Dark Age

by Pierce Brown

  She blushes and makes a show of going to make more coffee.

  I open the box. Inside is a slim metal disk and a holodrop.

  “Victra is proud,” Pax says. “Obnoxiously so. And hasn’t spoken much since…” He glances at Volga and leaves it unspoken. “But she owed a debt to Trigg. Without him, she would have died in the Jackal’s prison ten years ago. She will forgive your trespass.” He gestures to the disk. “A one-way signal pass to get you past Republic patrols and off Mars.”

  I play the holodrop. A recording of a ship-to-ship transmission appears. Xenophon’s face fills the frame as he requests approach clearance to the Pandora for a shuttle bearing Pax and Electra. It is dated the day of the attack on the Pandora.

  I look up at Pax.

  “It was Xenophon all along, not Ozgard,” he says. “He was the intermediary. Victra thought we were making the exchange. The first shuttle destroyed their main sensors, and allowed the rest of the Ascomanni to approach and board. He is Fá’s inside man. Ozgard, Amel, both framed.”

  I set the holodrop down. “What do you want me to do with it?”

  “Tell Sefi.”

  “You tell her. You have the coms.”

  He shakes his head. “We can’t reach Olympia. Alltribe has gone paranoid. They think every communiqué carries a virus. To be fair, the Republic did launch one that took down a quarter of their ships. Even so, everything goes through Xenophon. We have no allies left. He’s isolated her.”

  “You want me to go back.”

  “Who else could get in there? They’re on war-watch.”

  “This is getting ridiculous.”

  “I know.” He glances at Volga in the kitchen as the coffee machine somehow overflows. Some things never change. “The older I get, the more I feel for my parents. Especially my father. Hate him or not. There’s never a right call, just people who make the hard ones.” He stands. “I have to go now. If you do not have breakfast plans, I would love you to join me. I have invited Lyria as well.”

  “Depends on the lass here,” I say. Volga nods enthusiastically from the coffee mess.

  I walk Pax into the hall. “Are you going to tell her?” he asks. When I don’t answer, he takes the chain from his neck and presses Trigg’s ring into my hands. I’d nearly forgotten about it. “You’re a good man,” he says. I laugh. “Stop. Whatever you decide, you’ve earned the right to be called that.”

  I mess up his hair and he takes that for answer enough.

  “I like him,” Volga says when the door closes. She hides the coffee she made for him behind the bar. “Did he really fly that ship?”

  “Like a Blue.”

  I put the chain around my neck and I look down at the holodrop playing in the box. I have to tell her now. How does one say something like this?

  I know you have always felt apprehensive about your own race. One part yearns to be one of them, so it idolizes their virtues and mystery. Another part fears their rejection, and so demonizes their savagery. With that said, old girl, it has recently come to my attention that your seed donor is the most famous person of your race who has ever lived. Congratulations, you are the daughter of a god. If his people accept you—which is a dubious proposition—and if they don’t think you’re an abomination that must be cleansed, you get to deal with Volsung Fá. A man who eats hearts for supper. Enjoy your new life.

  So I say nothing. Because the world outside doesn’t need another sacrifice. Not this angel. Not my Volga. I put my hand on hers. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  * * *

  —

  The bridge that connects the landing pad to the mountain tower is lined with trees. Nervous, Volga waits behind as I take a step onto the bridge. I motion her to join me.

  Trigg’s monument is made of marble, like so many of the rest. They captured a fair likeness of him, yet somehow made him look more noble, which means more Gold. Guess that’s the way of statues. Sell the myth, forget the man.

  Trigg’s jaw is set in determination. His eyes fierce. The anachronistic shield he holds over a fallen Darrow cracked and chewed by bullets. Candles from visitors flicker in the wind. Fresh flowers and baubles are stacked about his feet. Most are from Reds by the look of the flowers and offerings, but the rest are seashells and totems from his home in South Pacifica. Some made the pilgrimage to see the resting place of the Pacific’s most famous martyr. I wonder if Holiday is responsible for some of those shells. But no one is here now.

  “They say many people come here,” Volga murmurs.

  “Well, they’re idiots. He didn’t have a shield. And he died down there.”

