Splintered Suns

by Michael Cobley

  Pyke stared, surprised. “There’s another two crystal shards? What are they all pieces of?”

  “Something quite staggering,” said RK1. “Going by what my investigations revealed.”

  Pyke had to ask. “So, what did you see? What actually does lie outside this simulation?”

  “Star systems,” said RK1. “Suns with orbiting planets—the stars were darkened orbs and the planets were darker still.”

  “How many are there?”

  “It is not easy to estimate—this was only a snapshot glimpse, the best I could obtain without triggering boundary alerts and making myself a target for the killswitches, and other anti-intruder heuristals. An analysis of the snapshot results in a count of between fifty-seven and sixty-four visible star systems—however, I require far more detailed scans of the area in order to arrive at an accurate summary.”

  “That’s probably not about to happen anytime soon, I’m guessing,” said Pyke. “Still, sixty-odd weird, dark star systems …” He frowned. “Could all that be a projection, a simulation as well?”

  “Insufficient data for a decently probable answer,” RK1 said. “Such a notion prompts the inevitable question of why anyone would simulate dozens of systems with planets and suns? And what is the connection with this simulation? At any rate, I am preparing for another foray to the boundary. Gathering a larger measure of information should be revealing—especially now that we know that your shard is only one out of three.”

  “Okay, I’m willing to wait for that,” Pyke said. “But right now I could do with a tasty slab of clandestine crypto-help.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “You know about this intrigue that me and the others are caught up in …”

  “You are all trying to find a blood-poison vial which could be used to send the Emperor mad—yes, I’ve been following the narrative update stream.”

  Pyke chuckled. “So do you know where it is, and who’s really plotting against the Emperor?”

  RK1 clacked its bill and shook its squeaky head. “No, I don’t have access to uncommitted plot strands.”

  “Skag it!—I’ve found out that something’s happening in Redlamp Town but I’ve no idea what or who’s involved.”

  “Was that from a hint dropped by our lord and master?”

  “Heh, you noticed the friendly get-together we had, I assume.”

  The bird blinked. “I had been following your progress in the Inox & Throm mission and was aiming to pitch in with some help, but then you and the Flett character disappeared. I had to engage in some frantic searching, tracked you down by focusing on your lady friend’s vector markers. I only got here after the Legacy’s departure so I missed all the fun you had.”

  “Yeah, it was a right old barrel of laughs.” Pyke rested his head on his hand, palm against one eye, fingers splayed across his scalp. He sighed. “I just hope that the outcome of all this gives us some kind of advantage in our dealings with the Legacy …” But if we’re just running around, deluded into thinking that we have self-determination, perhaps we really should drag this out as long as possible, and put off the inevitable …

  He pushed these grim thoughts to the side. “Look, could you just transport me over to Redlamp Town and I’ll take it from there?”

  “That kind of operation is reserved for ratifiers and above. Sorry. However, I can tell you what’s happening to the others right now.”

  Pyke brightened. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  “After you disappeared, Vrass continued as planned, managed to track down Dachour, the dark-clothed retainer, within the Inox & Throm headquarters. Dachour’s position is more like a personal steward to Director Inox, and Vrass found an open vent on the wall of a room adjoining Dachour’s office. Dachour was awaiting the arrival of an overseer from one of the company’s outlying estates, having requested his presence by runner message earlier in the day. That meeting duly took place and now Mr. Dachour and the overseer are on their way to Redlamp Town, with Vrass tailing them.”

  “What was the meeting about?” Pyke said. “And who is this overseer guy?”

  “Sorry, another limitation on my abilities,” said RK1. “Conversations are automatically archived into restricted access storage which would be very time-consuming to bypass. And I have to prioritise my meagre rumours at all times.”

  “Do you know their destination?”

  “No, but T’Moy and Klane are already in Redlamp Town.”

  Pyke was caught between perplexity and surprise. “Hmm, plot threads drawing together, eh? They were supposed to follow those two heavies that jumped me earlier—and look where it’s led them!”

  “Quite so. I can give you their location if that helps.”

