House of Suns

by Alastair Reynolds

  ‘Cyphel’s funeral will take place tomorrow,’ Betony said, and for a moment we thought that was the end of his announcement. Then he scratched at his chin and added, ‘Today Mezereon will resume her questioning of the two prisoners. Events having forced a certain urgency upon us, I have given her permission to bring them both out of stasis.’

  ‘We could lose them both,’ Campion said.

  ‘We’ll take that risk, but I don’t think it’s likely. The condition of Grilse’s cabinet is rather better than that of the Jurtina. I think we have an excellent chance of getting at least one of them out intact.’ His brow knitted, Betony looked Campion hard in the eye. ‘Unless you’ve changed your mind, it might be better if you kept away from the interrogation.’

  Wiping her fingers with a napkin, Mezereon said, ‘Campion can sit in if he wishes. Just as long as he doesn’t try to stop me this time.’

  ‘You do what you want,’ Campion said. ‘I can think of a million things I’d rather be doing than watching you bully and torture the prisoners.’

  ‘Since they won’t reveal the information voluntarily, I don’t really see what choice I have.’ Mezereon folded her napkin and placed it back on the breakfast table. ‘It’s moot, anyway. As Betony said, we’re done with that phase of the inquiry. I’ll have flesh and blood bodies by the end of the morning - at least one, anyway.’

  ‘Or none, if your luck doesn’t hold out.’

  She stared him down, managing not to blink once. ‘The sectioning apparatus is ready. You are more than welcome to observe the procedure.’

  ‘We’ll all be there,’ Betony said. ‘No excuses this time, unless you’re on patrol duty. Purslane, that includes you.’

  ‘Next you’ll be telling me I can’t look away,’ I said.

  ‘I want everyone to be present. We’ll be studying your reactions, seeing who doesn’t look comfortable.’

  ‘That’ll be me,’ Campion said.

  ‘I don’t think this is any time for flippancy,’ Betony cautioned.

  Campion shrugged and stood from the table, knowing when he had said enough. I followed him to the railing, out of earshot of the others. We had barely spoken this morning. When I woke at dawn, I had found him already out of bed, sitting on a chair on the balcony, looking out towards the dark silver dunes with eyes reddened by tears that he had tried to rub away.

  ‘We’ll get through this,’ I said to him now.

  He took my hand and squeezed the fingers. ‘I know. It’s what I keep telling myself. But I don’t feel it. If you told me Gentian Line will end tomorrow, I’d find that easier to believe.’

  ‘This is when we have to be the strongest. Darkest hour before dawn, et cetera.’

  Campion looked away. ‘I could do without the platitudes.’

  ‘You know there’s a saying like that in almost every human culture that’s ever existed. There’s a reason for that, too. Sometimes you just have to hold on, to keep doing what you’re doing, to have faith that things are going to get better. It’s how we survive. There’ve been a million bottlenecks in history where things would have turned out much worse if we’d all just given up and accepted the inevitable. Some of those bottlenecks would have ended us if a few irrational, doggedly optimistic souls hadn’t clung to a thread of hope.’

  ‘I’m clinging, believe me. But that thread just got a lot thinner, a lot more frayed.’

  ‘Then we hold on more tightly. Something good will happen. I’m sorry Cyphel died, but at least it tells us we’re getting warm. Someone was scared enough to kill her. That means she was close to revealing vital information.’

  ‘Vital information that has now been lost for ever.’

  ‘Someone else can take over her work. Cyphel was the automatic choice for reconstructing your thread, but it doesn’t mean someone else can’t do it eventually. It’ll just take them a bit longer.’

  ‘Maybe that’s all the traitor needs - a little more time, and then it won’t matter.’

  I shifted awkwardly, because I had no good answer for that. ‘I know how you felt about Cyphel, Campion. This must be tearing you up inside.’

  ‘Do you hate me for that?’

  ‘For liking her? That would be rather petty of me, wouldn’t it? Especially now. She was one of the best of us. She was beautiful, too - don’t think I hadn’t noticed. I can hardly blame you for admiring her.’

