Dark Age

by Pierce Brown

  All this for the thin man attached to the back of Drusilla’s bike. Neither alliance fighting for love or hate, only the utility that one life will provide them. And when I think of that distant look in Atlas’s eyes as I choked him out, that look that reminded me of Cassius when he went to face the Raa, I understand what they both knew—how foolish all this rage is.

  Before I plunge into the smoke of the artillery bombardment, the last thing I see is a ripWing squadron streaking out from under Heliopolis’s shield with guns ablaze.

  Blinded by dust and smoke, I hug my bike and close my eye. Debris pings off the metal chassis like hailstones and bites at my legs and face. The air is hot and ghastly. I want to sob in terror. I focus my Mind’s Eye, and it all quiets.

  I weave around a man-sized chunk of starShell, almost in slow motion. Nothing hurts me. Nothing exists but the mind.

  Then I burst out of the smoke.

  A wash of clean air as I tear out the other side of the cloud to see a heavy shuttle unlike any other ever built hovering a meter above the ground. Alexandar drives into it, his bike smashing and sparking as it hits the ramp and careens into the cargo bay. I goose the thruster and nearly fall off my bike as Drusilla’s slams into me from the left and locks together with mine, driving me off course. A ragged chunk of metal impales her through the chest. I crank my bike left and skid sideways, dragging hers into the transport. I feel myself sailing through the air. I collide with something unmovable. My shoulder is pulled from its socket. The engines rumble beneath. I feel us rising. And I lie there feeling very calm and present, because standing over me, roaring for retreat, is the Reaper himself.

  THE AIR HEAVES WITH SHOCKWAVES as the shuttle shoots through the aerial gate in the storm wall, and back to the safety of Heliopolis’s shield. Remains of bikes litter the shuttle’s cargo bay. Drusilla, one of Alexandar’s cousins, shakes on the floor, a piece of metal through her chest. The medici swarm over her. A second Gold groans at my boots. Lean and caked in so much desert chalk it shudders off him as he coughs. I search him for weapons. His face is mangled and melted on one side.

  “Get us to the Star,” I shout at our pilot.

  Thraxa jerks a tarpaulin off the back of a crashed bike to reveal a body. She yanks on the man’s dark blond hair so I can see his face. “Look what the pup dragged in!” She spits on his unconscious face and puts all her substantial weight and strength behind her knee to break his sword arm, then she breaks the right for good measure, before manhandling him into more secure cuffs. “We’re going to have some fun, impaler.”

  I heave a bike out of the way to reveal the last body. Alexandar. He’s nearly unrecognizable. His ears and several fingers have been cut away and large strips of skin eaten off. I throw myself over him and check his pulse. It is faint. When I tear open his coat, I find two exit wounds in his chest. “Alexandar!” I say, shaking him. “Alexandar!”

  His eyes crack open and he manages a smile. His teeth are missing, I realize in horror. His hands pull dumbly at something as he pushes a chalky pelt into my hand. “Told you…I’d bring it back.”

  Blood bubbles out his mouth and his eyes roll back.

  “Faster!” I shout at the pilot.

  I cradle Alexandar in my arms and jump out the back of the transport before it even makes its emergency landing. The medici are waiting for us, but their gurney will be too slow. I sprint past them carrying the man, scattering deckhands, not stopping until I lay him down in the medBay. He’s barely breathing. Rhonna rushes into the room behind me, her eyes wild. “Alexandar!” She pushes to his side as the medici prep him for transport to the surgery ward. “Alexandar…” Her eyes search the horror of his face. His missing ears, the strips of stolen flesh, the toothless mouth as his lips part to murmur something. “What did they do to him!” she screams. “What did they do? Alexandar.”

  The medici pull her away and rush with him toward the surgery ward. I follow. A chief medicus pushes at me, her feet sliding on the floor.

  “Sir!”

  “We’re going with him,” I snarl.

  “Then you’re going to contaminate the room and terrify my surgeons,” the medicus says. “Wait here.”

  “Do not let that boy die,” I say to her. “Do you understand me?”