  “Don’t hold back.”

  “As of this moment, they have just left a tavern called the Hawk and Hammer and they are heading round the corner to … an alehouse called the Bull and Shovel.”

  “That’s what I need,” Pyke said. He pushed away from the altar and hurried over to the window with the wrecked shutters and hauled himself up into its deep stone shelf.

  “I’ll keep tabs on you as best as I can, Captain,” said the mechanical bird as it took to the air again, wooden wings clattering. “I still have my information-gathering exercise to complete so I may not be on hand if an emergency arises. Next time we meet I hope to be rather better informed.”

  “Look forward to it, Arky!” Pyke gave a smiling, finger-to-the-brow salute then squeezed through the window and dropped down into a thankfully deserted back alley. As he reached the corner where the alley opened onto the main road, he noticed a big poster pasted to the smooth stone of the temple wall, and stopped to look. It read:

  Praise Vondral! Praise The Divine Dramaturge!

  Across the grand stage of our Existence, Vondral the Almighty lays down the scripts of our lives in accordance with the loving discipline of his Will. Heed the prophecies of His Servants! When preordained Dramas seize thy days and nights, curb unpleasant impulses and behave with Piety and Nobility. When confronted with Conflicts and Antagonists, adopt one of the Nine Holy Personae and play out your part with Grace and Acceptance!

  Submit To The Sacred Resolution!

  The World Is Vondral’s!

  It took all of Pyke’s self-control to throttle his laugh down to a muffled chuckle, half in awe at the Legacy’s sheer self-aggrandising egomania, and half in a kind of mocking contempt at it. He’s just not into concealing that towering vanity at all—to him it’s some kind of merit badge, something to show what a classy tyrant he is. God, what an arse! Pyke gave the poster a last withering look then walked on.

  It took ten minutes of side-street navigating to reach the garrison’s main gate from which a broad road called the Iron Highway ran north-east. West of the highway was Redlamp Town—crossing into it took him under the shadow cast by the garrison walls. Morning was full, bright and breezy across Granah by now but in Redlamp Town street lanterns still glowed in the hazy gloom. Careful questions to a few passers-by who looked like they belonged gave Pyke enough hints to trace his way through the narrow streets and winding lanes to a junction where he found the Bull and Shovel. He was about to cross over when the alehouse door creaked open and out stepped none other than the Chamberlain and his playmate, the Brute.

  Pyke pivoted away to conceal his face while striding off downhill. Luckily there was a small hat shop just ahead and when he paused at its window a sideways glance revealed that the thugs were heading in the opposite direction. Relieved, he abandoned the hat shop and hurried back to the junction, wondering where Klane and T’Moy were if they were supposedly tailing those ambushing scumsuckers. And, right on cue, his two companions emerged from the alehouse—T’Moy spotted the two receding hoodlums and said, “There they are,” but before he could march off in pursuit Klane grabbed him by the arm and wheeled him round to come face-to-face with Pyke, who Klane had spotted straight away.

  “Captain!” T’Moy said. “Th
ose filthy lurkers are heading that way …”

  “Yeah, if we move it sharpish we can catch them,” said Pyke, but Klane shook his head.

  “Following them has been a fruitless exercise, I’m afraid,” he said. “They’ve been in this tavern and another, asking about Sergeant Dalyak …”

  “So they got a lead on the mysterious sergeant,” Pyke said. “But you think they’re not worth following? Why?”

  Klane jabbed his thumb at the door they’d just exited. “I had a word with one of the elderly regulars, who was wearing a 25th Brigade badge on his collar, a veteran, you see. He told me that any strangers asking about the 25th or the whereabouts of any old campaigners generally get the runaround treatment—usually the barman sends them onto another bar and tells them to ask for a name in particular, only its a code name that lets the people in the next tavern know to send the nosies on a blue-crow hunt.”

  Pyke laughed. “No such thing as a blue crow, I’m guessing.”

  “Just so, Captain. The old veteran told me that they came up with this diversion after their mascot was stolen several years ago by fraudsters working for a rival regiment.”

