CHAPTER 6
THE MORNING STAR
My copy of the Emperor’s pardon lay hidden in my breast pocket like a leaden weight, but I smiled as I led the way into the hangar where my ship awaited. The Katanes starport in Jaharrad was among the largest I had ever seen. The hangar Aldia’s men had set aside for my ship lay on its very fringes. Not a cothon, not a blast pit designed for vertical takeoff, but a longhouse with rolling doors and an arched ceiling like half a cylinder a thousand feet from end to end. It lay in the military quarter, behind fences and security posts, at the edge of the airfield, where the city gave way to the savannas and leagues of farmland that fed the Jaddian capital.
“This is your ship?” Cassandra asked, not two paces behind. The girl had spent two days in a medical tank after her ordeal, and already her wounds had vanished, though she carried herself with a new dignity, a cock-footed surety that she was and had become what she had spent her life trying to be: a Maeskolos.
A Swordmaster of Jadd.
“She is,” I said, and the sight of the old girl banished for a time at least my sadness and the bone-deep tiredness of my age.
The Ascalon stood in the center of the hangar, vapors rising from fuel and coolant lines. A small army of Jaddian technicians clamored over her, men and women in white-and-orange striped coveralls. We stopped then for a moment, both to admire the vessel and to allow Neema to catch up. The servitor led a quartet of stevedores carting a pair of float-palettes, upon which were mounded the crates which contained the accrued detritus of our lives.
Seen from above, the Ascalon resembled a leaf-bladed sword, five hundred feet from end to end, broad and flat—being only four decks high at its tallest, and that was near the rear, above the great hold. Short wings thrust out near her stern, each sporting one of the vessel’s twin fusion engines, sleek black nacelles. The slit of her warp projectors already gleamed, a blue line that wrapped about her stern.
“How fast does she go?” Cassandra asked.
“Nearly twelve hundred C, given her head,” I said. “She’s an interceptor, Challis class. One of Red Star’s finest. See the way the hull rolls over top like that? That’s not for nothing! She’s nigh invisible to radar. And see those coils on the nacelles?” I pointed. “Heat sinks. There’s nowhere to hide in space. Trying’s like trying to hide a fire priest on the slopes of the Hephaistos where nothing grows. Those coils drink the heat of her engines, allowing her to hide in the dark for days at a time . . . ” I fell almost to silence, admiring the graceful geometries of the old ship, like a black knife spoiling to be thrown. “We used her to save the Emperor, your mother and I. And to escape the Prophet, when we were its prisoners.”
In truth, only I had been Dorayaica’s prisoner, but it was easier this way.
It was a story I was in no great hurry to recount.
“She’s beautiful!” Cassandra said. She had never been aboard a proper starship, had only traveled on suborbital flights between Jaharrad and the Islis di Albulkam. I tried to remember what it had been like—leaving Delos that first time with Demetri Arello and his crew. The terror and the joy. Seeing the joy at least upon my daughter’s face kindled a portion of the old feeling in myself, where I had thought it dead.
“I’ll take these straight aboard then, my lord? Shall I?” Neema asked.
“Very good, Neema,” I said, “Our quarters—my quarters—are far forward. The level above the hold. You and Cassandra may take the adjoining rooms. The flight crew shouldn’t stop you.”
“Can we meet this lieutenant of yours?” Cassandra asked, looking round the vast hangar bay with its swarming technicians and the fuel lines snaking over the fused stone floor. “Is he here?”
Looking around myself, I said, “He should be about.”
Neema was fussing with one of the stevedores, bickering in Jaddian about the location of our rooms. I did not intervene, but when Neema seemed to resolve the dispute, I leaned in close and said, “You did not have to come with us, my friend.”
The butler blinked at me. “Where else would I go, sir? I should think they’d have words for me back at the academy were I to abandon a client simply for leaving the planet.”
I smiled at the man, sparing a glance over his shoulder for the trio of black-clad Imperial officers emerging from the side ramp near the Ascalon’s prow. I marked Lieutenant Albé at once, with his ivory-rimmed spectacles.
