s green façade just behind me, and whirling I saw the sparking shape of a nahute twisting in the air. It was damaged, but still lethal. Before I could respond, Cassandra shoved me aside, her own blade flashing ice-white in the dark. The thing fell in smoking pieces, but the damage was done.

“Yukajjimn!” the cry went up. “Yukajjimn! Yukajjimn!”

“They’ve seen us!” the red-haired officer said, checking the fuel cell on her gun.

Valeriev cursed.

I rounded on him. “Is there another way out of here? A back door?”

The xenologist shook his head. “Nien. There was a back passage, but it’s collapsed.”

“Then we dig in here,” I said. “Anyone with guns: forward. With any luck most of the Pale won’t be shielded. They’ll have no choice but to come at the door.”

“And if they are shielded?” asked one of the soldiers.

“Then we will handle them,” I said, and raised my unkindled sword.

The red-haired woman was already firing, had taken up position against one pillar at the right hand of the open portal. The knot of HAPSIS men on the slope above and to our left had seen us, and one slid down the sand to close the gap. He came up on one knee and fired, his compatriots close behind. I counted nine of them in all, three triases.

Seeing them, the Cielcin swarmed up the hill, drawn by them and their brief glimpse of Cassandra and myself in the chamber’s mouth. The red-haired commander and her men formed up around the opening, fired downslope. The light of our guns illumined the Cielcin horde. There were half a hundred of them at least, some with swords drawn, others crawling on all fours, rushing up the slope like dogs, like apes transported from the jungles of some dark and other world.

One shot caught the foremost in the face and it fell, a smoking, bubbling heap.

“They’re not shielded!” the commander cried.

But some were. I saw the fractal glimmer of impact as they rushed toward us, and the flash of nahute hurled in our direction—heard the thrum of their drives and the whine of their fangs.

“Down!” I leaped out of the portal, blade flashing to life. The nahute slammed against the HAPSIS legionnaire’s shield and ricocheted off, circling back like a shark. I cut it down, and shoved the man toward the door. “We have civilians in there!” I bellowed, pointing at the door. “Several of the dig team! There’s no other way out!”

The legionnaire cursed, fired downslope. Another of the Cielcin folded like paper. A second shot struck the berserker beside it, and I saw the flash of shields.

“We should get under cover!” the legionnaire said.

“All of you!” I shouted up the slope, waving to the others. “Into the ruins! Now!”

Cassandra pressed beside me, twin swords in her hands. “Don’t we need to get to the landing field?”

“We can’t leave them here like this!” I said, and turning back to the others shouted for them to get inside. I spurred the one legionnaire on ahead of me.

Cassandra was gone. I looked round, heart hammering in my throat, and saw her ten paces away, down the slope. One of the Cielcin stood before her, towering fully eight feet tall. Cassandra held fast, undaunted. I saw the xenobite’s sword raised, and though I knew she had the skills to stand her ground, I felt once more a thrill of fear.

The white sword fell, met Cassandra’s highmatter, and parted like tissue.

“Veih!” bellowed one inhuman voice. “Huta ba-kousun’ta!”

Their swords!

The Cielcin was already dead, fell smoothly in three pieces as Cassandra recovered to guard. The hundreds of hours Hydarnes had subjected my daughter to moved her limbs for her, though in my heart I sensed already the shadow of the tears that were to come tomorrow if we survived the night.

“Into the ruins!” I shouted once again, and leaped past the gate to stand with my daughter. Again I struck at one of the nahute, shouted for Cassandra to draw back. We would have to hold the door ourselves.

One of the legionnaires had not heeded me, and hurried forward to stand at my side. “We should get you to safety, sir!”

I brushed him off. “Cassandra!” I exclaimed. “The door!”

The Cielcin were almost on us. Those that had hurried on all fours skidded to a halt, drew their scimitars from oiled sheaths at hips or shoulders, and circled round, hemming us in. Dragging Cassandra by the wrist, we retreated to within several short paces of the door. Shots passed us—one skimmed off the curtain of my shield. The legionnaires had all won the gate, all but the man at my shoulder. “Back!” I cried. “Hold them back!” The ruined chamber was a death trap. If even one of the enemy carried explosives, even a simple grenade . . . 

