by Manda Benson
Samphrey stood to attention at mention of her name, and made a wide-eyed, nervous expression.
* * * *
Wolff levered a crowbar into the airlock door and strained at it. “I don’t understand,” he grunted through tensed muscles. “The machinery isn’t holding it closed, but it’s still stuck. Pass me that jack... No, the other thing.”
Samphrey handed him the tool and he worked away some more. The hole became wide enough for him to get his hands inside, and he pulled and pushed at it until it became large enough for him to squeeze his body through sideways.
Slipping through, the corridor lay in darkness and he felt a strange sensation in his foot, as though he was dangling it over a hole. “The gravity’s broken,” he said. “Pass those tools through please.”
He put the tools away and took hold of one of the maintenance rails, moving to the side and out of the Shamrock’s localised gravitational field so Samphrey would have room to follow.
Wolff switched on his torch. “You hold this for me?”
Samphrey shone the light over the inside of the corridor. It illuminated one of the ship’s ganglia against the corner formed between the wall and the floor, and brown stuff had dribbled from its seal.
“That’s odd.” Wolff pushed himself out into the corridor and prised the cover off the ganglion. The wires and circuitry inside were furred up with orange deposits. “It looks like it’s oxidised. Come on, let’s go up to the bridge.”
Wolff set off, pushing from one side of the corridor to the other. When he looked behind him, Samphrey was trying to pull herself along the maintenance rail, hand over hand. “Here, let me help you.” Wolff bounced back to her and held out his hand.
“It’s not proper for you to help me.” Samphrey hesitated. “I’ve to do it by myself.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” Wolff assured her.
“Well, all right, then.”
“Okay.” Wolff took hold of the girl by the waist and turned her to point in the right direction. “Remember to keep your hands or your legs between you and where you’re going, otherwise you can hit your head. Ready?”
He pushed her forward, and she reached out to the rail on the far wall as she floated toward it. Wolff jumped after her, and in this way they made their way up to the end of the corridor.
Wolff held on to the rail and looked around the corner to the bridge. He could see starlight through the windows, and no lights shone from the consoles. A sharp odour of burnt circuitry flavoured the air. Samphrey shone the torch over the bridge, but there was nobody there.
“I—” Samphrey said, and closed her mouth.
“What?”
“Sorry.”
“Did you want to say something?”
Samphrey compressed her lips, her mouth forming a line. “It’s not my place.”
Wolff shrugged. “Say it.”
“If the Archer was shooting at us, she would probably have been in the armoury.” After she spoke, she watched Wolff with an odd, defensive anticipation.
“Good idea. Let’s go there.”
They went back down the corridor toward the arsenal. The windows there cast dim beams through the dust hanging in the air, and in the center of the room where the beams converged floated a human shape—the Archer. She was perfectly still, floating with her back toward the floor, her legs bent at the knees, one arm raised at the elbow and the other hanging behind her.
“Is she dead?” Samphrey said.
“I don’t know,” Wolff answered. “It could be a trap.”
Samphrey shone the torch upon the nearest wall, illuminating a handrail and an access port stained with more brown marks. “That orange stuff, what is it?”
“It looks like metal oxides, but oxides don’t normally form unless there’s a lot of dampness. You sometimes see them, only traces, on very old ships.”
“Perhaps something has worked as a catalyst and made all the ship’s wiring corrode.” Samphrey’s voice was deeply uneasy.
Wolff looked back to the motionless Archer. “I’m going to have to get her down. The problem is that if one of us drifts into the center of the arsenal, there’s nothing to hang on to and we’ll be stranded there.” He turned to face Samphrey and pointed to the rail. “I’m going to need you to help me. Tie your sash on here. That torch, you can attach it to your arm with that strap on it.”
Samphrey did as he asked, but as she tied the knot she said, “Wouldn’t it be easier for you to hold on to me? I’m smaller.”
“No, it won’t matter when there’s no gravity.” In reality, Wolff did not want Samphrey to be the one who reached out to the body in case the Archer was still alive and this was a trap.