  I forget the monument and look down into the shadows. From the lights of passing ships, I can just make out the ledge on which his head split open. It’s a cold, empty place, not like the monument where the orange light of the candles bathe Trigg in warmth. But he isn’t in either place. His body was never recovered. He is dust.

  “Better he lives up here,” Volga says, and I see the respect in her eyes for the myth of my husband. It does so much more for me than words ever could. I don’t really understand why I wanted her to come. Maybe it’s because I buried him so deep, and felt that if I could keep her from knowing too much about him, she would never matter as much as he did. But she does. Oh, she does.

  And maybe Trigg deserves to be this myth. If not for himself, for others, like Volga, or young sons of South Pacifica who yearn to be brave like he was. Could that be what the world needs? Not dirty truths, not romantic paragons, but stubborn bastards who refuse to move?

  Like Holiday? Like the great Red prick? Like Sefi?

  Little cracks already web the feet of the statue. My eyes don’t linger there. I’m tired of looking for the cracks in everything. Tired of running. Here with Volga, I should feel complete. But looking up at Trigg, and remembering the sense of purpose that gripped Olympia only two weeks ago, I know I am in the wrong city.

  Maybe the world needs another stubborn bastard.

  “I have to go back,” I say to her. “I have to tell Sefi that it’s Xenophon. I can’t let her get undone by that little bastard. It isn’t right.”

  She stares at the statue. “You stole from them. Iceborn do not forgive. They will murder you.”

  “Naw. Sefi’s…different.”

  “Then I will go with you.” It takes real courage for her to offer that.

  “Sorry, old girl. That ain’t happening. They know me. They don’t know you. I won’t be gone long. Hell, I might even be back for breakfast.”

  “Ephraim, you do not owe them anything. We don’t owe any of these people anything.”

  “I’m not sure that’s true.”

  “I just found you again,” she protests, but the fight has left her. Tears well up in her eyes. I could have left in the night, but she would have followed, and she doesn’t deserve that from me. “You need me.”

  “You’re right about that,” I say. “Damn right.” I stroke her hair. “You know your people have a word, something deeper than family: aeta.”

  “Tribe,” she says, as if the word was sacred to her, looking away in embarrassment. I tilt her chin back so she looks at me.

  “You’re my tribe, Snowball. I’ll be back for breakfast. That’s a promise.”

  She smiles hopefully, then bursts into tears. I wrap her in an embrace, and I know I’d do anything to keep her safe, and do anything to be with her. But as Freihild said by that fire, some things are more important.

  The servants bring me to Pax as he pores over battlemaps in Victra’s library. I stand behind a bookcase and remove the necklace to put Trigg’s ring on my finger. When I turn the corner, he stands without a word and guides me to a gravLift and then to the armory, where I pull out the old heartspike, and ask if he can do me one last bit of magic.

  I CRAWL ALONG THE WEST wall of Griffinhold
, sticking to the shadows godtrees cast in the brazier light. The night guardsmen on the ice-slick cobbles below are easy to avoid with my spider gloves and thermal dampening suit. More difficult were the enhanced radar drones and motion sensors Sefi had installed per my advice. Why’d I have to be so damn thorough? They nearly ruined my drop from the Alltribe flier I hitched a ride on from the coastal city of Nike. Luckily, I followed a murder of crows in.

  I reach the pulseShield that encloses my target’s window in one of the six western towers of Griffinhold, and disrupt the field with diamond refractors, creating a slip narrow enough for me to shimmy through. The room is dark, tall, and more choked with incense than a fifty-credit Lunese brothel. Lovely. It also looks as if a hurricane had come through it. Priceless urns and bits of shattered wood are strewn about the carpet. Oldboy had a tantrum after his fall from grace. Good. The big lads outside will be used to noise.

  I slip toward the large four-post bed where a giant shadow snores. I nearly choke from the alcohol on his breath. Feeling a bit sinister, I take the wine bottle from his bedside and crawl onto the ceiling to take a swig and upend the bottle. Dreadfully expensive wine pours down over the shaman’s face. He wakes to see a black shadow on the ceiling above him.

  He screams and falls off the bed.

  Laughing my ass off, I release my gloves and land in his place on the bed. From the floor, Ozgard peers up at me. “Grarnir?”

