Beneath Ceaseless Skies #117

by Marissa Lingen

  Alden looked at us both. “Won’t you try to run? To hide him?”

  Long-Leg and I both laughed, the snuffling laughter of our kind when we are not actually amused. “That will only mean a few dozen more of our people die. If not all of them.”

  I cannot credit what happened them. I have never seen its like. “Sergeant,” he said to me, not calling me Cook or Girly as the rest of the humans had started to do. “Sergeant, call the campus guards. Tell them I have had a fight with this other professor and killed him. Tell them it was over metaphysics. Or tell them—tell them it was for my brother’s honor. Yes. That will do. It was for the honor of my soldier brother. That is even true.”

  I stared at him. We were not on our own without Calliver after all. Or—more, for I was not sure even she would have done this.

  “And you... Long-Leg?”

  “Yes,” said Long-Leg, not daring to look up.

  “Go clean your hands. Don’t let anyone see you but your own people.”

  Long-Leg moved faster than I did. Perhaps he believed Professor Alden faster. Perhaps he didn’t care, thinking that a few more hours before death would be a gift regardless of how he got it. But he ran off, his feet slapping against the wood of the floor. “Go, Sergeant,” said Alden softly.

  “They will hang you.”

  “I have friends,” said Alden. “My brother will speak for me, though we hate each other. Likely I will only be locked up for all my days.”

  I shook my head and shuffled off to get the guards. When we came back, I half believed that Alden would be gone and the guards standing there would take me for Derzan’s killing. But no, he went with them as gentle as a lamb, an animal I have only seen trussed in my kitchens, which is as gentle as an animal gets.

  Back in the kitchen, the staff was lined up in their rows.

  “What did he do?” said Pinchnose. “Why? Why?”

  “He believes in the Armistice,” I said. “Get back to work on those pots. If you finish early we have spell drill to do.”

  Pinchnose looked up at me. “Spell drill, Sarge?”

  “You’re going to need to know some things to get on in this world,” I said. “I don’t know who’s going to teach you but me. Maybe we’ll find one or two more. The professor might be able to give us a word of who, if we can—if we can get word from the prison. But for now we’ll start with me.”

  “Yes, Sarge,” said Pinchnose, wide-eyed.

  “And—keep an ear on those professors,” I said. “Watch for the ones who are kind. Share the word, let me know. We—we aren’t alone. We cannot go on thinking that we are, with all that is ahead.”

  “The fight to come?” said Long-Leg.

  “No, you fool,” I said. “No more of that. What we have ahead is work, and hard work at that. Haven’t we already got an armistice?”

  “If we can get them to keep it,” said Long-Leg.

  Copyright © 2013 Marissa Lingen

  Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

  Marissa Lingen lives in the Minneapolis area with two large men and one small dog. Her work has appeared in Analog, Baen’s Universe, Nature, and multiple times previously in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, among others

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  BLOOD REMEMBERS

  by Alec Austin

  The wall at the edge of camp was waist-height and broken in several places where stones had been taken for other construction. As Tariq, Ksara, and I leaned on it and watched the sky turn orange, I could feel the tug of Downlander blood coming from its stones, offering me memories of an atrocity long past.

  The past concerned me less than the present, though, and as Tariq counted plumes of smoke and Ksara’s black eyes glistened with oily rainbows, I said what all of us were thinking: “The reinforcements Galloway promised aren’t coming.”

  Behind us, the camp was alive with the sounds of cooking and laughter as Cardinal Galloway’s bodyguard mingled with the Downlanders who’d answered my call. There should have been fifteen hundred Kunstadters camped here, come to oppose Immaculate XII, biblioclast and anti-Pope. There should have been the sound of metal on metal as horses were shod, the scent of pickled cabbage in the air, and voices singing drinking songs in Kunst accompanied by the cranking of the beggar’s lyre. Instead, all the voices I could hear were Downlander or Orvali, and the only songs were hymns.

  “The Kunst princes have offered his Eminence a dizzying array of excuses,” Ksara said, her shadow writhing and stretching behind her. “They’re trying to sit out the war. Galloway’s been burning the letters as they arrive.” As she finished, her shadow extended and flexed half a dozen wings.