  ‘I’m lucky to have you. Whatever I might have felt about Cyphel, it didn’t even begin to compare—’

  ‘I know,’ I said, shushing him by placing a finger against his lips. ‘You don’t have to say it. You never have to say it. Just ... keep being here, all right? Don’t ever go away.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Campion said.

  PART FIVE

  I held the letter in my hands. It was the finest paper I had ever touched, smooth as a puppy’s ear and as delicately scented as a courtesan’s pillow. It smelled of lilacs and almonds and the rare spices of the Faraway Islands, the archipelago that lay at the very edge of the mapped world, beyond the Kingdom, beyond outlying empires, beyond the Shield Mountains, beyond the girdling seas, beyond the perilous leagues of White Kraken Ocean. The wax seal was a black coin embossed with the calculatedly unsettling emblem of Count Mordax: a portcullis made of bones. I broke the seal with my fingernail and folded open the crisp document, my heart anticipating the dire news I fully expected it to ontain.

  I was not to be disappointed, if that is quite the turn of phrase to encompass my feelings. The letter was from my stepbrother, Mordax himself. His writing was as elegant and magisterial as ever. He wrote love letters the same way he wrote death warrants. This was neither.

  The letter informed me that my lady-in-waiting, still a prisoner in the Black Castle, would be put to death unless I revealed the whereabouts of Calidris. Not only would she be executed, but the manner of her death would be ‘commensurate’ with my continued non-compliance. I could spare her by acting within hours; I could ease her torment by acting within the day; I could guarantee a slow and painful execution by delaying my response any longer than that.

  ‘I cannot do this,’ I told the chamberlain, Daubenton. He was standing in my council room, the heavy oak table straining under its burden of maps and plans of war, acres of heavy parchment and leather. The room was darkly vaulted, with small latticed windows to confound spies and assassins. Candles barely touched its sullen, military gloom. Nothing pleasant had ever been schemed within these walls, only death and punishment. Next to Daubenton was the master-at-arms, Cirlus. ‘I had hoped not to betray Calidris, after all he has done for us,’ I said.

  Cirlus fingered the crimson gash of his old duelling scar. ‘You could not betray Calidris even if you wished it, milady. Even my best spies have no idea where the sorcerer is hiding now. That was always as he wished it - to lose himself both to his enemies and his friends.’

  ‘Calidris must remain amongst men,’ I said. ‘That is his strength and his weakness. No other magician is as powerful as him. But magic is a curious fire. It pollutes the minds of those who would shape it. One magician may sense the mind of another magician, blazing like a beacon in an otherwise dark landscape. The only defence, the only manner in which a sorcerer may hide, is to surround himself with lesser minds. No one is entirely immune from the taint of magic; we all carry a little of it within us. Our minds do not blaze so brightly, but we may provide a kind of concealment to one such as Calidris. In cities, in towns, even in villages, he may swaddle the bright coal of his own mind in the dim embers of his fellow citizens. He cannot easily be found, even by another magician. That is his strength. But it is also a weakness, for it makes it hazardous for him to travel, even in the company of a small party. And if a man such as Mordax wishes to find Calidris, he need only put every village in the Kingdom to the sword, until he has forced the magician to reveal himself.’

  ‘There have already been reports of raiding parties torching the villages and hamlets along the western flank of the For
est of Shadows,’ said Daubenton. ‘They rode horses from the east, and spoke in the coarse tongue of brigands ...’

  I nodded heavily. ‘But we may safely assume Mordax’s men were responsible. We may also assume that they will apply the same systematic approach to every village they suspect of harbouring Calidris. Our army is weakened - we cannot defend every community on the map.’ I put down the hateful document, this vile piece of fragranced paper that had been touched and written on by my stepbrother. ‘I cannot let my people burn. Even when the lady-in-waiting has been put to the sword, do you imagine Count Mordax will leave us alone?’

  ‘I fear milady is correct,’ Daubenton said. ‘But how does this change things? We cannot locate Calidris.’

  ‘I can,’ I said.

  ‘How is that possible?’ asked Cirlus.

  ‘Because Ludmilla gave me the blueprints for her ships,’ I said.

  Daubenton frowned. ‘Milady?’

  I was ashamed at my childish outburst, though the words had tumbled from my mouth before I could stop them. Ludmilla Marcellin was a figment from my dreams: the princess of another realm - one of celestial argosies and palaces in the sky.

