Dark Tempest

by Manda Benson

  Why would someone want such a lifestyle? Who would want that unbearable solitude, century after century? Wolff remembered the sad loneliness in Belthede’s petrified countenance, and wondered what it could have been that had driven her to lie down and die after all that time. She had died of no injury. Her brain had simply shut down to leave her body to waste.

  Some of that same despairing loneliness he saw, too, in young Jed, held in check by that unbreakable fiery arrogance, although it was drilled into this Code of hers too much to call spirit. He could almost see something beneath that defiance in her eyes that held over the ravages conurin and solitude had brought upon her, something that could eventually consume her and expunge the proud fire that held her above Belthede’s final indignity. Something inside her screamed out for someone solid and real to pull her out of her world of shadows.

  It wasn’t just the Archer. It was the same whimsical tangent Wolff always took. He was ever drawn to a challenge, and something about Jed challenged him. He felt a sudden urge to turn back and forgo this foray and the possible learning of Taggart’s motives for coming here. He imagined the ship leaving the docking dendrites, him losing the chance for good. He’d come away without insurance.

  “Why so taciturn, Gerald Wolff?” said Rh’Arrol casually.

  “Time and tide wait for no man,” Wolff murmured.

  Rh’Arrol made a narrow-eyed, open-nostrilled face at the apparent non sequitur.

  The lift came to a halt and the door slid back. Rh’Arrol stuck out aer neck and surveyed the corridor noisily before leading the way.

  This passageway was of a more subtle décor, and as Rh’Arrol led him, swinging aer neck about and clicking as though ae half expected some wild beast to leap out upon aer. The passageway gave way to a wide cavern of sand-coloured stone, mottled with dark and light bands, and stalactites and stalagmites forming pillars, like some sprawling cave system. Yet it was all too regular and organised to be convincing as a natural formation. Globes embedded in the higher ceilings emitted a soft light, and what looked like bamboo plants were set out in hollows filled with growing medium. Massive windows of vitreous alloy along one side of the garden let in bright sunlight, Satigenaria’s brilliance illuminating the ring wall with glaring albedo as it stretched away into mind-numbing perspective. The lift must have brought them through the entire breadth of the circumfercirc stratum.

  The morran dropped into shadow, and began to push its way through thick, shade-dwelling leaves. The flora changed as Wolff followed Rh’Arrol farther, varying from acrogens in the shade of many different species, to equally different varieties of cacti in the hottest, brightest parts. But again, it was something blatantly artificial trying to look natural. All this was an elaborate display case for some rich fool’s horticultural findings.

  As Rh’Arrol hurried along, Wolff lagged behind, looking at the specimens and their immaculate labelling. No fallen foliage littered the floor. No dead branches hung skeletal from the trees, nor did sallowness or blot despoil the many-hued leaves.

  Wolff sat on a stone wall beside a fake stream. He rubbed at his leg. The blood had clotted and the fabric of his trousers stuck to him.

  Rh’Arrol continued for a few yards without noticing then looked around abruptly. “Why does you stop?” ae demanded.

  Wolff shrugged and Rh’Arrol scurried back to lurk under a succulent.

  “Just thinking,” Wolff said.

  Rh’Arrol crouched, bending knees over back in a defensive posture. “We should not be tarrying here.”

  “Relax.” Wolff waved a hand at the surroundings. “Water’s free. So drink it. Eat the fruit.” Wolff reached out a hand and plucked a green-striped fruit with a long tail from a branch. Rh’Arrol stared at him as he sank his teeth into the succulent flesh.

  “Not eat fruit!” The morran’s eyes widened. “Forbidden fruit!”

  “Mmm,” concurred Wolff.

  “Look, the water is free. The garden belongs the seignior. The trees and the fruit draw nutrients from the soil and belong to him. Come with me, Gerald Wolff. It is not far now.”

  Wolff looked at his clock again and considered how he was going to go about this matter, and how he might break the surface of the water with this seignior. The sort of man who planted public gardens and forbade the public from eating the fruit was unlikely to be the sort who would humour some wandering maverick who hitched rides with the mysterious Archers, even if his intentions were noble.

