Nightwatch on the Hinterlands

by K. Eason

  Though what she was doing staying here, in a second-rate hostel with first-rate arithmantic silence-hexes on her room, might be worth investigating. The veek might pay for that knowledge.

  For now, though, the arithmancy. A hex for silence made no sense, unless it was that kind of establishment—which this wasn’t—or unless the people inside the room wanted no sound to escape. Tzcansi’d had rooms like that in a few of her cafes, for business meetings. Had a cellar like that, too, in a warehouse in Lowtown, for a different sort of business meeting.

  Corso sniffed the dead air. Stale dust, maybe some mildew. But there was no metallic blood smell. No dead-meat. He took a small bite of breath. Held it and came all the way into the room.

  The door shut as soon as he cleared the threshold, taking the light from the hallway with it. He couldn’t hear himself breathing now.

  All right. He already knew the room was hexed for quiet. That was creepy, sure, but it wasn’t dangerous.

  What he couldn’t hear, though, might be. And what he couldn’t see, with the teslas disabled. He waited for his eyes to adjust. For the shadows to take on more definition. Definitely a wardrobe over there. He patted along the wall until he found a closed door beside him. The probable WC. It, like the main door, opened when he touched the panel.

  Nothing came leaping out at him. No faceful of jacta bolt or monofil-swinging wichu. Of course the lights didn’t work in there, either. Black as the inside of a pocket. No sound. The only smell was chemical, antiseptic, faint and permanent. The floor was—he poked an exploring toe forward—slick underfoot, like tile.

  Definitely the WC, as fucking expected. Corso let his breath out in a little gust that he could only feel, and eased back. Let that door close itself, and retreated to the room’s opposite wall.

  Last time he’d gone into someplace that’d seemed empty, he’d found Tzcansi. But there he’d smelled the blood before he got up the stairs. He’d known there was something wrong, and what that wrong would look like when he got to it.

  There was definitely something wrong here, but what it was . . .

  . . . was a matter of sliding two paces down the wall until he could get an angle and peer past the partition into the main room. Chances were, anyone waiting for him was pressed against the wall shared with the WC. They couldn’t see him yet. He couldn’t see them.

  Iari would’ve done it five times already. Iari would be looking at him with that poor civ Corso face for huddling with his back to the wall, within easy retreat to the corridor. Iari would be laughing behind her fucking visor that he was scared to go into a dark room like there were Brood hiding in there, instead of what was most likely a slagging wichu.

  A room slathered with silencing hexes. Remember that.

  Except no. Iari wouldn’t laugh at him. Iari would say get behind me and pop out that shield.

  That image got Corso to slide himself along the wall in one sharp, quick motion, jacta raised, primed, ready. Expecting to see a wichu, maybe with a weapon. Expecting that wichu to jump at him, maybe, or throw something, or scream. Not expecting what he did see: a sharply made bed, the cover of which was a collage of light and dark patches (they would be colorful, with sufficient light), in the middle of which was a puddle of black so dark it made all the shadows look pale and tragic.

  That puddle sprouted a pentad of lambent eyes in an unbalanced arrangement. That puddle flowed into a collection of knife-edged limbs of asymmetrical proportions.

  Boneless.

  Corso fired the jacta. Whitefire arced from the muzzle, jagged and aimed by panic. It stitched across the bed, warped by the natural Brood warping effect, before ricocheting off the wall and hitting the boneless by accident.

  Corso smelled the hit: chemical burn in his throat, in his eyes, acrid and thick as oil. Saw it: the spattering not-quite-flesh, burning white and raining onto the bed, raising smoke from the patchwork quilt.

  The boneless (should have) shrieked. Its primary mouth irised wide, showed that coil of teeth and the triple-tongue.

  It whipped sideways, uncoiling. Ricocheted off the wall and bounced at him.

  This time, when Corso fired, he screamed.

  He didn’t hear that, either.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The boneset’s chrono and the med-mecha’s glowing insectoid eyes were the only real lights in the hospice. The ambient teslas, the only ones bright enough for, oh, reading, had powered off on some whimsical timer when Iari’d been in the middle of Book Two, Chapter Eight.