Neema was one of the angrafiq, a Jaddian homunculus. All his school was made—bred—to be the finest maids and manservants in the Principalities. Freed of the genetic confines of the Chantry—though there were those in Jadd who worshipped Mother Earth in their way—and of the Emperor’s High College, the Jaddians had made an art of the genetic science, an art reflected not only in the superhuman perfection of the eali caste, but in the many and varied forms taken by the angrafiq: from the mamluk clone armies; to the hulking laborers I had seen hauling equipment in the starport, large as any Cielcin; to Neema himself.
“You’re a good man, Neema,” I said, and patted him on the shoulder.
The manservant gave a studious little bow and withdrew.
“Lord Marlowe!” Lieutenant Albé called out, hand raised in greeting. He looked precisely as he had that day nearly two weeks before when he had come to the villa, his officer’s blacks unmarked and immaculate, his hair freshly shorn and oiled. Knowing him now for a Delian, a Meiduan like myself, I marked his hairless face, without barest suggestion of blue in his cheeks.
Evidently some of the old fashions and customs persisted. And why should they not?
“Lieutenant Albé!” I said in greeting, turning squarely to face the man and his companions. “We’re still pretending it’s lieutenant, are we?”
The fellow only smiled, gestured to his companions, a man and a woman in matching blacks. The woman wore the old burgundy naval beret. “These are Lieutenant Janashia”—he indicated the man—“and Pilot Officer Browning.” The woman. “We’ll be conveying you to the Troglita.”
That was the Imperial warship, the HAPSIS vessel the Emperor had earmarked for his little expedition. I found myself studying young Janashia and Browning, recalling the words of the Emperor’s letter.
Demoniacs all.
Trust no one.
Had William grown paranoid in his old age? I wondered.
Janashia and Browning both saluted.
I returned the gesture only haltingly, feeling myself a fraud. The coat I wore was cut in Imperial fashion, but its cloth was Jaddian, as fine as any prince’s. Like the lieutenant, I had no device or badge of rank, for I had—until the occasion of the Emperor’s thrice-damned pardon—been made outcaste a second time.
“An honor, soldiers,” I said stiffly. “Lieutenant Albé, my daughter. Cassandra.”
Had it been my imagination? Or had the young lieutenant already been looking at Cassandra? The light flashed across the lenses of his spectacles as he turned to attend to me. Swiftly, he removed them, and smiling took Cassandra’s hand. She had offered it as one Maeskolos might offer a hand to another. The left hand extended, thumb up. Perhaps it was because it was the left hand, or perhaps young Albé was as unfamiliar with the custom of handshaking as I had been as a boy. It was not done on Delos, except amongst the meanest serfs.
But he did not shake her hand.
“Lady Marlowe!” he said, and—turning her hand palm down—lifted it to his lips and kissed it. “Enchanté.”
A welter of emotions manifested in me then. Confusion at the unfamiliar word. Anger at the young officer’s forwardness. Contempt for the man himself. Who did he think he was? He said his family had served mine for five of their generations after I had left, that Crispin had asked him to carry his accursed message across the long light-years in the hope that he might one day find me.
“That’s quite enough,” I said, glowering at the man.
Albé, to his credit, appeared utterly unfazed. For her part, Cassandra seemed delighted, but she had been overfond of male attention almost as soon as she was old enough to be aware of it, having never had great reason to fear it, and certainly little reason to fear this man.
“Your father did not say you were a swordmaster!” he said, admiring her outfit.
She smoothed the crimson mandyas she had but recently won, and said, “I only passed the Trial five days ago.” The half-robe that was the garment of the Maeskoloi Swordmasters of Jadd hung from her left shoulder, tied beneath her right arm and belted at the waist to keep it from falling away. Its cloth was of samite, dyed almost the color of arterial blood and woven with a pattern of golden paisleys, and its fringe fell just past her knee.
“Newly a swordmaster, then! Magnifique!” He gave a short little bow, replaced his glasses with a flourish. “My sincerest congratulations. Your father must be very proud.”
I did my best to smile. “He is.”
Cassandra hooked her thumbs in her belt, emphasizing the twin swords Hydarnes had given her upon her ascension. The hilts were ebony and black leather, with brass fittings. A matched pair. Those fittings glinted as she stepped back from young Albé, each secure in its own magnetic hasp at either hip.
