Dark Age

by Pierce Brown

  The man shakes his head, terrified of the armored beast in front of him. Who wouldn’t be?

  “What did you do?” Pebble asks me.

  “Octavia was a paranoid autarch. Fearing deception, she employed teams of Violet Carvers and Orange Master Makers to create biological esoterica and machines to divine truth.

  “There is one that piqued my interest upon accessing her vault. It was the apogee of her devices, one called the Pandemonium Chair. A battering ram into the mind, so to speak. A crude one which I’ve been refining as a way of decompressing before bed.” I gesture to my white box to show her the three thin spikes no longer than a Red’s pinky. “I call them psychoSpikes. Far more elegant than the chair. Far more useful. Whatever was the Duke of Hands—memories, predilections, personality—is now erased. He is tabula rasa.”

  I hold up a small datachip. “That which was flesh is now silicon.”

  “By Jove…” Pebble whispers. “Is it permanent?”

  “We will see.”

  The Howlers scoot closer to the cube. I tell Holiday to prepare to depart. “Theodora, your new recruit is ready. I advise a restart with the spike before uninstallation. No one should have to look at Sevro the moment they’re born.”

  “I think the Duke of Hands will make a fine Splinter,” she says with a smile. “With some tender love and care, he might even become as patriotic as you, my Sovereign.”

  “I am counting on it.”

  Inside the cube, the man who was the Duke is shaking like a leaf. Sevro has his helmet up now to terrify him. Sevro circles and sees the small metal spike embedded at the base of the man’s skull. He comes back around and crouches in front of the overwhelmed Pink, cackling with laughter.

  “Boyo, sorry to be the one to tell you this. But I think you just got skullfucked.”

  He leaves the Duke there and stomps out of the interrogation tube. “How long have you known about Dancer?” he asks me.

  “Less than an hour.”

  “And what does my Sovereign propose to do with the traitor?” he asks.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” I reply. “Communicate.”

  THE SKUGGI AND I SQUANDER our first days together on basic language skills, which I off-load to Yellow linguists and datadrops. I rely on a translation insert for my ear so I can understand the coldbloods. They’re not babies. Most, like Freihild, served a tour or two in the Free Legions. They know more than they let on. But hundreds of years of Golds culling the clever ones has taught them to hoard information behind masks of stupidity.

  They play dumb or angry when they don’t trust you.

  And they don’t trust me a lick.

  Thought my deeds would get me some street cred. False hope. As Freihild is only too keen to impart: I violated the sanctity of one of their sacred heroes by filching the Reaper’s brood. Pax is literally a godchild to them, Electra not far behind. No amount of Ozgard’s support will gain their respect.

  While the social element of my improvised training regimen flounders, the Obsidians are natural physical learners. Like Volga, they learn the tricks of my trade as fast as children picking up a new sport. By week’s end, they’re destabilizing laser grids, dissecting thermal sensors, and picking locks. Some already knew laser grids from the legions, but their methods are outdated and grunt-slop. Still, you only have to show them something once. Telling them something, on the other hand, is like trying to push a whole handful of sand through an ear canal. You lose right about ninety percent of it.

  Over the next weeks, my primal terror of being crushed underfoot diminishes and I settle into a comfortable routine. On occasion, Pax stops in from his own lessons to watch. He shakes his head one day when the thirtieth Obsidian in a row is unable to tell a lie to one of Sun Industries’ first-generation lie detectors.

  “Compared with modern Bloodhounds, this thing’s as gullible as a nineteen-year-old farm boy with a concussion,” I shout. “Most operatives rely on being inconspicuous. You will never be inconspicuous. You are very conspicuous. So you must be good liars. Next!”

  As the next skuggi ambles up to try their hand, I slump over to Pax.

  “Go on, I know you want to correct me, halfbreed,” I say, plopping down beside him on a low wall. His chin sports a fresh bruise from Valdir’s martial lessons. No wonder he’s not warming to them.

  “Actually I was coming to say thank you,” he says.

  “For what?”