  “Burning the letters?” Tariq asked, looking puzzled.

  “To keep the news from spreading,” I explained.

  Tariq nodded with new understanding. “Well, he’s not wrong. We can’t take on Immaculate without the Kunst cavalry. My men are scouts and skirmishers, not cataphracts.”

  “Of course we can,” I snapped. “My father defeated Orvali knights without cataphracts several times. It’s just a question of choosing the field of battle.”

  Tariq shot me a sharp look, and I could see he wanted to ask, Who picked the Field of Thorns? He didn’t quite dare, though, because he suspected what my answer would be.

  It wasn’t that hard to guess, when the man whose ambush had killed my father sat in our command tent wearing cardinal’s robes.

  I pushed my memories of the Field of Thorns aside as another thread of smoke rose to stain the lurid sky. ”Is that another monastery?” I asked Ksara.

  “St. Asceline’s,” Ksara confirmed, her voice taut with anger. “The original Codex of Miraculous Beasts and Cochrane’s Dialectics were just used for kindling.” Her shadow swelled and spread its wings wide as she added, “Every day, more knowledge is lost and a new wing is added to the Burnt Library. It is not to be borne.”

  I touched the back of her hand, and without speaking, Ksara took my fingers in hers. Though her digits were slender and ink-stained, she had a Prodigal’s strength, and I could feel her relax her grip to keep herself from hurting me.

  “It need not be borne much longer, darling,” I whispered. “I promise. If Galloway won’t act, I will.”

  Ksara nodded once in acknowledgment, and the three of us stood together in silence as the sun set and centuries of scholarship were lofted into the sky on plumes of ash.

  * * *

  Cardinal Galloway was finishing a roasted hare when Tariq and I arrived at his pavilion. ”Anton,” he said, waving me in with one hand as he bit into the hare’s leg. ”What news?”

  “Three more monasteries have been put to the torch,” I said. “St. Theodora’s, St. Magnus’s, and St. Asceline’s. Our outriders haven’t run into any of Immaculate’s scouts since the ones we nabbed last week.” I paused, then added, “There’s still no sign of the Kunstadters, Your Eminence.”

  “Duke Albrecht assured me that he and his men will set out on the morrow,” Galloway said, stripping the last bits of meat from the rabbit’s leg. “Surely we can wait here until they arrive?”

  I stared at Galloway for a moment, trying to recall how many years had passed since he’d taken the cloth. Five? Even after half a decade, he should still know better than to hesitate on the enemy’s threshold. Nor had Galloway been a fool when I cut my deal with him, some years before that.

  “We can,” I granted after a moment. “But it’s not wise, Your Eminence. The longer we stay in one place, the easier it will be for Immaculate and his commanders to infer our location. We should advance to Briareus’s Knee and extend our reconnaissance along the road to Orval.”

  “We cannot challenge Immaculate’s army with only a mob of Downlanders and my bodyguard,” Galloway said. “Not even if the giants you like to use as landmarks were to miraculously rise from the earth to fight for us. You’ve seen the reports from Orval. The bastard must have ten thousand men under arms by now.”

  “Ten thousand thi
eves and vandals,” I said, paraphrasing Matthias of Talern, “are no match for a Downlander army.”

  “We haven’t got a Downlander army,” Galloway snapped. “We have five hundred poachers, a thousand green boys, and as many veterans of the Third Carcanian War. We have fifty horsemen, all of them Mogvar exiles. Even with the hundred halberdiers of my guard, that’s not nearly enough.” He paused. “We need the Kunst cavalry, Anton. Without them, Immaculate is going to scatter us like chaff.”

  I nodded slowly, pretending to agree. Behind his practical facade, Galloway was terrified. He was still capable of tactical analysis, though.

  Which begged the question: did he actually believe Duke Albrecht would come to our aid? Or did he have another reason for wanting us to sit on our hands?

  “All right,” I said. “We’ll wait another three days. But no more.”

  The tension in Galloway’s shoulders eased as I spoke. “Good,” he said as I turned to go. “Keep the outriders on alert. We can’t afford to have Immaculate sneak up on us.”