  Like Rh’Arrol had said, it wasn’t far before the garden gave way to a sequence of chambers with solid-looking doors in the walls.

  Rh’Arrol led him to one such door. It had a brass knocker on the front, so he knocked. A male voice barked something from within, and he took it as an invitation to enter and pushed the door back.

  Wolff passed through the doorway and found a man awaiting him. His shoulders were tensed and his hands spread, their thin fingers splayed upon the desk at which he sat.

  Upon seeing Wolff, he appeared to let his guard down marginally, and drew a slender stylus from a rack of writing implements beside a plate bearing fruit, fibre loaf, and a piece of green cheese with a silver-hilted dirk stabbed in it.

  “You should know how it displeases me to be disturbed,” the man snapped. He grimaced, showing slightly discoloured fangs.

  “Well, forgive me, for I don’t. Are you the seignior?” Wolff addressed him.

  “I am not,” the man replied, with some hauteur. His dark, lank hair was receding and drawn back into a greasy knot behind his head, and the way he arched his eyebrows gave the illusion that he’d stretched his forehead in the act of tying back his hair. A small dent was evident in the dead center of his forehead. He was clean-shaven, apart from a sleek growth of beard on his chin drawn into a tapering fork with some sort of polymer gel, like a viper’s tongue. His face was thin, sunken about the cheeks and with keen, dark-rimmed, grey eyes. His precise, efficient movements caught Wolff’s attention, and when he spoke, his teeth, long in the canines and marred and convoluted, showed, as well as a slick, dark tongue with a narrow tip. Wolff looked again at how he meticulously held the long shaft of the pen—an Archer, an arrow, that same brooding intelligence.

  “I wish to see the seignior.”

  The man narrowed his eyes. “You are not of this system.”

  “No. I arrived here on the ship, the Shamrock.”

  The man’s frown deepened, his eyes retracting into slits of white in the recesses of the dark sockets. “What breed of man doth curry the favour of the star Archers?”

  “My name is Gerald Wolff, and yours?”

  “Castellan Viprion, advisor of the management.” The castellan’s eyes turned and his gaze settled briefly on Rh’Arrol. “Citizen Wolff, on Carck-Westmath we do not bring morrans into the areas designated for the habitation of men.”

  Rh’Arrol’s quills flushed and aer tentacles twitched, somewhere between meekness and annoyance.

  “This morran is with me and does not concern you. As I said, I wish an audience with the seignior.”

  “Are you sure you wish to see the seignior?” Viprion licked his lips.

  “That is what I asked, is it not?” Viprion’s tone annoyed Wolff. Something in his parlance suggested a cryptic undertone to each assertion.

  Viprion got to his feet in an unhurried sort of way. His clothing was entirely black, covered with lurid sequins, and belted tightly around an already lean waist. His thinness and discoloured teeth already suggested that he was a conurin addict. Something between a smile and a sneer twisted his mouth. “I would not grant you permission to see the seignior under normal circumstances, particularly not with a morran. However, a man with the benediction of the Archers I see may be a separate case. Follow, then, if that’s your will.”

  The castellan led them through another door and down a long corridor. He walked ahead of Wolff and Rh’Arrol, paying them little attention. Wolff had not known Viprion for long, but already he had formed a preliminary opinio
n of the castellan as untrustworthy and almost loathsome. This man was no idiot, Wolff thought. He could surely not overlook security. How could he know no weapon was hidden about Wolff’s person, or in Rh’Arrol’s smock, considering the contempt with which morrankind seemed to be treated on Carck-Westmathlon?

  Unless...

  Perhaps a shield stronger than any weapon protected this seignior. What, then? Perhaps the man was so well-armed an attempt to attack him would be risible. Perhaps Viprion led Wolff and Rh’Arrol to a simple intercom with which to commune with the seignior.

  Viprion swung open the door at the end of the corridor. “Gerald Wolff to see you, seignior,” said the castellan ingratiatingly.

  A ropy, stocky sort of man leant over a couch with his back to the door. He was either bald through genetic fault, or his head had been shaved. A pair of feet, human but abnormally small and slender with ankles covered in silky hair, protruded from one end of the couch, shaking spasmodically. At first Wolff thought the seignior was fornicating with the person on the sofa, but then the man turned around.