  “A mascot?” Pyke said.

  “A stuffed and mounted devil-boar,” said Klane, with a hint of a smile. “Goes by the name of Magni!”

  Pyke and T’Moy stared at Klane for a moment, then started laughing. “A pig!” said Pyke. “A stuffed pig!”

  “They said it was a boar …”

  “Aye, yes, boar is a kind of pig, sort of.” Pyke grinned, shook his head. “Dalyak’s journal must have said something bland and terse like, ‘I left the vial with Magni,’ or some such, and most of the gougers trying to track down this nasty relic think that Magni is a person! Outstanding!”

  “Where do we go from here?” said T’Moy. “We seem to have run out of clues.”

  “Not necessarily, my fine Bargalil friend,” Pyke said. “Even if the guardians of Magni were keeping him under wraps, they’d still keep him close at hand for the 25th’s anniversaries and celebrations, yeah? So it makes sense to find out where the 25th gathers on special occasions.”

  T’Moy frowned and Klane didn’t seem convinced.

  “Well, they know our faces in here and the first one we were in,” said the Shyntanil.

  “That’s why I’ll be asking the questions in my new guise as a reporter for the Worroth Chronicle!” Pyke said.

  “It’s the Worroth Herald,” corrected Klane.

  “Okay, fair enough …” Pyke glanced round at the exterior of the Bull and Shovel. It presented a dour façade to any passing custom, small square windows in a stone wall, a low door showing evidence of numerous repairs, and a wooden sign with pictures of both a bull and a shovel that might have been painted by an eight-year old. “What’s it like inside?”

  “Squalid,” said Klane. “Stinking and ill lit.”

  “Sawdust on the floor?” Pyke said. “Surly barkeep?”

  Nods from the other two.

  “Any decorations?”

  “A moth-eaten bearskin, nailed to the ceiling,” Klane said. “Its upside-down, eyeless head is practically the first thing that greets you on entering.”

  “A bearskin, not a bull’s head.” Pyke shrugged. “Anything else?”

  “Dagger graffiti,” said T’Moy. “On every table surface.”

  “Okay, sounds like your standard dive. What about the place you were in before—what’s it called?”

  “The Hawk and Hammer.”

  “What was that like?”

  “A palace compared to this one,” Klane said. “It’s long, like several rooms joined together, well lit, pleasant bar staff, didn’t smell as if the walls were painted with vomit.”

  “Decorations?”

  T’Moy nodded. “Paintings, a tapestry, a couple of statuettes in niches, a lot of flags.”

  “There were a few bits of armour hanging up about the serving counter,” said Klane.

  “Sounds like a promising candidate for our investigations,” Pyke said. “You fellows know the way so lead on.”

  Klane nodded and set off, pointing to a road that curved up behind the Bull and Shovel. “It’s over this rise and down the other side, third on the left.”

  Walking three abreast as they climbed the hill, Pyke grinned—it was like being in one of those prehistoric vees from Earth’s Oilrig Era, all heroic self-assurance and stories that had an ending! He couldn’t help putting on a swagger as they neared the crest, wishing he had a lit cheroot wedged into the corner of his mouth so he could take it out from time to time and squint expressively …

  The downward slope was just coming into view when Pyke noticed a group of brawny men in similar surcoats striding into view from further round the hill. Their leader he recognised immediately.

  “Off the road!” he stage-whispered. “Get to cover!”

  Grabbing them by arms and shoulder he hastened them sideways off the road, steering them along a grey, decrepit alleyway which, fortunately, was narrowed here and there by outbuildings, providing plenty of cover if needed. Crouching at the alley’s shadowy mouth, Pyke’s panicky measures proved not so crucial when the Shylan Shields turned off the hill crescent and tramped off down the very road that the three had themselves been heading for.

  Pyke and the others exchanged puzzled frowns.

  “There’s nothing else for it,” said Pyke. “We’ll have to tread carefully in their footsteps until we can find the way to this pub.”