  “What was that?” Tariq demanded of me once we’d left Galloway and his bodyguards behind. “You know as well I do that the Kunstadters aren’t coming!”

  “I do,” I said, keeping my voice low. “And so does Galloway. I want you to double the pickets around the camp.”

  Tariq sucked air in through his teeth. “Seven seals of Heaven. You think he’s sold us out?”

  “Either that, or he’s about to,” I said. Galloway hadn’t become a Cardinal of the Orvali church by not recognizing when the likes of Duke Albrecht meant to break a promise.

  * * *

  As Tariq saw to the pickets, I headed back to my own pavilion, lost in thought. Men I knew from my father’s campaigns nodded and waved to me as I passed, but no one hailed me with “Carcan Avs”—Blood lives, the first half of the traditional greeting of the Downlands. This wasn’t supposed to be a Downlander army, or a Downlander war. This was about the block-print prayer books that graced every home from the Freeholds to Slough Tamar; about two thousand years of learning and civilization being thrown away in a fit of misguided zeal.

  Ksara was in my pavilion, paging through the Burnt Library’s copy of the Codex of Miraculous Beasts. As I came up behind her, a fresh page unfurled itself from the book’s spine, letters of flame inscribing themselves on virgin parchment as a bonfire many leagues away transmuted the original to ash.

  “How are you holding up?” I asked, leaning down to kiss her ink-black hair.

  “Not well,” Ksara said, stroking a picture of a leopard using its sweet breath to put an antelope to sleep. “The illuminations in this one used to be so lovely—all gold and lapis and cochineal. Now look at them! There’s nothing left. Just skin, fire, and ash.”

  “The book isn’t completely lost,” I said, trying not to focus on how the book’s parchment was the same pale shade as Ksara’s skin. In a very real sense, she was the Burnt Library, as well as its custodian. “That has to count for something.”

  Ksara dismissed the Codex in a swirl of shadows as she turned to face me. “Does it? Do your blood memories console you, Anton? Or do you wake whimpering in the dead of night, having dreamt of the Sack of Merane? Does it comfort you to watch your twelve-times great grandmother die in an alley?”

  “The Arutanian crusade was a crime against all that is holy,” I replied, kneeling so I could take her hand in mine. “And so is this.”

  “Immaculate must be stopped,” Ksara said, her words ringing out like the toll of a bell, and as her eyes kindled like coals and her shadow leapt up the pavilion’s wall to spread a dozen wings, she was Ksarael, Prodigal of Lost and Forbidden Knowledge—a creature who’d fled God’s suffocating grace to dwell in the Inferno with her renegade siblings, and wasn’t remotely human.

  “He will be,” I replied, and the flames faded from Ksara’s eyes, leaving them an ink-slicked black once more.

  “What were you and Tariq talking about before you came in?” she asked, stroking the skin between my thumb and forefinger.

  “I think Galloway’s lost his nerve,” I told her, lifting the back of her hand so I could kiss it. “He wants to sit here and wait for Kunst reinforcements, even though he knows full well that Duke Albrecht is blowing smoke. So I told Tariq to have his men stop anyone who might be carrying a message to Immaculate.”

  “My cynical, suspicious love,” Ksara murmured.

  “Do you think I’m wrong?”

  “Not at all,” Ksara said, tracing my jaw with a fingertip. “I’m proud of you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re waiting for proof before you strike,” Ksara said, rising to her feet and pulling me up with her. “It’s good to know I taught you properly.”

  Our kiss tasted of saffron and cinnabar; of iron and ink and ashes.

  * * *

  Tariq roused us in the cold watch before sunrise, with the pallor of false dawn barely touching the western sky.

  “We caught one of Immaculate’s agents,” he said, averting his eyes as I fumbled with my trousers and Ksara clad herself in shadows. “He was dressed in Galloway’s livery, but I’d never seen him before, and I know all of the cardinal’s guards by name. The bastard tried to eat the note he was carrying, but Nassir pried his mouth open before he could swallow.”

  “Tell Nassir he did well,” I said as Tariq handed Ksara the note. “What does it say?”

  “It’s a substitution cipher,” Ksara said, squinting at it. “Easy to crack, and it’s in Galloway’s handwriting. He agrees to all of Immaculate’s terms.”

