Back | Next
Contents

CHAPTER 18

BEFORE THE FETE


“You’re sure you don’t want me to go with you?” Cassandra asked, setting her spoon down and staring at me intently. “I don’t mind. It’ll be nice to get out—do something a little different.”

Dinner consisted of a cold soup of potatoes and leeks grown in the Ascalon’s little hydroponics garden, a salad of tomatoes from the same, and a loaf of brown bread baked from flour and bromos protein taken from camp stores. There was no meat, and the only concession to luxury remaining was the wine: a Jaddian red so dark it was almost black. I had been rationing it since our arrival, mixing it with water after the fashion of Jadd, but still it was nearly gone.

“No, no,” I said. “This won’t be a social visit.”

“Yes, it will!” Her smile flashed across the narrow glass table. “I heard they’re staging a Colosso. I’d like to see it.”

“They’re only staging a couple small bouts in the governor-general’s courtyard garden,” I countered. “You won’t be missing anything.”

Cassandra clenched her jaw. “But I want to go.”

“I am only going to put in a little private word with the governor-general,” I said. “There’ll be no pomp or circumstance. It’s to be very private.”

“All the more reason for me to go!” Cassandra said. “What’s the harm?”

What could I say to her? That I feared for the stories of her existence to spread too far and wide in the Imperium? Through HAPSIS, the intelligence apparatus knew of her: SpecSec and the War Office and the rest. The Chantry doubtless knew of her. The simple fact of her existence put her in danger. And yet if I could keep the rumors of her to a minimum, if I could keep her name off the lips of the public, she might escape the notice of at least some of my enemies.

“You’d do better to stay here,” I said, taking a swallow of the dry red.

The girl exhaled sharply, crushed a tomato with the side of her fork until it bled upon her plate. “Posho mia defender, sai tuo?” she said, sliding back into her native Jaddian. I can defend myself, you know. “I don’t need you to do it for me.”

Knowing she was wrong, but not wishing to argue, I smiled and restored my wine. “Neema’s done yeoman’s work with the soup, don’t you think?”

Still in Jaddian, Cassandra said, “Si, es buon.”

“Where is Neema, anyhow?” I asked. I had been out on the bridge while Neema prepared the evening meal.

“He’s gone down to the Rhea to have a word with the quartermaster,” Cassandra said, voice flat. “We’re short on some things.”

I ate alone in silence, tearing chunks from my bread to take up portions of the cold soup—wishing it were hot. Dark had fallen, and the desert nights were cold.

“I’m sorry, Anaryan,” I said, speaking Galstani myself. “I’m sorry the galaxy isn’t what you hoped it would be.” I fell silent for the space of a swallow of wine. “Do you miss Jadd?”

She looked up sharply. “No,” she said, and her eyes were downcast. “I don’t know. Maybe.” She managed a bite of her salad. “I just keep thinking about the doctor and her soldier, dead in that flier. The way her head was sort of . . . crushed in. Like an egg.” She set her fork down. Her eyes were far away. “I’d never seen a dead man before, except the man in the morgue . . . and that was . . . ”

“Different. I know,” I said, and reaching across the table, I gripped her hand in mine. Squeezing it gently, I continued, “Your great-grandmother died when I was . . . nine standard? I think it was? They laid her body in state after they embalmed her. Crispin and I snuck in to see.” I shared the story then, about the shroud that covered her—as one had covered the figure that called to me in the desert—and about how I’d been made to carry her eyes in their crystal canopic jar as part of her funeral train. “Death is . . . only the next part of life. Man’s dead outnumber her living a thousand to one, it’s said.” Ninety thousand to one, I thought. “It’s always been thus.”

“Abba . . . ” Cassandra looked like one struggling to find her words. Absently she reached up, pulled her left plait down over her shoulder and stroked it as she searched. “They say . . . the men in the camp, I mean . . . they say you died.”

“They . . . ” I had been expecting this conversation for a very long time, had always been surprised when it failed to occur on Jadd, where rumor of the Halfmortal was sure to have abounded among the students at the Fire School. “They say a lot of things.”

She was not ready for the whole story, nor was I ready to tell it.

“They say one of the Cielcin princes struck off your head.”

I did not want to lie to her.