“I wish the Irchtani were here,” Cassandra said, her shoulder to mine. “We need all the help we can get . . . ”

Two of the Cielcin leaped, one with blade and nahute both in hand. I cleaved at the silver serpent, but it slipped from its master’s grasp and flew past me, soaring through the open door. I heard shouting and crazed gunfire, and knew the men of Gaston’s garrison had lost composure. I hewed at the blade and alien flesh, and saw the horned head topple. Cassandra drew back, staggered against the outer wall of the ruins. Her own quarry fell back, cowed by the sight of our blades.

A sea of Pale faces lay before us, glass teeth shimmering, black eyes wide. Shots rained about us, and though the unshielded among them were cut down, those that were protected closed in. The distant flash of fire in the deep of space lit their faces, and I saw one taller than the rest, lop-horned and bloodied.

“Ramanthanu!” I called out.

The captain spied me and snarled.

“Detu adiqamam ne?” I said, addressing the monster in its own language, “Why fight? Your prince is dead! Your god destroyed it! Depart from this place! Or it will destroy you!”

“Ennaleto ne?” the ichakta echoed. “Depart? No! Muzugara was unworthy. He betrayed our Prophet, sought to seize power for himself! We will stay, and die—if it is god’s will! But we will kill you first!”

“Try it!”

A shot caromed off the captain’s shield, and the Cielcin warrior bared its fangs, mouth stretched until the inner jaw hinged outward, lips peeling back as it roared. Its brethren did the same, and I threw out an arm to force Cassandra behind me into the mouth of the tunnel. The planet quaked beneath us, stressed by the distant action of the Cielcin moon. For a moment, I felt as if I moved in a kind of painting, in one of my mother’s holographs. The Cielcin rushed in like the tide, an ocean of black and white, blades raised like the foam caps of breakers where they crashed upon the rock of man.

The soldiers behind fired past me where I stood in the opening. Though Cassandra and I might have held that narrow way, our mere presence prevented the gunmen from having full freedom of fire. And yet if I stepped aside, allowed them free rein, the Cielcin would sweep inside in a moment, and Death would ride on their shoulders.

One of the enemy plowed into me as I was turned combating another. We both collided with the pillar to the left of the entryway, and I felt the wind knocked from my chest. My head struck the green stone, and my vision blurred. Still, I managed to get my sword up and between us, and felt hot blood sheet onto my fist. The xenobite sagged against me. I shoved it aside, mindful of the black ichor steaming in the cold of that desert night.

“Lord Marlowe!” It was the red-haired woman. “Down!”

I crouched, permitted a flurry of violet shots to pass overhead. I felt the air boil as they passed. The blood had run from my hydrophobic coat and pooled on the pale sand. I stood once more, questing for Ramanthanu in the sea of inhumanity, but the captain had vanished. Cassandra stood near at hand, one foot planted on the corpse of an enemy as her swords passed through the chest of another.

Something pinged off the rock beside my head, and looking down I saw the flashing light I most feared.

The red-haired woman saw it, too, and lurched toward it.

I felt myself scream more than heard it, and saw the blast a moment later. The grenade exploded before she could throw herself fully upon it. Still, her body took the worst of the blast, and in an instant she was gone, transmuted into a rain of blood and meat that splashed the screaming civilians within. She had not been shielded, and so had made of herself a shield.

I never learned her name.

The impact hurled me out onto the sands, my shield taking the worst of the blow. Cassandra, too, had been blown clear, and the legionnaire who had stood with me. Pale hands seized me, pinned the hand that held my sword. I saw the flash of a knife.

“I’ll rip you open,” came the inhuman voice in my ear, breath hot and thick with the stench of rotting meat. “Wide open, you little worm.”

Only the lightning saved me.

The air crackled, and a blast of thunder tore the heavens apart. The Cielcin that held me startled, and I wrenched my sword arm free. The blade cut wildly, and must have struck true—I hardly saw what happened. I had eyes only for the sky.