  Of the things which inspire fear, there are two categories: those things beyond our strength and control, and those things over which we have some measure of the same. Among the former, we might include the shift and whim of the Elements; for who can divert a flood, or a hurricane, or lightning? Who can withstand an earthquake?

  A fair question, at the time, and one with the obvious answer nobody. Jareth had been one of the founders of the Aedis, the First Knight-General, and first on the line against the then-united vakari Protectorate. The newly formed Aedis was starting to implement nanomecha, but the syn implants were years away. Jareth and his templars had fought the vakari without them. Iari wondered what Jareth would think of their invention. If he’d think the implants undercut all his stoicism, all his virtue. A priest could divert storms, with enough upgrades, or wring water out of the very air. A templar with a synned battle-rig could match a vakar for speed, for strength.

  But a templar and all her nanomecha couldn’t stop an automated voidspit timer that turned off all the teslas in the trauma wing.

  The midnight bells came and went. Iari sang her own prayers in the dark. Tried to doze, after, but the silence was too loud for that.

  The med-mecha beeped, very softly.

  “I’m awake,” Iari murmured. “What?”

  But then she heard footsteps in the corridor. Light, quick, becoming familiar.

  “Lieutenant?” softly, from outside the curtain. “Are you awake?”

  Iari glanced at the med-mecha. “No. Sound asleep. Come in, Sister Iphigenia.”

  The curtains twitched open. “Mishka’s tears, just call me Iffy. What’s funny?”

  “Nothing. Throat’s dry. Iffy. Don’t you ever go off-shift?”

  “I do. I am, technically. Lights,” she said, and the teslas overhead activated obediently. (Voice recognition? Not fair.) Iffy dragged the stool over beside the bed and perched on top of it. She had a shapeless, faded cloth bag slung over her shoulder, like she was planning a trip to the market shops. She set it on her lap and began rummaging through its guts. “I wanted to bring you this before first shift starts.” She pulled a skinsuit, neatly rolled, out of her bag, and set it on the side table. “For later. The one you were wearing when you came in is unsalvageable. Oh, don’t give me that look. I didn’t break into your quarters or anything, Lieutenant. I’m just delivering it from Supply. The Knight-Marshal signed off on the order. Brother Veeda wasn’t going to let me have it, otherwise. Honestly.” She paused, lips pursed. “I also told Corporal Luki when you’re set for release. She said she’d be here to meet you, with Char.”

  Iari imagined an entire conversation, starting with why and including the words Sister Diran and conspiratorial smiles. She skipped straight to the expected, inevitable, much-deserved end. “Thanks, Sister.”

  Iffy’s smile flickered like a damaged tesla. “And I also wanted you to see this.” She produced a tablet from the bag’s depths and unrolled it like she expected it to snap in half. “It’s your medical report. The results of the last round of tests. Sister Diran hasn’t even seen it yet, unless she’s up earlier than I think she is.”

  “But you read it.”

  Iffy nodded. “In case you had questions.”

  “You don’t think Dee would answer my questions? No. Don’t answer that. She wouldn’t. And thanks.” Iari took the tablet. Didn’t look at it,
not yet. Iffy’s face was more interesting, trying and failing at serene unconcern.

  “Is it bad?”

  “No.” A blink. Another flickering-tesla smile. “It’s actually all good. Your nano are fully functional. Blood alchemy is normal. Maybe even a little better than normal.”

  “But?”

  “Just read it, Lieutenant. I’ll, ah, just check the boneset.”

  Hrok’s breath, that wasn’t ominous or anything. Iari began reading. Most of the information, she already knew about, albeit from a more personal, visceral perspective. Bruises, breaks, the usual damage templars got in battle. It was the second half of the report, the part concerning her implants, framed in numbers and alchemy, with charts and color-coded results, that needed closer examination. The word infection, for instance, describing the failure of nanomecha—a cascading effect that had, at one point, taken almost all of hers offline. Almost. And then they’d recovered, words accompanied by a new onslaught of numerical explanation. Iari skimmed past those, looking for a probable cause in plain Comspek.