I could only shake my head.

I was saved the necessity of replying by Neema, who by providence chose that precise moment to reappear. The Nemrut School manservant emerged from the hall with a heavy sack of flour slung over one shoulder.

“Still eating, Master Hadrian? Young mistress?” He set the bag down on the counter beside the sink and the small range. “I expected to find you gone and the washing up ready to begin.”

“We got to talking,” I said. “Did the quartermaster get you everything you need?”

“There won’t be meat until you return from Williamtown, domi. My sincerest apologies.” I dismissed this concern with a wave. “Lieutenant Alexandros will send a cart with milk and eggs and the rest in the morning.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “But I have liberated the last bag of white flour in the whole camp, I think. And we’ve butter and preserves. Breakfast will be uncomplicated, but quite fine. I may fry the last of the tomatoes—I must use them before they spoil.”

“Very good,” I said. “All’s quiet out there?”

“Very quiet,” Neema said. “They were telling me at the ramp that one of the Irchtani patrols hasn’t reported in yet.”

I stiffened. “Why didn’t you start with that?”

“I didn’t think it was that important,” Neema replied earnestly. “Is it?”

“Likely not!” I said, draining the last of the wine. “But I’ll take a walk down to the Rhea and check with Commander Vedi and Annaz—see if I can’t make myself useful.”

Neema bristled, “Domi, if I’ve done any harm by not hurrying back to tell you, I—!”

“No, no, Neema,” I said, lifting the nearly empty bottle that it might accompany me on my night journey. “I’m sure it’s nothing. It’s early yet, and I’m not tired.”

“I’ll go with you!” Cassandra stood sharply, chair scraping as she rose.

I was on the verge of saying that I’d rather go alone when I recalled how my desire to have her remain at Phanamhara while I went to Williamtown had rankled her. So, I gestured to the door. “Grab your shield-belt, then. Let’s be off.”

* * *

“They were meant to have reported in about forty minutes ago,” said Commander Vedi when Cassandra and I reached the Rhea’s cramped bridge.

“Where were they patrolling?” I asked.

“That’s the thing, sir,” Vedi said. “More or less straight up. Between here and the Mensa.”

“How high?” Cassandra asked, arms crossed as she leaned against a blocky console.

Vedi’s brows contracted. “About twenty thousand feet.”

“It could just be the comms,” one of the lieutenants supplied, swiveling in his station chair. “Especially at that altitude. Signals get lost.”

Vedi shook his head. “Then they should have sent down a flare. And the rest of the birdo teams are up there calling. No response.” From this I knew he meant that the Irchtani were communicating by their musical cries.

“You should be checking on the ground,” I said, eyes moving from Vedi to the lieutenant, sweeping over the other officers at their night posts. Most leaned over consoles, some with cups or insulated canteens. The bitter smell of caffeine filled the air.

The commander rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “You think they’re dead?”

“You don’t?” I asked.

Cassandra stood up straight to hear the urgency in my tone.

Commander Vedi shrugged. “Patrols miss check-in pretty regularly down here. Spotters, too. It’s the magnetosphere.”

“Auxiliary Patrol A-13, this is the Rhea,” said one of the junior officers at the forward console, a dark woman with close-cropped and tightly curling hair. “Auxiliary Patrol A-13, do you copy?”

“Do patrols miss check-in by forty minutes?” I asked.

“Well,” Vedi hesitated. “No. They should have sent down a flare when it became clear the signal wasn’t coming through. You’re right.”

“Does Oberlin know?” I asked, looking to the door that separated the low-ceilinged bridge from the long, narrow hall that ran several hundred feet to the rear hold. Sir Friedrich had not returned to the Troglita, but had remained planetside after the discovery of Robyne and Irum’s bodies. “Does Commandant Gaston?”

“If he doesn’t himself, his people do,” Vedi said. “Gaston’s on our frequencies, and we’ve a hardline to Ground Control in the weather station. “And I’ve not woken Sir Friedrich. Not yet. Lascaris left orders not to disturb the old man unless it were dire.”

The lieutenant had not swiveled back to his station, but kept a pair of fingers on the comms patch behind his ear. “Still nothing from the birdos, commander.”

“Understood, M. Chatterjee,” Vedi said. “Keep trying. Dominina, get me the chiliarch.”