  Wolff looked at the Seignior’s bullish features, surely not a man of the Blood then could not help but look at the shivering thing on the couch. Superficially, it appeared to be an elongated boy with a bulbous cranium and huge wet eyes, and white-golden hair covering the wrists and ankles and forming a mane around the face. His milky skin was as pale as Jed’s, and his limbs were so thin and delicately jointed he looked as though he would shatter like china if caught by a wind. This was a man designed for survival in low gravity, on moon worlds—a Lunatic as they were called.

  “Lestel here is annoying me, Viprion!” the seignior roared. The Lunatic boy drew his hands up over his face. His fingers were as pale and sculpted as bleached driftwood.

  “And you annoy me, Castellan Viprion,” the seignior continued, striding gracelessly toward the Castellan. “You and your pathetic advices and strategies! You’re only fit for the knacker’s yard!”

  “What is a knacker?” Wolff wondered aloud.

  “What?” The seignior turned on him. His face had the bloated look imparted by too much alcohol, and pockmarks scarred his forehead and cheeks. While Viprion, as a man of leadership, had quite clearly been brimming over with devious, opportunistic artifice, none of these qualities were at all evident in the seignior. How could a man not of the Blood be the seignior of a circumfercirc? He was, Wolff assumed, either an arrant tyrant, or a figurehead chosen for his lack of insight.

  “I said, what’s a knacker?”

  “A knacker’s yard is a place where beasts too old to enter the food chain go to be slaughtered!” the seignior shouted.

  “Yes, but what’s a knacker? Presumably an individual who works in such a yard. But did you ever meet one?” Wolff made an elaborate, flourishing bow. “Delighted to meet you, seignior. I am but a humble knacker. Did you ever wonder how many people put ‘knacker’ in the job title section of their census form?”

  The seignior’s frown relaxed. “You’re an idiot!”

  “Yes, that’s what I put on my census form.”

  The seignior ignored him and continued his advance on Viprion. “Why have you brought here this foolish man?” The Seignior broke off to stare at Wolff. “Who is a criminal and a thief, and who eats fruit out of my garden? And why have you let this disgusting urchin in here?”

  “He wishes to speak to you.” Viprion licked his lips and took a nervous step backward. “The man, I mean, not the disgusting urchin. I think you should know that he came aboard by virtue of an Archer’s vessel.”

  “How exciting for him!” The seignior turned to Wolff but he did not look into his eyes, staring instead at Wolff’s shoulder. “And you, you stole fruit from the gardens, did you not?” He pushed his florid face toward Wolff, still not looking him full in the eyes. A stench of alcohol hit Wolff like a sheet caught in the wind. How did he know Wolff was a criminal? How had he seen him eat the fruit?

  Lestel groaned. The seignior spun round, saw that the Lunatic had slid off the couch and was crouching on the floor, and kicked him hard in the leg. The boy’s thigh splintered with a nauseating crack. Lestel cried out in pain and fell on his side. The seignior drew back his foot to aim another kick, and Wolff saw that for sure it would shatter Lestel’s ribcage and crush his heart and lungs. He seized the seignior by his loose white tunic and wrenched him back.

  “You dare to touch me?” the seignior spoke to Wolff without looking round. “You do not know the way of these parts, Citizen Wolff!”

  Lestel groaned again. The seignior stepped toward him. Lestel raised his face, and an expression of acute horror spread across it. Then he screamed in pain. His eyes rolled back to the whites, slaver ran from his mouth, and his limbs shook.

  “What are you doing?” Wolff demanded, disbelief overcoming horror. Surely the simple act of looking at a person could not induce such agony. Perhaps Lestel was acting, or it was the pain from his leg. “That can not be! Steel and Fl—” Wolff was cut short as the seignior turned and looked straight at him, and an insane agony erupted from the back of his neck, grating on every nerve of his body. Somewhere from his right came a strangulated shriek from Viprion, and he heard the sound of the castellan’s head hitting the wall. Wolff sensed that he, too, had fallen over, but he could no longer tell directions from one another or see anything but a red haze. An icy swash of pain engulfed him. His diaphragm contracted into a tight knot and he could not draw breath.