The lightning I had seen lingered, held in place as if Jupiter himself grasped it firm against the unfixed stars. The Cielcin all had seen it, and those that were nearest me fell prostrate.

Ushara had come.

Again the planet shook, and the lightning in the sky quavered, parted, revealed the pupil and the red-rimmed iris of that vast and livid eye. One of the Cielcin near to me was lifted from its prostrations and pulled screaming up into the sky. The sand shook, tendrils and ropes of it pulled skyward, floating as if under the impetus of some almighty magnet. My shield sparked and went dead.

I saw Ramanthanu raise its head, black eyes like tunnels into night. The captain knelt not ten paces from me, its sword abandoned at its side.

“What on Earth is that?” asked the legionnaire nearest me.

I spared a glance for him, and for the blasted opening to the chamber in the ruins. A battered Tiber Valeriev stood in the portal, the arm of the woman in her nightclothes over his shoulders, helping her to walk. Both were bleeding.

“A god,” I said, words hardly to be heard in the furor.

“Earth and Emperor,” the man said. “The size of it!”

“Abba!” Cassandra hurried to my side. Blood ran from a wound at her hairline. “We have to go!”

One of the Cielcin screamed, and looking back I saw it scrabbling across the sand, one leg raised as if some unseen hand grasped it by the ankle. As it writhed, it grew, and grew translucent, until the beating of its arms was like a scythe, sweeping three of its kind from their knees at a stroke. With my vision, I saw that invisible hand, a tendril of crooked lightning forked across the breadth of time.


Mimma ul atta.


The voice of the goddess boomed, filling all the world. The Cielcin who had lifted their faces buried them, and Cassandra huddled nearer to me. Fresh lightning cracked the sky and split, and a second eye peered down from an even greater height, and a third nearer to us, between the mountain and the sand.

“I did not believe in demons,” the legionnaire whispered, words tripping over themselves in his haste. “This is the end of the world.”

All the fighting around us had stopped. The Cielcin made huge by the Watcher’s grasp lay dead upon the ramparts of the Vaiartu ruin across the avenue, its neck broken.

“These are not the demons the Chantry warned you of,” I said. “Not a one of you stands a chance.”

“Do you?” Cassandra asked.

“Go,” I said. “Go now! Run!”

“I’m not leaving!”

“Go, damn you!” I shoved her from my side, regretted it almost at once.

But the night had not expended its store of terrors. As Cassandra staggered from me, eyes obstinate, full of hurt, the earth shook again. The sand beneath us lifted, and turning my head I saw something vast and white slithering beneath the surface of the great berm held back by the static compactors. A roar like that of some long-imprisoned Titan fresh from Tartarus filled all the world, and the berm broke like the surface of the sea as a whale leaps skyward.

An arm erupted from that surface, great around as some mighty tree, dozens of feet from shoulder to fingertip. Rings like the belts of wrestlers shone upon its fingers, glowed with rubies and jacinths vast as any human skull. But where the dead Cielcin giant was like a thin reflection in darkened window glass, the arm was solid as stone. The hand fell and struck the earth like a thunderbolt, six fingers closing on the sand. I had forgotten to move, forgotten how to move. There arose then a cry like the music I had heard in the pantheon, a voice at once high as heaven and deep as hell, and with a groan like the cracking of stones in the bowels of Old Earth, she broke the surface, her face huge as any of our shuttles, followed by her shoulders, her titanic breasts like hills rising from the sand. The stones of Phanamhara cracked as she rose, for she had emerged beneath them, and broke their foundations like kindling.

Ushara surveyed the world beneath her, tall almost as Dorayaica’s holograph had been astride the field at Deira, though she was buried in sand to her hips. One of the Cielcin rose and ran toward her, arms outstretched.

“Thnaga-kih, qisabar wo!” cried one of the others, warning its clansman to stop. “Belnna!” But the first Cielcin did not heed the second. Ushara’s hand flickered, seeming not to travel across the space between, and closed on the running fool. The Cielcin vanished entire, crushed in that gargantuan fist until black blood ran between the huge, white fingers.

“Run, Cassandra!” I whispered. “Run, please!” Then, “The Rhea. Get to the Rhea!”