  She did not belong in daylight.

  ‘Forgive me,’ I said. ‘I babble nonsense, the product of too little sleep.’

  ‘Of course, milady,’ Cirlus said. ‘But concerning Calidris—’

  ‘I can reach him. Before he left us, Calidris gave me a gift.’ From the folds of my dress I withdrew the embroidered rectangle of my sewing kit. Daubenton and Cirlus studied it warily, uncertain of my meaning. I opened the kit, spreading the two halves wide in my lap. The needles, pins, thimbles and embroidery were as I had left them.

  ‘Milady?’ Daubenton said again.

  My hand moved along the arrayed needles until I reached the smallest of them all, the one I was careful never to use when I was sewing. I pulled it from its pocket.

  ‘This is what Calidris gave me,’ I said, holding the needle up for inspection. It glimmered in the wavering candlelight. ‘It looks like the others, but it is not the same. Calidris placed an enchantment on this needle. It is blood-bound.’

  ‘I am unfamiliar with the notion,’ Cirlus admitted.

  ‘So was I, until it was explained. It is magical cunning. Calidris knew he must make himself difficult to find - that is why he went into the world, to smother himself with the dull minds of ordinary men. But his wisdom told him that there might come a time when the Kingdom had dire need of him again, a crisis so grave that Calidris must once more work his magic to save us.’

  ‘Calidris’s magic nearly tore the world in two,’ Daubenton said, the colour gone from his face. I felt the same way. Calidris’s dark talents had opened a mouth into hell.

  ‘Then it may be magic powerful enough to hold the world in one piece, when something else would rip it asunder. Calidris knew this: he’s no fool, and no one in the Kingdom has a firmer appreciation of the risks of magic. But still he gave me this blood-bound needle. With it, I may summon him again. I have only to prick my skin, to draw a bead of blood, and Calidris will hear my call.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘An invisible needle will stab into his finger and draw his blood. When the needle pricks, he will turn his gaze towards the Palace of Clouds and know that I have need of him.’

  ‘You would do this?’ Cirlus asked.

  ‘There is no other way,’ Daubenton said.

  ‘You did not sound so certain a moment ago,’ I said.

  ‘Better his magic be loosed into the world than to watch the Kingdom fall to Count Mordax’s raiding parties.’ Daubenton shrugged wearily. ‘It is a dark bargain, but I see no alternative.’

  ‘Because there is none,’ I said. ‘We must have Calidris.’

  ‘To give to Mordax, in return for the lady-in-waiting, and the safety of our villages?’ asked Cirlus. ‘Surely we have other choices? What of Relictus, the failed apprentice? He remains in our custody. Could he not help us now?’

  ‘Calidris made me promise that I would never turn to Relictus, even in our darkest hour. He never trusted the apprentice. He said that his talents were dark and misshapen.’

  ‘Calidris could not have foreseen our present needs,’ Cirlus said.

  ‘It is immaterial. I have no intention of giving Calidris to Mordax. The count would never keep his side of the bargain. I know him better than anyone else. He and I were once to be married, you know.’

  ‘Milady, the count is your stepbrother,’ Daubenton said tactfully.

  Confusion addled my mind for a few heartbeats. I had been certain that the count and I were destined for marriage until shadowy politicking had made that betrothal an impossibility. How could I know his voice and mannerisms, his inability to keep a promise, if I had not moved in his circles with the intimacy of a lover-to-be? ‘He used to come and play,’ I said, trailing off as the absurdity of my statement sank home. ‘I remember his ship, his robots—’

  ‘Milady must sleep,’ Daubenton said. ‘She has been driving herself to exhaustion with her concern for her people.’

  Cirlus just looked at me. I did not know if he had formed a judgement.

  ‘Calidris must return to us,’ I said, with renewed firmness. ‘Not to be traded for my lady-in-waiting, but to use his powers against Mordax. No advisor in the Palace would trust our enemies in the Black Castle to hold to a bargain.’

  ‘That is true,’ Daubenton admitted.

  ‘I feel clear-headed now. Resolute. The time has come.’

  ‘It must be milady’s decision,’ Cirlus said.

  ‘It is,’ I answered. ‘Always and for ever.’