  “We’ll do what is medically possible, sir.”

  Rhonna and I are left in the silence of the intake room listening to machines beep. A ragged breath escapes her and her skeleton seems to fold in on itself as she hunches in a corner. She was furious when I left her behind to get Alexandar, but she’s still in no shape for combat. I thought deep down that this had to be some trick. Some trap of the Fear Knight’s. It seemed impossible to hope yet I took the risk. And now that Alexandar is alive, somehow despite everything, he may yet be taken. It all seems so unfair.

  “Fear butchered him,” Rhonna says, too numb to cry. “He cut him to pieces.”

  “Do you have coagulant?” I ask a medical officer. The officer disappears through a door and comes back with an injector. “I’ll be right back,” I tell Rhonna.

  “Don’t,” she says as I reach the door. “Just don’t.”

  I make no promises as I leave.

  * * *

  —

  I stalk through the brig. Saud and Carthii prisoners idle about in their cells to either side. Soldiers mill outside an open high-security cell. They press to the walls, clearing the way when they see me charging with a full head of steam.

  “Darrow…” Thraxa warns, blocking the door into the cell and holding up her hands.

  “Move.”

  “I know how you feel. If it were up to me, I’d beat him to death with a teakettle. But we need information from him.” I take a step close enough to her that I can see the clogged pores of her broad nose.

  “Move.”

  She moves. Inside the cell, the Fear Knight is being woken up by a medicus and scanned by a team of techs.

  “Get out,” I tell the medicus. “But don’t go far. He’ll need you soon.”

  The Fear Knight sits up on the foam mattress and looks at me with a start as the vebrine they’ve given him kicks in. I inject his neck with the coagulant and take the cuffs off his hands. His arms bend unnaturally from Thraxa’s rough handling. I survey the monster. The Rim Gold is skinny from his time in the desert, like a piece of dehydrated beef. Pensive, intelligent eyes stare back at me from under the chalk without even a trace of fear. It isn’t like the Jackal, whose eyes were like empty bowls. Neither are they animalistic like Atalantia’s. These are soulful eyes of a man who knows he’s chewing on human flesh and swallows because he can.

  I lean forward. “If I came to you laid out like a suckling pig, would you accept the boon without suspicion?”

  “Highly doubtful.”

  I look at his hands. “How many of my men have those hands impaled?”

  “Enough, so it seems.”

  “Did those hands cut my Howler’s ears off?”

  “They did.”

  I pull my razor off my arm and let it hang loose. “Do you think you deserve to keep them?” My slingBlade forms slowly at my side.

  He turns his hands over as if viewing them for the first time and speaks to me in Latin before translating to Common. “Caesar was a clod. But he got one thing right: war gives the right to the conquerors to impose any condition they please upon the vanquished.” He presents his hands to me.

  I prepare to cut them off.

  Yet my hand stays still at my side. A week ago, I would have. Throughout the war, I’ve done worse. But it would not be for my army. It would be for me. Was this the compromise that poisoned our Republic? Was this rage what made us forget that our hope is founded in our virtue? Virtue that has been sorely lacking, and which led to Orion’s genocide?

  “All of a man’s affairs become diseased when he wishes to cure evils by ev
ils,” Atlas recites. “For order, I impaled soldiers. For liberty, you drowned cities. The victor writes history with the blood of the vanquished. I wonder, in the end, which of us will turn out the hero? Don’t you?”

  I leave the Fear Knight without a word. Outside, I find Thraxa waiting for me with several dozen of Rat Legion. “Get information from him,” I order.

  “I’ll lead the torture personally,” Thraxa says.

  I look back at the man. I know better than most how any man will cave to torture in the end, but I also fear false information. “He’ll just lead us astray. My wife will crack him.”

  Thraxa looks concerned. “Darrow, Virginia is—”

  “And so was Alexandar until today.” I survey the legionnaires with Thraxa, and make it a moral victory. “Use all means within the bounds of the New Compact. If the Vox won’t obey it, we will. The information he has in his head could win this war. The men will want to cut that head off. If he dies, I will hold Rat Legion accountable.”