  Nods all round, and collars were raised as they emerged from the alley and cautiously went after the Shields. There were nine of them, Pyke noticed, a heftyish number of those dangerous bruisers and all led by his old friend, Shield-Lance Drask. Did the Legacy think him up, I wonder, or was he just picked out from a range of possibles, Henchgoon Leader #4, mebbe?

  Their progress was a stop-start series of carefully quiet dashes from alley to doorway to the corner of the occasional wagon parked in the street. As this procession went on, Pyke was still hoping that the Legacy’s prophecy was just bluff and an attempt to twist the knife of worry in his gut. So far, though, it seemed that no one had been killed or seriously wounded or ended up in dire peril … although they were yet to hook up with Vrass. Pyke steeled himself—the Gomedran would be okay, he’d be fine.

  Then he realised that neither Klane nor T’Moy had bothered to suggest any alternative routes to this inn, the Hawk and Hammer. When he pointed this out, Klane nodded sombrely.

  “That is because these fools are actually following the most direct path,” he murmured. “And they have not bothered to picket their progress with scouts.”

  Pyke gave a dry chuckle. “Okay, this should be instructive.”

  As it turned out, the involvement of the Shylan Shields was more just plain annoying than anything else. When the nine brawny thugs stopped outside the Hawk and Hammer, Pyke and the others kept watch from the cover of an arched entrance back along the road. Shield-Lance Drask and one of his mobsters entered the inn through one of three doors—after a few minutes of heel-kicking, they re-emerged and went into a huddle with the rest. After some muttering, the Shylan gang was on the move again, leaving two of their number standing guard outside the inn. Pyke turned away from the view and leaned against the stone wall of the archway, hands outspread in disbelief.

  “And now we need another way in,” he said.

  “Which there is,” said Klane. “The three front doors are not the only entrances—there is a salon-style taproom up on the first floor, accessible from an outside stairway at the rear.”

  “Good to hear,” Pyke said. “And a clear route that avoids us being spotted?”

  T’Moy nodded. “My Barlig persona visited this area many times—I can steer us along a safe path.”

  For once their manoeuvring went without a hitch. Led by T’Moy they backtracked a short distance to a narrow street heavily rutted by delivery wagons, which curved downhill behind the inns and eating houses and music parlours, bringing th
em out near a main road where there was enough foot traffic and carts for the three of them to cross unnoticed. Then it was just a matter of strolling back uphill via a back lane to the loading court behind the inn, and the stairs that led up to the back door. They tried to look relaxed and unconcerned, as if they did this every day, and when they reached the landing Pyke paused to speak.

  “Right, I want the two of you to find a table in one of the side rooms on the ground floor, and make your presence felt, study the surroundings and even the customers, without starting a fight, however. Where do the stairs from upstairs come out in the main bar?”

  “One of the side rooms, conveniently,” said T’Moy. “When you arrive after us you should turn left—that’ll take you past the middle taproom and the serving counters.”

  “Got it,” said Pyke. “I’ll get chatting with the regulars, see if I can find out any hints about this mascot, should give us an idea where Vrass may be headed while he’s following that guy from Inox & Throm …”

  “What if it’s here?” said T’Moy. “What if Magni the mascot is being kept here?”

  Pyke scratched his ear, smiling. “Then Vrass and the nasties he’s tracking will soon be coming through those doors and things around here might get a bit tasty! I can’t see us being that lucky, if that’s the word—but if you hear me shout ‘Fire in the hole!’ then you need to come running ’cos I might need some backup, okay? Same goes for the both of you, if you need me to pitch in.”

  Serious nods were exchanged, hands were shaken in a manly fashion. Then Klane and T’Moy pushed on inside.

  Pyke leaned on the landing’s handrail, looking out past the smoky trails leaning with the wind over the low roofs back along the alleyway. Even here the dark grey walls of the Imperial garrison jutted into view, yet just past its corner he could make out the tall sandstone tower of the abandoned temple on whose roof he’d recently bandied words with the bastard machine that held all their lives in its toxic grip. He let out an angry sigh then followed the others into the Hawk and Hammer.