  “Stop shouting, you idiot.” I prop myself on an elbow. “Those big bastards outside the door will hear if you talk particulars.” I run a hand up my leg. “Would hate to think I’m the first whore who’s landed in your bed.”

  “Grarnir,” he whispers, and pulls himself upright-ish. “I thought you were Ascomanni.” His wounded eye is covered in a patch, his mangled hand in splints. Looks like a giant baby, an effect enhanced by the dewy tears in his remaining eye. “I knew you would return. I knew—”

  “Shut up.” I sniff him. “You drunken lout. Knew you’d be soused.”

  His eyes narrow in suspicion. “Why have you returned?”

  “Well, oldboy. I’m here to sort out a particularly sinister case of milk worm. That’s right.” I pop the datadrop into my hand and let it roll. “We got ourselves a parasite.”

  His eye widens in horror as the drop plays its little bit of incriminating evidence. “That scheming little maggot. The two-faced malefactor—”

  “He outplayed you, medicine man. No need for bluster.”

  “We must tell the Queen.”

  “Naw. I was thinking we sit on it. Let Volsung eat her heart, or whatever else that albino golem has in store, then make off with a load of helium and become emperors of the asteroids.” He stares at me in horror. “Fuckin’ hell. It’s a joke. We’re gonna blood eagle that big puke. But we gotta do it right and good, you hear?” I lean forward and tap his nose. “Problem is, Queen listened to Old Eph, and’s got her sanctum as tight as Publius cu Caraval’s sphincter. I almost got pinned twice trying to slip in there. But you, dear charlatan, can get it to her.”

  He shakes his head. “The Queen is possessed of an evil spirit. She went into a fury when you took children. Trusts no one but Xenophon, suspects a coup to take her throne. She even thinks Volsung Fá is not real.”

  “Damn.”

  “I am still forbidden from her sight, as are all but those Xenophon permits. Her Valkyrie have closed their ears to me.”

  “Figured you’d have wormed your way back in. Shit.”

  “Indeed. Shit.” Big shaman looks all dour. Scheming leech or not, he’s wounded by Sefi’s dismissal. He’s drunk, sure; but functioning alcoholics are a gift from the gods. They’re never quite out of the game.

  “So, we got a problem then.” I wag the datadrop. “This here is a nail in the coffin for that little puke. How do we get it to her? Who can play messenger?”

  “A jarl,” he says. “She is set to speak before them tomorrow morning. They slumber in Eagle Rest.”

  “Thought security was a little weird. Braves I didn’t recognize. What’s her speech for?”

  “An ambassador from the Republic is on his way. Xenophon has arranged a peace summit.”

  “Uh-huh.” I raise an eyebrow. “Having just been with the Republic, I very much doubt that. They don’t buy this Fá story. Think Sefi’s lost her bleedin’ mind. No jarls. Xenophon’s got the playing field stacked.”

  “The skuggi,” he says in sudden epiphany. I knew he’d get there. “They bear Freihild’s death as grievously as Valdir. They can be trusted.” He sighs. “But they cannot gain audience. Her Valkyrie are loyal, and will never turn against her word. I could not put skuggi against Valkyrie. Only evil grows of that.”

  “Agreed. I was thinking they could help us liberate an old bloodstained friend.”

  “Unshorn…” he murmurs in obvious fear.

  “Now you’re catchin’ on, oldboy.”

  * * *

  —

  Ozgard waits for me in the same hangar where I trained the skuggi and later shot three of them in the face. He wears his crow-feather cloak, his dragonbone staff, his red scale boots, and his great fourteen-point elk horn headdress, tips crusted in the blood of his people’s enemies. It was a mighty fine sight seeing him try to squeak out that perforation in the pulseShield outside his window with all that luggage in tow. But what Ozgard might lack in finesse, he more than compensates for in loyalty. He does not wait alone.

  Fetched from their barracks by Ozgard, eighty of my skuggi spirit warriors surround the rotund shaman. Gudkind stands as their leader. They eye me with no small amount of distrust and wariness, especially the ones I shot, but Ozgard called them here, so they listen.