“Aye, sir.”

A moment later, Kithuun Annaz’s high voice filled the hissing comms-band. “Annaz speaking, man-commander. No sign of Akiil and his boys yet.” The words were faint and half-lost beneath shoals of static. “We search very high, but there is no response.”

“Check the ground,” I said again. “Have Gaston launch the spotters, recall the ones on weather watch. If they’re on the surface, they should still be visible against the sands.” I did not add, If they are dead, they will still be warm. I settled for a simpler, “Have them do a thermal sweep.”

Vedi hesitated. “What are you afraid of?” he asked.

“You know what we’re hunting,” I said, perplexed by the very question.

“You think this is the Monumental’s work?” Vedi asked.

“It left Irum and Doctor Kel’s bodies where we would find them,” I said. “It killed your man, Alexander. It’s been trying to warn us off since we arrived. Perhaps it’s escalating its efforts.”

Beyond the windows of the bridge, the camp glowed beneath the light of floodlamps, so that a bubble of day seemed to cling to the planet’s surface. Above it, the night was black and full of demons. The lamps had banished the stars. I could see the Ascalon, its black-finned shape far off on the margins of the camp, the low shapes of troop landers like ingots of raw iron filling the mile between. I half expected to see the creature in its black shroud—like Death herself—standing on the pale sands just below the window.

Cassandra had come to stand beside me. “You think it’s coming for us?” she asked. “Abba?”

I shook myself. To the bridge at large, I said, “There’s something going on.”

In the camp outside—somewhere—a lamp exploded. It could not have been far off, I heard the breaking of the glass, and when I looked out the window, the film of false day seemed a shade less bright. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Vedi rounded the holography well and came to stand with Cassandra and myself at the rail.

“One of the lamps went out,” I said, but looking round at the darkness, I could see none dead. Had I imagined it? Or was it only one invisible from the Rhea’s bridge. “I heard the crack.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” said the lieutenant, Chatterjee.

I looked, and saw the camp multiplied across infinity, lights bright and stark as ever.

Had I imagined things?

“Lord Marlowe?” Vedi leaned forward to peer into my face.

I turned my gaze—left, it seemed to me, or down—along that direction no other man could see, and saw the lamps flickering, falling dark one by random one, so it seemed a shadow passed across time, moving like a great bird close above in the dead of night, casting unseen shadows over us with the beating of invisible wings.

“Wake Oberlin,” I said, not sure what it was that spurred me to that decision. “Now.”

“But my lord, his orders!”

“Damn his orders!”

I was spared the need to explain, for in that instant, the lights went out.

Not just one lamp, such as I had seen across the manifold states of potential.

Every lamp.

At once we were lit only by the blue gleam of the consoles and the faint, red-golden glow of the overhead fixtures. The roof of night—which had floated above the whole camp mere moments before—contracted until it seemed the dark was near enough that my outstretched fingers might feel it.

“I’ll wake him myself,” I said, coat swirling as I moved for the door.

“But lordship!” Vedi followed for the space of three steps. “Lascaris said—”

“If Priscian Lascaris wishes to stop me, he will tell me himself!” I whirled in the doorway leading back to the hall. “Find out what happened to the lights. Send someone to check the camp reactor, and call Commandant Gaston!”

“I . . . yes, my lord.” I left Vedi standing—a curiously forlorn figure—adrift in the midst of his swirling subordinates as the Rhea’s bridge moved to high alert.

Oberlin’s rooms would be among the largest of what scant accommodations the ship could offer, and when I asked the deck officer, he informed me the Lord Oberlin had taken the second cabin, across from Commander Vedi’s own. The woman repeated Vedi’s line that secretary Lascaris had left orders not to disturb the Director, but I overrode her. “Where is Lascaris now?” I asked.

“He said he was off to the weather station to speak with one of Gaston’s men,” the deck officer replied, leaving her desk to follow after Cassandra and myself. “He’s been gone nearly two hours. The Director retired early. He keeps to his room, anyhow, when he’s not in meetings.”

I waved her to silence, pounded on the titanium of the door. “Oberlin! Oberlin, it’s Marlowe! Open up!”