  “Do we know what those terms were?” I asked Tariq.

  Tariq was shaking his head as Ksara plucked a letter from the air, its creamy parchment etched with smoldering letters. “Be careful,” she said as she handed the letter to me. “It’s fresh from the brazier.”

  “How kind of Galloway to burn his correspondence,” I murmured as I scanned Immaculate’s offer. “He really should know better.”

  Ksara and Tariq exchanged smug looks. During my father’s war, they’d used Ksara’s abilities to trick the previous pope into hanging several of his advisors as spies.

  “What does it say?” Tariq asked as I reached the last paragraph and froze, barely able to breathe.

  “Well,” I said carefully, “there’s a great deal of ranting, in which Immaculate accuses me of parricide. Then there are the clauses you’d expect, about Galloway betraying us, acknowledging Immaculate as Pope, and retaining his place as a cardinal. And then....” I couldn’t go on.

  “And then,” Ksara finished for me, “Immaculate demands Galloway’s cooperation in prosecuting a second Arutanian crusade, to purge the Downlands of heresy.”

  Her words barely registered. Blood memory crashed over me in a wave, flinging me back to the Sack of Merane. I saw the perfect cerulean sky overhead as Guy of Demora breached the Stone Gates and the first Orvali troops rushed through. I could make out hundreds of faces in the crowd of women, children, and old men that were waiting for them. I had witnessed this atrocity hundreds of times—I knew their names, their lives, their grief. There was Petros, the quarryman who’d lost his arm in an accident and come to Merane to beg charity of the Perfecti. There was silver-haired Ulyana, surrounded by her daughters and granddaughters; widows, every one. And there was Yuliya, her great-grandchild, who wore the gray robes of a Perfecta at the age of twelve and was the first to raise her voice in song.

  They stood with their arms locked together, singing hymns to their god—a god who cared nothing for the world of matter, and who they knew full well wouldn’t save them.

  I saw the vanguard falter before them. Watched Guy of Demora urge them on.

  And heard the chorus swell as the killing began, glorifying God the Most High through two more verses before the sounds of butchery drowned out their voices forever.

  It took Ksara’s hand on my arm to bring me back to the present. “Anton? Are you all right?”

  “No,” I whispered
. A second Arutanian Crusade. At that thought, more blood memories stirred, and it was all I could do to keep myself from hearing Orvali soldiers laugh and jeer as they kicked the heads of mothers and grandfathers through the streets. A beard trailed in one head’s wake, like a gore-smeared tassel. “No, I’m not all right. Do they not understand what that means? Do they not remember why the Downlands were eager to follow my father to war?”

  Ksara shook her head. Of course they didn’t understand. I hadn’t made them remember, like I’d made a generation of Downlands youths recall Merane and Phenare. I hadn’t made Galloway watch as his ancestors hung children from the hooks of butcher’s stalls or smashed the icons and stained-glass windows of Saint Vadim’s Cathedral.

  “It was three hundred years ago,” Tariq pointed out. “And Orvali have short memories. They measure their grudges in decades, not centuries.”

  “Immaculate’s memory seems to work just fine,” I said. “He longs to reenact the Arutanian Crusade and every one of its horrors. Well, not while I draw breath.” I paused to calm my racing heart, then added, “Come the day, Immaculate and his adherents will lie dead—or wish they were.”

  Come the day. That had been my father’s phrase. Meaning the long-awaited day we conquered Orval.

  He was seven years in the grave, yet I was still using his rhetoric. Still playing the role he’d groomed me for, even as I rekindled the war I’d killed him to stop.

  Come the day, all the world would bow to Antonin Carcania, and offer fealty and tribute to the sign of the Eclipse.

  “Is it war, then?” Ksara asked, tiny sparks kindling in the tarry depths of her eyes.

  “Yes,” I whispered. This was a Downlander war now; a fight for our survival. Visions of corpses dangling from trees like swollen fruit filled my mind, but I pushed them aside. There would be no more monasteries burnt; no more massacres like Merane and Phenare.

  I would not permit it.

  After three heartbeats of silence, Tariq and Ksara covered their hearts with their fists. “Carcan Avs,” they said in unison. Blood lives.