  They salute.

  “What about Cato?” Thraxa asks.

  “Who?”

  “The fourth Gold. He says he helped them escape. No confirmation yet from Alexandar.”

  I look back at the Fear Knight. He’s a man of too many layers. Was this planned to get him inside? Cato inside? Would Atlas risk that? “I don’t need another variable here. If Alexandar survives, we’ll ask him ourselves about this Cato. Until then, isolate him, check his story, and order a full analysis.”

  A vigil waits outside the medical bay. Alexandar’s cult of young Gold acolytes has swollen to include men and women from all branches. Colloway exits as I reach the door. I frown, wondering if I have the wrong room. He holds little love for Alex but now he just shrugs at my expression and claps my shoulder. “Chin up. Your boy’s a Stoneside, ain’t he?”

  I join Rhonna and sit in the chair beside her. She looks at my razor for traces of blood. I shake my head. With a nod for herself, she puts her small hand over mine and together we wait.

  We’re woken some time in the night by the medicus. The cold woman has not even the faint trace of a smile as she tells us that Alexandar survived and we can see him in the morning.

  When the medicus returns I let Rhonna go in first. After several minutes she reappears with red-rimmed eyes. She smiles. “He’s asking for the boss.”

  Alexandar lies shirtless in the bed, perforated with IVs. His face is still swollen, and bandages cover the empty ear sockets. He reaches a hand out to clasp Rhonna’s as I loom over him. “ ’Lo, boss,” he says with a childish smile.

  “Hey, kid. Thanks for bringing back my cloak.”

  * * *

  —

  Glirastes is snorting drugs as Harnassus paces a hole in the briefing room carpet. A silver chimera drug dispenser full of sol dust slips out from the Master Maker’s voluminous sleeve. I pull up a chair and sit across from him.

  He admires his chimera. “When I had my first bite of sol dust, I thought I had arrived. I was a young man, of course. And once you’ve had stallions galloping through your veins, well…” He dabs the golden powder that rims his nostril and looks at it. “Very nearly cost my career. It was a long time before I realized one doesn’t have to drink the whole glass in one gulp.”

  Pulling back his upper eyelid, he works the powder into his eye and sighs.

  “I’m told you’ve stopped working,” I say. “Sardines again?”

  “Gods no, it’s a Thursday,” Glirastes says. “I’m sure you would agree certain standards must be maintained in a professional relationship between patron and artist. For instance, I would never deem it appropriate to imprison any of your friends and expect felicitations from you. It would simply compromise the relationship.”

  “Harnassus says you’re close with this Cato au Vitruvius.”

  “You sound tired, Darrow.”

  “It’s been a long week.”

  “Then don’t make it longer on yourself. Cato is, in many ways, my only pupil.”

  “That callow boy?”

  “That callow boy did what all your men could not. I know. When I first met him, I was as dubious as you are now. Just another fawning sycophant relying upon the wealth of his parents for access to me. Disgusting. But he has depth to him. He appreciates the grand without sacrificing the minute.

  “You drowned half of Helios. I mourned for the dead. And now that one of them, a boy who is like a son to me, has come back, you think you can keep him from me?” Glirastes shakes his head. “I have done all you asked. I am your gateway out of hell.” He leans back and rests his hands on his tummy. “It is your army. So do what you will. But if Cato is not out of your prison and sharing a toast to life with me over a glass of shiraz by tonight, then you will have to find yourself another Master Maker to build your gateway.”

  * * *

  —

  Through the video feed I watch Cato au Vitruvius admit that he is a libertine to our lie detector.

  “Science?” I ask my Yellow science officer. Harnassus has assembled the team I put on Cato to deliver me their full analysis.

  “We ran his DNA against the active Society military database and Gorgon NOC list with no matches. He is not a member, nor does he have relations in their military. Of course, without connection to Skyhall, we don’t have access to the census records.”