Sensing at last that he was being overfamiliar, Edouard bowed and swept his hand to one side. “Your ship awaits, Lord Marlowe. I trust you will find it all in working order.”
Shouldering past the man and his two subordinates, I advanced toward the forward access ramp. “Your own ship is in orbit, then?” I asked.
“Yes, my lord,” said Janashia, hurrying to catch up. “Rendezvous is set for around fourteen hundred hours, galactic standard time. That’s about nine hours from now.”
Albé interjected, “Captain Clavan and Sir Friedrich are eager to see you, lord.”
I paused with my hand on the rail. It was the first time Albé had mentioned Sir Friedrich since that afternoon on the lawn before my villa. There was much neither of us were saying.
“Abba?” Cassandra had stopped just behind me. There was a breathless excitement in her face that smote my heart—and smites me still. She didn’t understand. She thought she was setting out on some grand adventure, some storybook mission. Beyond the farther suns and back . . .
Where once the tall tailfin of the Ascalon had been painted with the pitchfork and pentacle of my Red Company, the men of Colchis had painted the pentacle only.
There stand I, I thought.
A fading image.
More Eudoran melodrama. Shaking my head, as if to clear it of some fog, I said, “You won’t have seen this before! Come!”
* * *
We were cleared for launch within the hour, and Pilot Officer Browning’s clipped Sagittarine accent sounded over internal comms to alert us to make ready. Neema had remained in his cabin, but Cassandra and I both joined Albé and his officers on the bridge.
There were a dozen junior men aboard as well, shipmen in black fatigues who strapped themselves to fold-outs down in the hold. Albé said his captain had not known how many flight crew would be required to launch the Ascalon and bring her to the Troglita, but I suspected there was another layer to it. The men were there to escort me, to ensure mad Marlowe and his daughter did not abscond with their own ship.
As if I would have had anything to gain by doing that.
I could as easily have stayed at home.
Albé had the captain’s chair when we arrived, and Janashia and Browning the navigator’s and copilot’s seats. Save for these interlopers the place was precisely as I last had seen it. Cassandra gasped with delight, and in the space of time it took for her to find her breath and speak, I found myself recalling the journey to Jadd after Olorin and Lorian and Bassander Lin had spared me the Emperor’s justice.
Sharp’s men—his Dragonslayers—had saved me, had faked the prisoner transport that was meant to deliver me to Belusha, the Emperor’s favorite prison planet. Mads and Aron and the other soldiers of the late centurion’s special detachment had died in exile with me. Old Mads had died last of all, retiring with his Jaddian wife to my villa. It had been his death that finally left me alone in exile, had prompted me to hire Neema from the Nemrut Academy, and to beseech Prince Aldia for aid in the birthing of Cassandra.
Cassandra gripped a handle just inside the doorway, moving with that species of slow wonder that one finds in children who—coming to the age of ten or twelve—witness their first snowfall. “This is incredible!” she said, voice hushed. “How long before we fly?”
“About ten minutes,” came Janashia’s reply.
“We’re just waiting for clearance from flight control,” interjected Browning.
“They need to clear our part of the sky,” I said and, reaching past her, opened one of the fold-outs that ran along either side of the bridge behind the officers’ chairs. “You’ll want to strap yourself in, Anaryan.”
But my daughter ignored me. “Have you ever flown one of these before, lieutenant?”
“A Challis?” Albé looked round, found the controls for the shutters, and thumbed them. “No, ma’am. There aren’t more than a thousand of these in the whole Imperium. This ship was a princely gift.”
“You should have seen the other one,” I said, thinking of the Tamerlane. That was a mistake. It was impossible to think of the Tamerlane without thinking of the way it ended, pulled down from the sky and broken on the sands of Akterumu.
The shutters opened like the petals of an iron blossom, retracted until the glass geodesic stood open to admit the carmine sun.
We had taxied out onto the tarmac by then. Far off on the right, I could see the low buildings of the public terminal, white stone and silver glass, and above them the pale towers of the starport authority. Myriad shuttlecraft were flying in low and slow from Jaharrad, and I thought I saw—shimmering on the edge of sight—the spires of the Alcaz du Badr dominated by the great golden dome of the Tholo Orothano, the golden palace of Prince Aldia, a hundred stories tall.