“He’s not asleep, is he?” Cassandra asked. “It’s only two hours after sunset . . . ”

The deck officer shrugged.

I hammered on the door again. “Oberlin, open up! The lights have gone out across the camp and one of the Irchtani patrols is missing. Open the Earth-blasted door!”

Nothing.

“You’re sure he’s in?” Cassandra asked the deck officer.

“Where else would he be?” the deck officer asked hesitantly. It was her job to know.

Snapping my fingers at her, I said, “Key the door.”

“I can’t do that!” She drew back a step. “That’s the Lord Director’s personal quarters!”

“His personal quarters are on the Troglita,” I said. “He’s borrowing these. Open the door.” As I spoke, I slid into the woman’s near orbit, so that I stared down my nose at her. She was plebeian, junior officer that she was, and more than a head shorter than me.

She blanched, bowed, and said, “I don’t want any trouble, lord.”

“Trouble may have found us, regardless what you want,” I said, and pounded the door for the last time. “You will open this door, shipman, and you will do it now.”

The poor woman advanced on mincing feet, caught between her master and Lord Marlowe. She drew out a keycard and held it to the lock before keying the override sequence. The door cycled with a pneumatic hiss, and before I could step over the threshold, the deck officer thrust her head in to speak—and in doing so, saved my life.

“Lord Director? I’m sorry, Lord Marlowe insis—”

A bolt of cold silver flashed from the dark within, struck the woman clean between the eyes and emerged from the back of her skull an instant later. Instinct conjured my shield just in time, and I barked an order for Cassandra to hit the deck. Old memories came rushing back: Valka lying in a hospital bed. Blood on the cabin floor. A broken blade with no handle lying on a table of black glass.

It was a knife-missile.

The deck officer was dead already, her blood red and slick upon the frame of the door. The blade itself shimmered in the air, dripping blood as it turned, the camera eye and sensor clusters of its machine brain questing, searching for something. For movement. For heat. Even shielded, I knew I would have only one chance.

I took one step toward the bloody thing. In an instant, it swiveled, point coming in line with my face. I heard the faintest whirring as repulsors accelerated. One knife became two. Four. Eight. Became countless knives. I raised my left hand, watched it become two. Four. Eight. Countless hands extended to catch those knives in their fingers.

One hand succeeded.

The wave collapsed, and I closed my fist on the speeding dagger, felt the edges bite. I heard Cassandra’s indrawn breath, her curse. “Noyn jitat!”

Then my sword was in my hand, the winged-lion hilt fashioned of iridium and Jaddian ivory. The blade—forged on Phaia for Prince Philippe Bourbon—shone blue-white as starlight in the dim hall. With it I slashed the knife-missile in two, and dropped the smoking ruin to the deck.

“Are you all right?” I asked, standing over Cassandra.

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

I offered her my hand. “Welcome to the world,” I said, as she took my hand and stood. “To my world.”

“Abba, your hand!”

I looked at it. There was blood on it.

“I’m not bleeding,” I said, though I had felt the edges. “It’s her blood, poor woman.” I looked down at the body and stepped over it. “Hers and . . . ”

Friedrich Oberlin lay on a couch just within, his body a bloody ruin. Motivated—I think—by heat, the knife-missile had plunged into the old man’s body a hundred times. His blood soaked the black leather, stained the gray carpets purple, and spattered the glass table and brushed metal walls. Looking at Oberlin, one could not have imagined how much blood the old fellow had in him.

“So much blood . . . ”

“Cassandra, get out!” I said. “Stay there!”

Demoniacs all . . . 

There was a blanket folded on the far arm of the slashed and bloody couch. Blood stained it, a patina of fine drops, the smallest already brown. Unkindling Gibson’s sword, I drew the cloth across Sir Friedrich’s mutilated form.

“Find peace on Earth, old man,” I said, and found that all my fury and contempt for the spymaster was gone. In its place, there was only the gratitude I felt for the young man he’d been. In his indirect way, he had delivered me from just such a knife-missile.

I had not returned that favor.

I had thought it was the Watcher in the camps, the Watcher behind the disappearance of the Irchtani and the loss of power . . . but the Watchers did not conjure knife-missiles.

The knife-missile was a human weapon.

There was another sort of monster afoot.


Back | Next
Framed