“Why does it look . . . like us?” asked the legionnaire beside me.

Just then, a blast struck the side of that queen monster’s head, a rosette of orange flame. Then I saw against the night the lights of one of our fliers, one of Manticore Flight had survived this long, and streaked past her. Ushara reeled, but righted herself, apparently unhurt. She spread her arms, the lightning filling the sky behind her like wings, and a second rosette erupted, larger than the first. The ship exploded in the air, man and machine alike reduced to a cloud of smoke and metal.

Then the giant brought her hand down onto the sand, a blow to flatten the earth.

Where that hand struck, it remained, and about it the Cielcin rose as if hauled skyward by innumerate nooses. Many hung thrashing in the air, others rose so high they vanished entire. With a cry, the legionnaire at my left hand rose himself, and I heard the crunching of bones.

“Run!” I screamed, and seizing Cassandra by the wrist I turned to drag her through the carnage for the tunnel. We could not climb the slope, not without passing the giant. We would have to circle round if we were to stand any chance of reaching the camp. How I longed for a flare gun, for any way of signaling whatever Irchtani might remain in the air.

I felt Cassandra lurch, and tightening my grip I turned to see her feet lifted from the cracked pavers. She cried out, and I felt my eyes and nostrils stretch, my own cry of fury and terror drowning all my world.

She was my world. All of it. All that remained of it.

Of Valka.

I could not lose her. Not like this. Not ever.

Roaring, I dug in my heels, dropped my sword to seize her wrist with both my hands. Her ankles had risen above my head by then, and she hung stretched taut as a rope between two wrestlers in the Colosso games.

“Abba!”

I was going to lose her. To lose her as I had lost her mother, as I had lost Pallino and Elara. As I had lost Siran, and Corvo and Durand. As I had lost Crim and Ilex, and Gibson. As I had lost Switch and Ghen and little Cat. I was going to lose my daughter, my only child to this war, to that monster.

Cassandra’s hands were slipping in my grip, the force that held her inexorable as the tide. Her eyes stretched wide. My heels dug against the sand, and I felt myself dragged up the slope toward the pale colossus. Peering across that infinity of time, I saw myself reflected countless times, in countless configurations, all of me tying all of Cassandra to the earth.

I opened my mouth, and a wordless roar escaped me, a shout of fury and defiance that burned in my throat like sand, like sickness. I held her wrist fast with both my hands, until I felt my own feet leave the ground. My stomach lurched, and the old pain in my shoulder groaned back to life. I felt the burning of eyes upon me, and my vision drifted from Cassandra’s face—just for a moment. The eyes of the colossus had found me, and their hunger and their sorrow fanned new flames in me. I felt tears well in my own eyes, tears not for Cassandra, but for Ushara herself. I felt her grief, and grief for her, deep and dark as any sea.


Niqi.


The word was like a knell.


Niqi. Niqi!


It resonated in me, and I felt my fingers slip, felt myself fall an inch back toward earth before Cassandra’s own grip held me. And as I slipped I understood the word, saw again the vision I had seen in the bowels of the pantheon, saw myself enthroned, the queen of monsters seated at my feet. I saw our sons, black haired, six fingered, numberless as the stars.


Sacrifice.


“No!” I yelled, and the word was like a shot.

I did not want power, did not want Empire, did not want her. Not then, not ever—nor ever again.

I was not going to lose Cassandra. I was not going to lose again. Turning my head, I saw the countless Hadrians spiraling across all of fractal time, our legions numberless, defiant, defeated. Ushara was a dark angel of limitless power, a creature of pure force older than time. I was a child of Earth, and little more than a beast.

Still, I defied her.

I locked eyes with the giant, and no matter where in time or across time I looked, I saw her there, staring back at me, eyes hard as glass and angry. But there are infinities and infinities, and in the depth of my fury and my fear, I saw beyond Ushara, saw worlds and realms of time where she was not, as numberless as the realms in which she was.

“Cassandra!” I prayed. “Hold on!”

My rage was not blindness. Not there. Not then. It had not been blindness on Perfugium. On Perfugium, my fury had lent me clarity, a clearness of sight and a well dug deep by my grief. The scholiasts had banished emotion, or the great among them had. But in doing so—as Gibson had warned me when I left him on Colchis for the first time—they had banished the greater part of themselves.