About us, the tarmac stretched like a geometric plane. Jaddian technicians in their striped orange and white hurried out ahead of us, one with gleaming batons.
“We’re clear for laneway ten,” Janashia said to Browning, who chirped her understanding.
“Take us out,” Albé said.
The Ascalon rocked beneath us.
“What’s that?” Cassandra asked, pointing to an oblong bronze lozenge of a ship dusting off perpendicular to us and dead ahead, riding its repulsors, relying neither on rockets nor wings.
“Wong-Hopper trading cog,” came Albé’s answer. “See the cartouche?”
I found myself staring at the back of the lieutenant’s greased head. He would break his stream of conversation to respond to Browning or Janashia with terse, clipped replies. He rode the command chair like a man long accustomed to it. Lieutenant, indeed. I gripped the hilt of my sword where it lay hid in my coat pocket.
I was taking a terrible risk, trusting the Emperor’s note—yet the signature had been in William’s own hand.
Trust no one.
As if I would have trusted any of them in any case.
Albé was not what he appeared, but surely any spy or assassin would labor to appear perfectly honest—clear as glass—and unassuming? Surely the sensitive nature of his work—of HAPSIS and the Watchers—was sufficient to explain his reticence.
The Ascalon reached the laneway marker painted with the curling Jaddian numerals for ten.
“You both will wish to find your seats,” Albé said. “Janashia, warn the lads to sit down, would you?”
Lieutenant Janashia punched a button on the console to trigger the warning lights and spoke into the comm.
“Just waiting on the all-clear from the tower,” he said when he was done, touching the contact patch beneath his right ear. With one hand, he keyed the go-ahead request to flight control in the towers at our backs. “One moment.”
I had taken the fold-out opposite Cassandra and strapped myself in. Her smile was electric, and I asked, “You secure?”
She said she was, and turned her head to peer over Browning’s head and out the window.
“There’s a lever by your left hand that will unlock and pivot the chair so it faces forward.” I modeled the action for her. “You’ll want to be facing forward when the fusion torch kicks on in the upper atmosphere.”
She did as I directed, and when she was secure, asked, “Was it like this? Your first time?”
“Actually, it was!” I said, thinking back to Arello and his crew. His wife, Juno, their Tavrosi doctor, and that apelike homunculus of theirs. What had his name been? “My first Jaddian. A little Union ship, free traders. I guess it’s fitting your first flight is from Jadd.”
Janashia said. “We’re clear for takeoff.”
“Copy,” Albé said. “Prime repulsors, take us to forty thousand feet and prep for fusion burn.”
“Aye, sir,” Browning said. “Ignition in three. Two. One.”
The atmospheric thrusters whined, and we were accelerating, tearing along the laneway. Browning adjusted the controls, and an instant later the Ascalon leaped into the air, boosted by her repulsors to aft and along her ventral hull, so fast it seemed that Jadd fell away from us. Cassandra grinned at me, and I could not help but smile in return.
Below, I saw the white terraces of Jaharrad, the great towers where the priests interred their dead in air, forever attended by their flocking crows. The vessel banked, and I saw the golden grasslands of Jadd, and the seemingly limitless pleasure gardens of the prince unrolled about his palace like a carpet of innumerable colors. And there was the palace itself, the Alcaz du Badr—the Castle of the Moon—dominated by the Tholo Orothano like some immense jeweled egg.
Then I saw only the pale sky, and watched as it seemed burned away by the friction fires of our passing until the stars—hidden by the white veil of day—emerged from the revealed black of space like pearls fetched up from the deep of some unfathomed sea.
I shut my eyes, feeling suddenly exposed, as though I were naked in that blackness, naked and alone. One is always exposed in the void, even on the vastest starship, without the comforting blanket of the sky to keep one warm. But in that moment, I imagined—and perhaps I sensed—a will, a malice, as though some terrible eye was questing in the Dark, scouring the stars. Jadd had been a paradise, a garden behind whose walls I had long been kept safe. I had returned to infinite space, the ceaseless night of the wider universe.
To my old world and life.
I longed to go back, to turn my face from that darkness, that malice, those questing eyes.
For a moment, I thought I would be sick.
I was back.