  “Sefi’s started letting me use the garage at night. There’s an old two-seater gravBike they found in one of the old depots. Looters didn’t think it worth stealing. Used to belong to Karnus au Bellona. She’s letting me take a crack at fixing it up. Spent all last night taking off the kill-spikes. Thought I had you to thank for it.”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I certainly do. After his brutal protest against Sefi’s attempts at instruction and her command that I bring him close, I thought it best to do a little recon to see what thorn was under the little lord’s saddle. Seems Sefi’s personal Oranges have noted spanners and hyper-crooks missing from their stores. Considering the security in the household complex, there were few possible culprits.

  A single night’s stakeout provided the answer I suspected. Who was it skulking in the garage in the dead of night? Why, the Reaper’s own—he’d slipped away from meditating in the tranquility gardens with Ozgard. When I visited the garden, Ozgard was deep in a trance trying to decipher the message in the veins of a leaf, and Pax was there beside him, a small bulge under his armpit, pretending to decipher the falling snow. I sneezed “bullshit” and went on my merry way. I think I saw him crack a smile. He likes me. Guess I’m a nice and cozy reminder of Hyperion amongst all the deranged giants.

  “Sefi says you told her I needed a workplace.”

  “Can’t you see I’m working?”

  “Are you?”

  “Shut up. Not my fault they’re stubborn.” I gesture to his chin. “Drop your guard?”

  “Valdir might be a great warrior, but he is a bad teacher,” he says. “He thinks that being louder makes him clearer. Ozgard, on the other hand, makes his lessons into games.”

  “Thought you didn’t like his lessons either. Aren’t they all just purposeless distractions from the oh-so-necessary war?”

  He shrugs. “Prepubescent temper tantrum, though the thesis is true.”

  “So you haven’t stabbed anyone lately?”

  “No. Electra got territorial.” He smiles. “Their complaints may be valid, but I suspect their solution is flawed, the timing dreadful for the Republic, and deleterious to existing internal class tensions regarding the matriarchal hierarchy. But there’s little I can do but go along.” He doesn’t mention his parents, though I know they are always on his mind. “Electra is far more at home here than I am.”

  “Well, you got more on your mind. And more of a mind than old Hatchetface.” Neither of us mentions Mercury. But that we’re both thinking it creates some awkward tension. “So what’s the curriculum?”

  “Actually, everything about Obsidians except violence.”

  “So drinking, shagging, gambling, and eating.” He watches me in amusement. “I miss anything?”

  “Spakr,” he says. “In Nagal, quiet and wise are the same word. So if I say ‘Mann ni spakr,’ it means that man is not quiet, and thus stupid and loud.”

  “Wait, you’re saying it’s Sefi the Wise?”

  “To them.”

  “I was about to say, it’s the worst moniker ever. All she does is talk about her Alltribe.”

  “She was silent for more than thirty years. You should try it. You might learn something.”

  “I liked you better when I was unconscious. Speaking of which, you got it?”

  He pulls the thin chain around his neck to show me my engagement ring.

  “
Some asshole stuff to do to a man in withdrawal. Pretty fucked up, young man.”

  “I’m not as young as I look. Uncle Sevro used the stuff for a spell. Zoladone, I mean.”

  “Did he now?”

  “The Rat War was hard on everyone. He’s not really a Goblin. He’s actually very sweet.”

  “I’ll be sure to tell him that if he ever catches up to me.”

  Pax holds the ring, contemplating if it is time to give it back.

  “Hold on to it for me,” I say.

  He tilts his head.

  “Gotta be responsible to someone.”

  He grins.

  “Now get. I gotta earn some liberty for two ladies.” I hesitate. “Glad you like the garage.”

  “He makes his lessons into games!” he calls after me.

  I mutter to myself as I walk back to the Obsidians just as a skuggi with a cleft lip tries to convince the Bloodhound that he lived on Pluto before he had pubic hair. The Green supervisors titter to themselves.

  “Get out of here. You’re worthless,” I shout at them. They scurry away, making faces at one another in response to some subliminal communication between their cranial implants. “Anyone have a pack of Karachi cards?” The skuggi do not answer. “Come on, I know you’re a bunch of gambling degenerates, even if your spirits are pure as snow. You.” I point at Freihild. Today she wears ghastly jade earrings. “Gudkind.”