  “Hello, you ugly sods, my name is Ephraim ti Horn,” I drawl as I waltz before them in my scarabSkin. “I was once the greatest freelancer in all Hyperion, which means I am the greatest freelancer who ever lived. But then I met you pukes. You dogged, creepy assassins of the icy poles have warmed the cockles of my reptilian heart. I ain’t your people. You ain’t mine. Let’s get that out of the way. In fact, I think you’re damn weird, and you think I’m a money slut. Fine. I could give a tick’s dick what you think of me. But your Queen.” I pause. “Our Queen needs our help.”

  * * *

  —

  The prison of the Alltribe was inherited from the Bellona. It stands lonely and arcane on the far eastern fringe of Eagle Rest, connected to the great citadel by means of an anorexic little bridge with room for no more than two Obsidians to stand abreast. With thousands of Obsidian bloodbraves asleep in their barracks, Ozgard waltzes through the fog that grips the bridge toward six armored Valkyrie guards. One is Braga, Pax’s bodyguard.

  “Shaman!” Braga shouts. “You are not free to roam. Where are Ulfred and Ulra?” Or something like that in Nagal. He presses forward. “Shaman! Halt.”

  “Braga!” he calls in a voice that is not frail Ozgard’s but possessed with the myth of the shaman he built to rise nearly to the top of the matriarchy. “I knew thee as a child. Did you not listen as you sat upon my knee? Doom visits those who shed the blood of the servants to the gods.”

  “We are in service of the Queen,” Braga rumbles in irritation.

  “And even she serves the gods,” he replies, continuing forward. “It is not the duty of a servant to blind themselves to truth. It is the duty of a servant to understand the will of the master, especially when the master does not. Our Queen has been deceived—”

  “Hollow words. Perhaps they always were,” Braga calls, lowering her pulseRifle. Her sisters do the same. “Our Queen believes Valdir covets her throne.”

  “Bah! He covets only war trophies and a warm cunny. You know this!” The Valkyrie flinch when Ozgard lifts his dragonbone staff. “Strike me, and you will summon the shadows of the mist.” The Valkyrie look back to Braga, seized with apprehension.

 
“Idiots. He is only a storyteller. A drunk storyteller.” Braga holsters her rifle and pulls out her axe, stalking forward to take Ozgard into custody. Standing before the armored warrior, cloaked in frail feathers, Ozgard waves his staff with dramatic flourishes. I begin to laugh. The mist flashes and Braga stumbles back, her breastplate smoking. For the smallest moment, she thinks magic has been conjured. Then experience takes over. Too late. She looks out over the bridge, not expecting an enemy here in the heart of their power. “In the mist—” she shouts as her helmet slithers over her head. The mist stutters with color. Half the Valkyrie go down before they can activate their pulseShields.

  As the skuggi emerge from the mist to overwhelm the guards and enter the prison to free Valdir, their jammers go active and I lose the signal. My turn.

  I activate a jamField and drop from the ceiling to land in front of the two muscular guards outside Xenophon’s room. To their credit, the sleepy Obsidians do not flinch, and run straight into the gravity mine I toss in front of me. They invert and shoot upward, crunching into the ceiling. I lower the intensity and let them float, unconscious. Wait, one’s not unconscious. Crunch a second time into the ceiling.

  “Hang tight, ladies.”

  I reach for the door latch to enter Xenophon’s room, when instinct saves me. The latch is charged with enough power to melt my brain. That little shit. I strip my spider gloves, take a canister from my belt and rubberize the scarabSkin gauntlets. As the spray sets, I set a tripwire at the far end of the hall, two more gravity mines along the walls, and a gas trap above the door just to be safe. Then, with the resin set, I disarm the laser alarm inside the lock, then the secondary trigger—someone’s paranoid—and then the mechanism itself.

  The door clicks open, the sound contained inside my jamField.

  Xenophon’s room is spartan. Except for the size, it is suitable for a servant. The White sits facing the fireplace watching a hologram. The sound is mute outside the perimeter of my jamField. Wary of pressure traps in the threshold, I don my spider gloves again and reach inside the doorframe to crawl up the wall, then the ceiling, until I’m suspended above him in the shadow of the vaulted ceiling. I turn off my jamField.