  “A battle-hex took down my nanomecha?”

  Iffy stopped fussing over the indifferent boneset and folded her hands. Stared at them, like all the answers to the multiverse were written on her knuckles. “That’s the turing’s best guess, based on probabilities and the initial damage. This was definitely an arithmancer’s doing. Someone with knowledge of battle-hexes.”

  “Someone. You better not mean Gaer.”

  Iffy’s chin jerked up. She flashed wide blue eyes at Iari. “No one thinks that! I mean. It’s obvious it’s not the ambassador’s fault.”

  It was what Iari wanted to hear. Exactly why she didn’t trust it. The anger settled back to nausea. She borrowed Gaer’s tone. “Why is that obvious?”

  “Whatever breached your nanomecha got in because its code looked Aedian. There’s no way the ambassador could write something like that. No vakar could. Lieutenant. I repeat: no one thinks it’s him.”

  “The turing ran that probability, though, didn’t it?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  Which Gaer would expect. He lived here, in the middle of an Aedis compound, one of, what, five vakari on the planet, and the only one in B-town? Damn sure he was accustomed to suspicion. Chaama’s cold bones, no wonder he wouldn’t come down to the hospice to see her. He didn’t want anyone to take him apart, sure, but he didn’t want to give anyone cause to think they should, either.

  “You said our code.” Ptah’s unblinking eye. Gaer had also said the code in the riev chip had looked like Aedis hexwork. “Does that mean this . . . infection . . . could hit priests, too? Not just templars?”

  “That is the theory.”

  Iari thrust the report back at Iffy. “Thanks for letting me read this.”

  “That’s . . . all? You don’t want to ask anything else?”

  Oh, void and dust. “What’s got you upset?”

  “The part about your nanomecha rewriting their basecode.”

  “That’s what they’re supposed to do, isn’t it? Adapt?”

  “In theory. It’s just—they’ve never had to. We haven’t had a security breach like this since . . .” Iffy waved her hands. “I can’t even name a date. The beginning. Before the Weep. Not since the very first nanomecha—wichu-artificed to be weapons, but they overwrote their own code when they colonized the very first person to carry them. That was before we had implants to interface with them, and before we’d even invented the syn.”

  Iari knew the bones of that story: pre-Aedis, an early encounter with the Protectorate, the groundwork for what became the templars in its details. She hadn’t realized, though, that the initial nanomecha had been wichu-made. Like the riev.

  She remembered the pyrotechnics in her HUD when Sawtooth and Swift Runner had come crashing into the warehouse cellar. They’d been infected, Gaer’s own word for it. But by Brood, not by . . . code. Unless the code included Brood? And even if that were possible, she didn’t have a chip. Sawtooth did. How would any infection have jumped systems, its code to her nanomecha?

  Iari scanned again through the report. No sign of Brood-rot in her. The Aedis would know. But Brood-rot was physical damage. Corruption, corrosion, natural processes derailed and disrupted. What if it could be somehow woven into a hex? Gaer said his voidspit arithmancy, numbers, underpinned everything. Why wouldn’t someone be able to find a way to describe Brood-rot with numbers?

  Pinjat’s workshop, wrecked as it was, so obviously battered by Sawtooth—she and Gaer hadn’t gotten any Brood emanations off of it. She hadn’t been rigged, so that excused her from catching it; but Gaer wore that optic, and he hadn’t sensed anything either. So either he’d missed it, or it hadn’t been there. That would mean Sawtooth hadn’t been infected when they had gone after Pinjat.

  Or, or, the infection had been in a stage early enough Sawtooth hadn’t been showing the effects. Pinjat’s murder had been what, less than a full day before the cellar encounter? And Sawtooth had been oozing then.

  Iari looked at her numbers again. It’d been twice that long now since she fought Sawtooth, and she wasn’t showing signs of rot. So whatever the riev had gotten, her nano had beaten it back.

  Or it was just taking a lot longer to manifest, and all the priests were wrong. And that still didn’t tell her how infected code could jump from a chip to her nano. If it could. (How could it? Could nanomecha . . . fly?)

  Ungentle Ptah, she needed an arithmancer’s perspective. She needed Gaer.