“Hold on to my ankle and lean away from the wall.”
Wolff pushed away from the rail and reached out. His fingers were a foot away from the Archer’s wrist. “Samphrey, can you push away from the wall?”
Samphrey moved, and through her Wolff felt the smooth sensation of the material of her belt sliding along the hand rail. His hand closed around the Archer’s forearm.
“Okay, pull back now, please.”
He pulled the Archer back toward the rail, taking hold of her tunic at the neck. He felt a long, arrow-shaped pin, similar to the one Jed wore on her tunic. Starlight fell on the Archer’s face. She was young, barely an adult. He felt her throat.
“She’s dead.”
A loud click that seemed to come from the corpse’s head made him pull his hand back. The interface band drifted slowly upward from the dead Archer’s face, leaving a line on her forehead from its pressure, with three old scars evenly spaced along it.
Chapter 18
Steel and Flame
No deceiving tongue the true shall serve,
Nor illusion false and vain,
Trust shall be earned and trust deserved,
In men of Steel and Flame
Jed held the interface crown, gazing upon the inner surface that had been against the dead Archer’s forehead. “The ship’s computer was burnt?”
“Corroded,” Wolff answered. “The conducting tracks in the circuitry are so thin that oxidation of that sort on their surface goes right through and breaks the circuit. The burning can be assumed to have been caused by capacitors and parts of the circuitry when they were damaged.”
Jed turned over the band in her hands. “But this can’t corrode. It’s made of surgical-grade tungsten. Yet the Archer died, and this detached from her?”
Wolff turned to Viprion, who sat with legs stretched out on the Shamrock’s bridge seating. “This thing you said about, the Moiety. Could that have corroded?”
Viprion gave his head a vigorous shake. “The Moiety’s organic. It’s made from the same materials as you and I. Most likely her brain died of the shock when the computer she was connected to overloaded.”
“I pulled the crown off another Archer,” said Wolff. “She did not die.”
“The Moiety denatures soon after brain death, and the crown detaches as a failsafe,” Jed explained. “If an Archer were to die for whatever reason, it means that if that Archer has an apprentice, she can don the crown and take control of the ship. It is better that way than the ship be lost and the apprentice die on it.”
“Then we have a functional interface band?” Wolff reached toward the crown. “The Shamrock’s chimaera array is damaged, if we could take control of the ship by one of us using this, we could tow it back out into the halo and find somewhere to have it repaired.”
“By your own admission, the other ship is ruined!”
“Where is the crown I broke, for the myth ship we are towing?”
Jed pointed to the shelf behind the seating. Wolff found the damaged band there, plying the deformed crescent with his thumbs. “I can see the part of it that holds the code that identifies it as belonging to the ship. I could take this out and replace it in the other one. Synchronise a working interface band with a working ship.”
Jed looked sharply at Wolff, then at
Samphrey, who was standing over by the bridge windows and listening to the conversation with a look of unease. “There is only one here among us whom the Code will permit to take the crown.”
Samphrey’s face changed, showing a deep yearning held back by intense dread.
“Samphrey’s training is incomplete, she is too young. Grafting a mind to a computer that has spent so long grafted to another is not without risk. The ship behind us belonged to an Archer of myth, who was not young. We would be better to find somewhere we can set down, and try to replace the chimaera that are damaged with two from my own haul.”
Wolff raised his eyebrows. “That would be a lengthy and difficult operation. I have seen chimaera handled before. They are easily damaged, and to attempt to install and connect them in a vacuum or an unknown atmosphere without specialist equipment, when none of us has training, and the Bellwether pursues us, that would not be straightforward.”
“I will do it,” Samphrey said.
Jed and Wolff turned and looked at the girl. Jed said, “Samphrey, if we do this thing, there will be no undoing it. That ship will be yours for the rest of your life, for better or for worse.”
“I’ll do it,” Samphrey repeated. “It’s the only way we are going to escape. You can still teach me, when we are away from this place.”