  The pain ceased as quickly as it had begun, leaving him ringing like a tuning fork. He raised his hand to his temple and realised he was physically untouched. His heart pounded and his breath came ragged. His sight returned to him as though surfacing from the water, Lestel still lying on the floor. Viprion, when Wolff sought him, was lying near the wall on the other side of the door, moaning. Blood made a thick track from his nostrils to his upper lip. Rh’Arrol crouched near the door whimpering, and the seignior was approaching aer.

  “Foul urchin, blight upon this circumfercirc!” he cursed then Rh’Arrol fell sideways and screamed, curling aer limbs up like a stunned spider. A crash issued from the far wall, and a second morran fell out of a ventilator shaft.

  The seignior desisted, and looked round at the morran. “Eavesdropping scum!” he shouted at it. Rh’Arrol half rose and struggled for the door. The seignior’s power hit the morran who had fallen through the wall, and it went into spasms. Wolff realised he intended to hold it there like that until the life drained out of it, like a man holding someone’s head underwater. He got onto hands and knees, and crawled toward the door. Rh’Arrol had fallen in the entrance. Wolff put his arm around the morran and stood, half carrying, half dragging aer into the corridor. Rh’Arrol’s breathing steadied as they moved away, and Wolff set aer down outside the door to Viprion’s office.

  “Why did you not warn me he could do that?” said Wolff, striking the ground with his fist.

  “I did not know he could do that!” Rh’Arrol shrieked. “I did not see him before this day! I thought him a man, as you!”

  “I doubt he could even provide an answer to the question I was going to ask him. He’s insane! What did you take me to him for? Are you stupid or something?”

  “I did not see him before! Men on Carck-Westmathlon do not have business with morrans! I took you to him knowing only his location from the blueprints.”

  Wolff calmed himself down a bit. It wasn’t Rh’Arrol’s fault and, as far as he could tell, whatever it was the seignior had done to him did not have a lasting effect.

  How could someone inflict pain like that? He’d heard of people under hypnosis who felt no pain, but never of someone imagining a pain that was not real due to it. That went into superstition and voodoo. “Steel and Flame,” Wolff muttered.

  Wolff sensed footfall in the doorway, and looked round to see Viprion leaning on the frame. He stood immediately. “What did he do?” he demanded.

  Viprion, breathing rapidly and wiping the blood from his nos
e, ignored the question. “He is in a foul temper, and has been drinking.”

  “Why did you not warn me?”

  “Certain people of deluded impressions, mostly males of your own age, seem to think they can defeat our seignior. I assumed you were merely another of the insurgent rabble.”

  Wolff frowned. It was patent that the castellan didn’t think he was stupid, and surely since he’d told Viprion he arrived on the Archer’s ship and was not local, this was not truly the man’s reasoning. “That man is your leader? I cannot imagine him being anything short of unnegotiable.”

  The castellan arched one eyebrow into a dark chevron. “What is it you wish to negotiate?”

  Wolff looked at the castellan. He hadn’t trusted him from the start. Some tribal instinct too deeply ingrained to be ousted from his sentience by education or culture had told him this was not the individual to invite into one’s cave. Potentially a dangerous man, he supposed, and something about him put Wolff on his guard. But he had come here to get answers, and with time at a premium, Viprion was the best source of those answers he had yet found. He chose his words carefully. “If I were to tell you Carck-Westmathlon was the focus of malign interests, might you tell me what you have here that could attract such interest?”

  The castellan’s face changed, but not to an expression that could be interpreted as surprise or shock. “Many reasons could be postulated. Satigenaria is a wealthy system, and much of that wealth occupies the circumfercirc. That said, lucre is never evenly distributed, and the Kuiper mining community of this system has ever hovered on the edge of revolt. This is an old settlement and not run as well as it once was. Unscrupulous rulers like our own seignior cause factionation and civil unrest in the populace of the circumfercirc itself. And to add to that,” Viprion said, casting a critical glance toward Rh’Arrol, “we have an overpopulation of morrans, which themselves are a threat to security. Cull the morrans and you incite further ructions among men who see it as unethical. Any one of these factors could prove a point of weakness marauders might exploit.”