  Screwface nods from his darkened corner. He brought us the military database information. “Ain’t laid eyes on that sorry Pixie before. If he’s a Gorgon, he’s young, deep, and out on a limb.”

  “Linguistics?”

  “His dialect is rare,” a Pink says. “It has inflections of Western Ladonese, which is the predominant accent of Erebos and its surrounding municipalities, but it is primarily Heliopolitan Aureate.”

  “So he’s lying about his origins.”

  “No,” the slender Pink says. “On the contrary, patrician families of Erebos consider Western Ladonese to be a plebeian tongue. Most embrace the Tychian accent, but a minority of ancient families consider that to be…inelegant, and so train their children against the grain in the affectation of Old Heliopolitan. It’s a nuance so particular the notion that he would think to imitate it beggars belief.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “I can speak Common in ninety-eight dialects, and even I have not thought it practical to master Old Heliopolitan. No one speaks it except maybe two hundred families of Erebos.”

  “Medical?”

  A Yellow pipes up from behind his optical display. “He has no signs of military-grade implantation. No foreign elements in his person, nor radiation marking except minor radiation poisoning. His blood pressure is low. Heart is abnormally powerful: twenty-five beats per minute, and shows significant signs of Mithridatism, a practice common in secondary Aureate families as emulation of the more significant families.”

  “Maniacs,” Harnassus mutters. “Poisoning yourself is now fashion?”

  “Been hot on the Palatine and Venus for years,” Screwface says. “I slipped Atalantia a full dose of methracene, and all she got was a brief bout of bloody emesis.”

  The Yellow plods on. “While we cannot divine if he has razor-pattern calluses owing to the burns on his hands, he has never borne a Peerless Scar. There is no sign of facial skin grafting or bone reconstruction to cover an existent one. His wounds are consistent with his story. His brain scans do not show signs of Securitas conditioning; however, his limbic system has some unusual synaptic activity which may be signs of childhood trauma and memory repression but would require additional analysis to render conclusive. Overall, he is an extremely healthy adult Aureate between eighteen and twenty-three years old.”

  “So what you are all saying is that he is telling the truth. Or lying very well,” I say. “Let’s find out which. Screw, I want your eyes on this.”

  ALTERATION IN VOCAL PATTERNS
, unnatural stillness, timing lag between verbal statements and physical expression, distancing language, linear left eye drift, abnormal gesticulation, extraneous overexplanation, pupil dilation, swallowing, grooming gestures, head canting, pulse rapidity, irregular blinking.

  These are some of the most obvious symptoms of lying that are drilled into Securitas agents in order to drill them out. To become a full-fledged Venator or frumentarius, one must have a ninety percent success rate in telling a lie to an instructor. Of course, I passed Grandmother’s exam when I was six.

  So it is with droll amusement that I stare down the optic reader of their robotic lie detector and think nothing much of it. It is profoundly large, almost the size of a small man, chrome, spherical, floating, with a hulking red eye. It is grandiosely named BloodHound XTC-1400, a product of Sun Industries, which no doubt cost Skyhall billions in research and development money to old Regulus. I can understand the investment. In a war where each side wields hundreds of thousands of informants and covert agents, it is as good as a guillotine.

  But for all this new civilization’s love affair with technology, they’ve been seduced by their own cleverness and fail to understand the simple truth: lying is not a science, it is an art. And art will always be a human language.

  I was under observation when we rose over the city wall under heavy fire; when Darrow jumped out with Alexandar bleeding everywhere; when they took me on a stretcher to their medBay; when they treated my burns and wounds; when they asked me questions while I was drugged with narcotics; when I showered; when I ate steak, potatoes, and greens laced with some mild inhibition inhibitor in my saferoom; when armed guards escorted me to be interviewed casually; when I gave a formal interview to two ethereal Pinks; when a handsome Gold Howler interrogated me; when I used the restroom; and when I walked through the hall to sit in this white room for two hours as their little toy investigated my story.

  They are not measuring lies now. They are cross-referencing current patterns with “normal” patterns from their recordings by asking a mix of old and new questions. It is a fruitless endeavor.