  I pricked my finger with the blood-bound needle and drew a bauble of the purest scarlet. There was no pain. Somewhere in my Kingdom, Calidris, the strongest of all magicians, felt more than his share.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ‘You’re no fool,’ Mezereon said, her voice pitched to reach the audience even though it was the prisoner she was addressing. ‘You’ve been around; seen a few things here and there. You know exactly what I have in mind for you.’

  ‘So get it over with,’ Grilse said. ‘You’re already boring me to death.’

  He had been moved into the open air, onto one of the largest balconies in the tower. He was out of stasis. Mezereon had failed with the Jurtina shatterling, who was now another pile of dust, but her efforts with Grilse had been more successful. As she had anticipated, his cabinet was in a better condition than the other three. He had weathered the transition to realtime without complications, and was now in Gentian hands, literally and metaphorically.

  Or at least, he had been for a few moments. Fearful that he might find a way to kill himself, or at least render himself incapable of being usefully interrogated, Mezereon had arranged for Grilse to be manhandled into a restraining box. It was an upright frame of complicated construction, a skeletal outline filled with aspic-of-machines, forming a translucent, gelid rectangle into which Grilse - by now stripped of his clothes - was forcibly immersed. The box allowed him to breathe and communicate, but he was going nowhere. It was presumed that if he had been carrying an implanted suicide mechanism, he would already have triggered it inside the stasis cabinet, during one the intervals when he had been dialled down for questioning.

  The sectioning apparatus was centre stage, and the box in which Grilse was trapped formed part of it. Hovering above the box, arranged into an ordered circle, were rectangular panes of a glassy material, each of which was as tall and wide as the framework around the box. Along the top of each pane was a flanged grey bar containing levators and enough intelligence to follow Mezereon’s instructions. All of this had been forged by makers, in accordance with ancient blueprints.

  The aspic had forced its way into his lungs, into contact with his nervous system. It was feeding him with air and information, allowing him to breathe, move within certain limits and hear what Mezereon was saying. We could see his chest rising and falling, his eyes following Meze
reon as she strode up and down.

  ‘I’ve killed three of your colleagues,’ she said. ‘I was ready to kill you as well, without hesitation, but things are different now. One of us is gone. She was murdered, just when she was getting close to exposing vital information. So I’m not going to kill you - not until I’m certain I’ve bled you dry, and by then maybe I’ll have lost interest. You mean nothing to me beyond the information in your head. And I will find out what you know - piece by piece, if necessary.’

  ‘You can do what you like. It won’t get you anywhere.’

  Mezereon looked to one side. ‘Lower the first pane.’

  At her instruction, one of the orbiting panes broke from the group and lowered until it was suspended just above the top of the cabinet. For a moment it hung there, until a nod from Mezereon caused it to lower into the cabinet itself, piercing the invisible glass and parting the aspic in a clean, descending line. It was only just possible to make out the pale edge of the descending pane.

  ‘You’ll feel it cut its way through you,’ Mezereon told the prisoner. ‘It won’t hurt as much as it should, since the nerve connections are reinstated almost as soon as they are broken. But there’ll still be a tingling background of unpleasantness. It will feel like a sharp-edged cold front pushing through your soul. As it descends, you will know that part of you is on one side of that glass and part of you on the other.’

  The pane had begun to divide him at the skull, piercing him so that his face was on one side of the glass, his ears and the rear of his head on the other. It crept downwards at perhaps a centimetre a second, the progress smooth for the most part but with occasional hesitations, as if it was encountering denser or more complex biological structures.

  I knew that the pane was only microns thick, yet it was isolating the two halves of him, severing them from each other as completely as if it had been a metal guillotine. What prevented him from dying - what allowed him to keep thinking, even as the pane knifed his brain into two halves - was that the glass was permitting essential biological functions to tunnel through itself as if the divided surfaces were still contiguous. I gathered that very little biological material was actually passing through the glass without being completely disassembled down to atoms or basic molecules, incorporated into the glass’s agile, constantly adapting matrix, and then conveyed and reassembled elsewhere (on one side or the other) in accordance with the circulatory patterns that had been interrupted. The same was true of the electrical and chemical signals associated with synaptic function.