  Of those things which we fear that lie beyond our strength, then: only fools careless of their own lives would battle with these, or people insensible of their own limits, or the insane. The one possessed of courage knows when to yield ground, and when to hold it.

  When Jareth had said it was all right to fear that which is beyond one’s power to overcome, he’d meant external forces. He hadn’t said what to do if the irresistible forces might be inside.

  Iari heard Dee coming. Brisk strides, and hard, like she was mad at the stone floor for some transgression. Like she was making sure it knew, every step, she was in charge. It was exactly twenty-nine hours, fifty-five minutes. Iari didn’t expect Diran to defy the Knight-Marshal’s orders, exactly; but she wouldn’t yield up a minute of Iari’s incarceration, either. Or her own authority. Literally, not one slagging minute.

  You saw that, sometimes, pissing matches between the priests and the templars. Usually it was Reverend Mothers or Fathers in conflict with their Knight-Marshals, each jealous of their personnel, their jurisdictions. They were supposed to be balanced partners, the arms of the Aedis; but there was always one arm a little bit stronger, a little more in control.

  This, Diran’s behavior, wasn’t symptomatic of a larger problem. The B-town Aedis worked like it was supposed to, a partnership of mutual respect between Quellis and Tobin. No, this was purely Diran, purely personal.

  The med-mecha beeped softly and rearranged its legs. Metal snick, metal whisper. It had stationed itself over Iari’s cubicle, never mind she didn’t need the attendance. She’d thought it was spying for Diran at first; but when it hadn’t set off any alerts when she’d tried to walk in the boneset (bad idea) and when it’d helped her back into the bed when she’d proved she could not, she’d decided it was just lonely. Bored. An impression further cemented by its company after Iffy got the boneset off.

  Diran would sniff at the very idea of a mecha’s emotional matrix, but Dee would sniff at Char having opinions, hell, Dee sniffed at anyone’s opinions, unless they agreed with her own.

  “I hear you,” Iari muttered, for the med-mecha’s benefit. Then she sat down on the edge of the bed. Standing would’ve been most comfortable, but Dee would read that (rightly) as a challenge.

  “All right, Lieutenant, let’s evaluate your condition—” Diran swept into the cubicle with a dramatic pulling-aside of the curtain. She loo
ked at Iari then, and frowned. “You’re already dressed.”

  That was Diran’s way of asking how did you get that skinsuit? Or, knowing Dee, who got it for you?

  Iari said nothing.

  Diran pursed her lips and tapped her stylus on the rim of her tablet. “Sister Iphigenia.” Not even asking.

  “Templar-Initiate Char brought it,” Iari said, which made Diran’s face pucker up, trying to think how she might’ve missed a one-armed riev coming into the trauma wing, trying to think when. Iari was just glad Dee didn’t read auras. Hers would be glowing with whatever color lies were. “I didn’t want any unnecessary delays for my discharge.”

  Iari patted the square-cornered bundle of hospice robe, stacked a precise fingerwidth from the pillow, which was as close to perfect center in the bed as the med-mecha and Iari had been able to manage. Tobin’s copy of Meditations sat beside it. Iari kept her gaze on its cover, on the title, on Jareth’s name.

  That which differentiates an animal from a sapient is the capacity for reason. For any beast may feel anger, or joy, or fear. But it is reason which affords us the power to control our reactions, and sets us apart from the beasts.

  “Mm.” Diran pretended great interest in the tablet’s screen. “Well. You may’ve gotten dressed for nothing. The thirty-hour medical hold was a minimum, not a guarantee.”

  Iari ground her teeth together until they creaked. Keep her mouth shut, that was the trick of dealing with Dee. Give her nothing to hold onto. Say that’s neefa-shit or Ptah’s burning eye, Dee, come on and she’d be in here that much longer.

  Instead, she sat still as a riev while Diran examined her—which the med-mecha could do, but which Diran did because, oh, she could.

  “I wish you’d waited to change out of the robe,” Diran said, as she crouched and felt her way along Iari’s newly-out-of-the-boneset leg. “Examination is easier without fabric in the way.”