  “I am Freihild,” she says, knowing I know her name.

  “I am Gudkind,” the man with the cleft lip says. I think it’s a woman, actually. Nope, a man. He’s got a beard. Wait, do some Obsidian women have beards?

  “Freihild, girl, you look like you got shit out an aurochs.” She doesn’t. But the best thing that can be said about my new appointment is the vast potential for cursing at skuggi killers without fear of physical dismemberment. “Gimme your cards.”

  “No cards,” she replies, unable to take that devilish gleam from her eye. I thought she’d make a fine liar. Turns out, she can’t turn it off. She just always looks smug as a fox in a hen hutch.

  “Liar. Fine. Whoever gives me cards first gets a pass on argot homework. And a hundred credits to gamble away down in Olympia.”

  Ten Obsidians rush forward. Freihild pulls out a pack too. “You sly minx. I knew you were lying. Go to the Bleeding Place and sit in the center for two thousand breaths.” I look at the rest of them. “You do not lie to your tessarius, you sorry sacks of offal. Lying to your tessarius is akin to killing a baby.” They do not react. Have they killed babies? “Akin to lying to Sefi! Do you understand?” They glower. “Akin to lying to Valdir.” There, that’s the right comparison. Freihild has not moved. “You deaf, brave?”

  Her eyes widen a millimeter. “Gold spirits live in Bleeding Place.”

  I grin. “So I hear.”

  “I do not have shaman wards.”

  “Move. Your. Ass. And no tiny Red breaths. Obsidian breaths.”

  She slouches away. I grab a pack from another Obsidian and sit on the floor.

  “Freihild.”

  “I am Gudkind.” He points to the woman I just sent away. “That was Freihild, which you know. For all know Freihild, because she is deft in all things.”

  “Right. Fetch me Xenophon. He’s in the war hall. Sorry, varHal.” Gudkind breaks into a loping sprint. I smile to myself and look around into the 198 frightening faces who watch me as if I’m about to pull a snake out of my boot.

  “Who’s the best at Karachi here?”

  “Freihild, for she is deft in all things, for she learned at the hip of Valdir the ways of the axe, and Screwface in the ways of cards.”

  So Freihild was Valdir’s student. Scandalous.

  I stare at the brave, utterly annoyed. “Jove on high. Who else?” I pick five from the ones with packs. “Everyone else, fall in, bear witness to slaughter. Come on, pack in.” Unable to crowd together for fear of touching, they align themselves according to height. Stupid Golds and their cultural departments. Must have had a riot thinking that one up.

  I shuffle the octagonal cards, throwing in a couple tricks that made Rising coldies croon. I deal them out. “They had a saying in the Free Leg: as easy as taking chit from a coldie.” They’ve heard it before. “Now, I know you lot love your cards. Problem is you’re not any good at it. The Whites believe Karachi is their game because they invented it to fit their skill set. That’s why half of you are in for a quarter kilo of gold at the gambling dens down in the city. They count the cards in their heads, so they always know their chances and they bet accordingly. All their dealers do it. Simple statistical probability.”

  Xenophon pushes through the Obsidians, looking disheveled. His voice is flat. “I was in the middle of an audit on the assimilation camp—”

  “You play Karachi, right, Xenophon?”

  The logos’s eyes lose their glaze and do a little dance. “It’s a little early, no?”

  “Education has no schedule.”

  “Then let yours begin.” The logos doffs a fine midnight coat, pools their midnight robes, and sits cross-legged. A coin-file appears in their hand and they push the release, spilling gold stamped with stars on the floor. “Deal me in. If you dare.”

  “So that’s how we get your blood moving. Comets are low. No third draw. Five limit.” I deal the cards. Forty minutes later, I own Xenophon’s coat and coins, seventeen Obsidian warrior torcs, fourteen sets of earrings, and a custom pulseFist carved to look like a dragon’s mouth. “Can anyone tell me what just happened?” I ask them.