I saw a place in time then, one further from me than any I had ever seen before that moment, where the giant was not, and the lightning, the eyes were not. I saw a world without Ushara—or only a moment without her.

But a moment was enough.

I chose.

Cassandra fell into my arms, and we both hit the ground like sacks of grain.

Ushara was gone.

The Cielcin that had hung in the air like the condemned all fell back to earth. They were dead, or else the fall killed them. Many had been torn apart, or crushed in Ushara’s mighty hands.

In the sudden silence, I held my daughter close.

When at last I stayed my ragged breathing, I asked, “Are you all right?”

Cassandra pushed herself to a seated position, looked round at the carnage, at the ghostly giant Cielcin broken on the ramparts, at the bodies and the broken buildings. “Is she . . . dead?” Cassandra’s voice emerged hardly more than a whisper. “Did you . . . kill her?”

Sitting up myself, I held her close, heedless of the blood upon her face. “I don’t think so,” I said in answer. “She’ll be back. We have to hurry.”

Cassandra was shaking, knowing how close she had come to destruction. “Hey!” I lay my hands upon her shoulders, shook her gently. “Hey! Cassandra, listen to me! You’re all right. You’re going to be all right.” I drew her close.

“Marlowe!” Valeriev staggered toward me. He babbled something in Durantine Slavonic I could not understand, but remembered himself. “What was that?”

I found my feet. My sword lay on the sand, the winged lion’s jet eyes staring up at me. I snatched it up. “You believe me now?”

The man nodded weakly.

“Get those you can to safety,” I said. “I have to go.”

“We have wounded!” Valeriev shouted at my retreating back. “The bomb!”

I stopped, head bowed. A terrible weight lay on my shoulders and on my heart. “Leave them,” I said. “If they can’t walk, leave them. You must get clear of the ruins. Get as far away as you can!”

“But!”

I rounded on Valeriev like a stuck bull. “I am going to burn this place off the map!” I shouted. “If you don’t want to die, doctor, you’ll do as I say!”

In that moment, one of the Cielcin—neither dead nor wounded—rose from the sand. I conjured my sword to meet it, but it leaped upon Valeriev and with a mighty stroke it hewed at the man with its scimitar. I shouted, but there was too much space between the doctor and myself, and he was dead already. His killer saw me and drew back, wary of my sword.

“Yukajji-kih, adiqqa itamshan!” the Cielcin said, gripping its weapon in both hands. “Fight!”

It knew it was dead, and lurched toward me.

A black shape burst from the sand and caught the creature by its ankle, the Cielcin fell, and another of its kind erupted from a drift of sand just as Ushara had done. Crawling hand over hand, it climbed atop my attacker and plunged a short-bladed knife into the first Cielcin’s back, sliding between the chitinous plates of its armor. This second Cielcin held its clansman by one horn and waited for its brother to die. The Cielcin that had slain Valeriev twitched once, twice, and was still.

Only when it was dead did I recognize its killer.

Ramanthanu stood, its face caked in black blood and sand, its braided hair lank, its slit nostrils flaring as it rose, knife in hand. “Daktaru!” it shouted, and threw down the knife. “Daktaru!”

I stood there, astonished, confusion filling my mind like smoke.

Daktaru was mercy, and more than mercy.

Clemency.

“I yield!” the captain said in its own, foul language, and did the most remarkable thing I think I had ever seen one of its kind do.

It knelt, and pressed one ear to the sand at my feet.

Not a one of us dared move. Cassandra stood frozen some four paces away. The other Cielcin—the few who survived—stopped dead on their feet or knees.

“Nubabiqursa o-caihanaru!” Ramanthanu said, shouting. “You hurt it! The god! The baetayan teach us that Utannash is false. That his powers are false. But you . . . live.”

I shifted, and Ramanthanu buried its face in the sand. “Daktaru!” it cried. “Daktaru ina ndaktu, Ba-Aeta-doh!”

“Ba-Aeta?” I echoed the word. “Your lord, you say?” The captain flinched. Gone was the monster that had sorted the prisoners taken from the Rhea, the beast that had thrown that poor woman to its dogs for sport. In its place was a worm, a groveling insect. Something in the captain had shattered.

Its faith.

Its entire world.

“Adiqursa ti-caihanaru vaa wo!” Ramanthanu said. “You battled the god! Drove it away. He killed my men! My slaves! When we had been faithful when Muzugara was not!”

“What is it saying?” asked Cassandra, one unkindled sword in hand.

I raised a hand to quiet her.

Ramanthanu spoke to the dust. “You are Aeta, Marlowe-doh! You slew Otiolo. Ulurani. You slew the Prophet’s own! Iubalu eza Bahudde eza Aulamn. Hushansa says you killed Attavaisa, too. And now Muzugara is dead.”

“I did not kill Muzugara,” I said. I had not killed Aulamn, either. And I had killed none of the others alone, save Attavaisa only.

“But he is dead!” Ramanthanu said. “Because of you!” The ichakta pressed its face to the ground. “I killed my man, Jabanki, for you. I am your slave.”

“Iyadar ba-kousun ne?” I echoed the word. “My slave?”

“Utannash is a greater god, that is plain!” The captain spoke more rapidly then. “Can you truly kill it? Can you kill the god that killed my people?”

“I don’t know,” I said, speaking Galstani and not Cielcin, the words a hollow breath.

“Abba?”

“Silencio, mia qal!” I snapped at her, falling back into Jaddian.

Confusing my shout for condemnation, Ramanthanu flinched. “Daktaru ina ndaktu!” it cried, begging for mercy or mercy of the other kind . . . 

My . . . slave. Again I did not move. Could not.

I had no need of slaves, nor did I trust the creature that knelt before me. I had learned my lesson aboard the Demiurge, had relearned it a hundred times. At Thagura, at Aptucca, at Berenike and Senuessa, on Dharan-Tun most of all. The Cielcin were not men, would never be men. They were demons—or as good as. There could be no peace between us. No amity, no armistice. Our war had but two endings: our extinction or theirs.

And yet . . . 

We had no time, and I had no men, nor could I spare any time for the wounded in the ruin, Valeriev’s people and Gaston’s.

“Belutoyu,” I said at last. “I don’t know if I can kill it. But we have killed one before. My people killed one before. We have a weapon they say can kill . . . your god. I mean to use it.”

Ramanthanu did not raise its eyes. “I will use it,” it said. “I will fight for you. For your god, if he is truly greater . . . if you are truly greater.”

All at once, my tongue felt thick in my mouth. Had I not longed for this moment—for something like this moment—ever since I was a boy on Emesh? For a moment, it was Uvanari—not Ramanthanu—who knelt before me, offering a kind of peace. But it was a Cielcin all the same, and the Cielcin had taken everything from me.

Almost everything.

Mercy or mercy, the captain had cried, suing for clemency or the fast release of death. Daktaru or ndaktu.

Mercy or Justice, it might have said, had it been a man.

I had a choice to make: to kill this creature or accept its surrender. I longed to kill it. It was Cielcin, and the Cielcin were my enemy, had been my enemy for nearly all my life. And yet, were I to do so, I would be striking down a beast that had surrendered to me. Were Ramanthanu a man, such action would be murder. Perhaps it would be murder still. Had I murdered the captain then, I would be everything they said, everything they say of me now. The Demon in White. The Palekiller. The Sun Eater.

My sword was in my hand. Gibson’s sword. I thought of the prisoners taken from the Rhea, of the poor woman this creature had sentenced to death by sport.

Justice. The sword would be justice.

And yet . . . 

“Junne!” I said, moved by some part of myself quiet and subconscious. I made my choice. “Junne!”

Down.

The Cielcin word for peace meant submission, and Ramanthanu had submitted, submitted itself to the only aeta left on that entire world.

To me.

Lifting one foot, I pressed my heel against the side of the captain’s horned head, just as I had seen Dorayaica do to Iamndaina on Eue long ago.

“Tuka okarin’ta ba-kousun,” I said, taking the captain for my own.


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Framed