  “Bald robbery,” Xenophon says in his customary drone. The logos shivers, missing the jacket as wind comes off the mountain. It’s the first time I’ve noticed how thin Xenophon is. Built almost like a salamander.

  “I only won two hands of seven,” I say. “You won three. Why do I have all the chit?”

  “Because you cheated on the last hand. I imagine there is a card-shooter on your wrist.” I pull back my sleeves to reveal no card-shooter. “Then an ambideck.” The logos takes a card in hand and bends it in half. No permutation of pixels in the card surfaces.

  “Xenophon played cards. You played Xenophon,” Freihild says with an apologetic smile for the logos.

  I look up at the pretty Obsidian. “The ghosts didn’t get you, I see.”

  I glance at Pax, who watches from a low wall. I saw him follow Freihild. Boy just can’t stand staying out of other people’s business. Or maybe he’s just gathering his own intel. Mother rubbed off on him, I see.

  “Freihild.”

  “Ja?”

  “You’re still a liar. But you’re right.” Someone starts to say Freihild is deft in all things. “Yeah, yeah, shut up. You nailed it. I played Xenophon. And now you deserve to have your name remembered, Freihild, deft in some things.” She looks loftily at the other skuggi. Gudkind gives her a powerful nod, like she just killed a foe. That means a compliment from me is worth something. So maybe I read them wrong. Maybe they don’t distrust me down to my very marrow after all.

  “Pinks are the best players of Karachi in the worlds, not Whites, not Coppers, not Reds,” I say. “The only people that could hold a candle to them were those Gold snakes on the Palatine. Lies were their first musical instrument. But I’ve seen even the Fury herself lose a hundred billion credits to Quicksilver’s Rose on a lone star bluff.”

  They guffaw. “A cunning foe like Atalantia would not lose to a Pink,” Gudkind says, offended.

  “She did,” Xenophon confirms. “At the Aristotle Club. January eleventh, 732 PCE. Were you robbing the place, Mr. Horn?”

  “Security, asshole. Not even I’d rob one of Atalantia’s clubs.” I look back to Gudkind. “So the Fury lost. How, you ask.”

  Gudkind blinks. “I did not ask anything.”

  “Rhetorical,” Freihild says.

  “Ah.
” He vaguely remembers the lesson.

  “May I continue now?”

  “Ja.” I wait for Gudkind to correct himself. “Yes.”

  “Rhetorical again. Mind the sarcasm,” Freihild says. “It is all he speaks.”

  I continue. “Everything you need to know about Karachi can be found in the faces of the other players, in the breathing, the blinking, the talking, the silence, the deviation from any pattern. Obviously don’t be a mule’s tit and bet the bank on a minor star match, but if you got a lock on your opponent, you’re on high street. Now you lot have the most paralyzed faces this side of a Silver’s at a slave auction, but your body language gives you away.” I jab a finger out. “Hammerhead over there started heaving like a thirty-year-old virgin soon as he got that major star run. Skeleton here got squinty when she tried to bluff with a lone high comet. Even Xenophon has a tic. You lot read the snow as kids, right?”

  They nod.

  “And the wind and beast droppings and whatever else was on your pole. Reading people is no different, but it is everything. It will tell you if you can bribe a person, intimidate, manipulate, bamboozle, befuddle, seduce. Killing is easier sometimes, but rarely better in the line of work you’ll be doing. Killing removes an obstacle. And what are obstacles?”

  “Potential assets,” Freihild leads half the skuggi in answering.

  “Exactly.” I beam. “That is how the Sons of Ares toppled the greatest war machine that ever existed. That is how I kidnapped the Reaper’s only son. Hieg?”

  “Hieg,” they echo. Some, including Freihild, touch their foreheads at the word Reaper.

  “Now, the other Colors have practiced lying since birth. Bullshit is the vernacular of cities. Gudkind over there probably thinks whores actually like his Venusian earrings.” They make huge guttural sounds. I flinch, thinking they’re about to kill me. No. It’s just two hundred Obsidian assassins laughing their asses off. A few of them take a knee and wipe their eyes. Right, no sexual mores here.

  “Gudkind does love whores,” Freihild says. “He is deft in many things, especially whores.”