Jed’s face took on the impassive, glazed-eyed look that Wolff now understood was symptomatic of her conferring with the Shamrock’s systems. Perhaps she was scanning the skies, perhaps she was merely thinking more deeply on the matter.
She passed the intact band to him. “Then do it, for it would seem it is the only option. But first, recover the Archer’s corpse from the ruined ship, so that we may cast it adrift and give her the funeral the Code demands.”
* * * *
Wolff dragged the dead Archer into the corridor of the myth ship, which Jed had decided should be renamed the Larkspur of hortica. He stepped quietly up to where the corridor opened onto the bridge, where Jed and Samphrey stood. Viprion, leaning on the wall just beyond the corridor, turned and raised his eyebrows at Wolff, tilting his head so as to look down upon him, and stalked into the corridor.
Jed spoke first. “Who are you?”
“I am Samphrey of hortica.” Samphrey stood stiffly before Jed, her voice proud, yet with an undertone of nervousness.
“What are you?”
“I am of Steel and Flame. I am hortica. I am an Archer!”
Jed faced the table in the center of the bridge, on which lay the interface crown along with a small ornamental knife and her leather-bound book with the stylised bird in the tree on the cover. She spread out her hands, palms up. “You will swear, on the Blood, on the Pagan Atheist, and in Pilgrennon’s name.”
“I swear fealty to hortica.”
“I swear, in the name of Pilgrennon the Blood paragon.”
Samphrey took the book, The Teachings of the Pagan Atheist, in her hands and held it vertically before her face, pressed between her palms. “I swear on the Pagan Atheist and in the name of Steel and Flame.”
Slowly, smoothly, Jed picked up the knife from the table and stroked it across her left palm, on the fleshy area at the base of the knuckles. She rotated her hand, closing it into a fist, and blood dripped onto the interface crown, staining its inner surface where the three prongs had retracted into it.
Samphrey knelt before Jed. “I swear, on the Blood, and on the Moiety.”
Jed lifted up the crown with the tips of her fingers, and raised it high in the air so a line of blood spilled over the inside of her wrist and tracked down her left arm. “Then, you will renounce all that you are and all that you were, for you are Samphrey of the Larkspur of hortica.” And Jed lowered the crown to Samphrey’s forehead, and Wolff saw the girl’s eyes close and the stiffening of her shoulders into a flinch.
“Mylen.”
Viprion was standing in the aft corridor.
Samphrey turned away from Jed, her concentration broken.
“Viprion,” said Jed, “do not intrude upon the ways of the star Archers.”
“Mylen?” Samphrey took a step away from Jed, toward the corridor. “That was the name of my cousin, who went to myth seven years afore today.”
“Samphrey, you are to become an Archer now, your past and your relations are of no relevance! Do not dishonour your own ceremony, and what is to be your ship, with the name of myth!”
“She was my sister...” Viprion murmured. “And then you must be that Samphrey who was also my cousin, whom I knew not well and did not see for some years, but I also did hear had been taken as an apprentice by the same Archer.” He looked at Wolff, he looked at Samphrey, then at Jed and the semicircle of dull silver that balanced on her upheld fingertips, where Samphrey’s forehead had been.
Viprion dived over the back of the seating. Samphrey cried out as he pushed her out of the way. He snatched the interface crown from Jed.
“Viprion!” Wolff shouted, and Jed had realised what he was trying to do and grabbed his forearms, but she couldn’t stop him from putting his head forward, into the crown. With a snap, the tungsten semicircle tightened around his cranium and his body crashed to the floor. He made no movement to break his fall with his arms, and Jed stepped back from him, a look of alarm upon her face.
Viprion’s limbs trembled violently. His face was an unholy rictus, eyes rolling, saliva running from his mouth onto the bridge floor. He looked as he had when the seignior had incapacitated him on Carck-Westmathlon.
Samphrey ran to Viprion and crouched down over him. “Will he be all right?”
Jed pushed the girl back by the shoulder, making her fall down. Her voice came as a shout. “Do you not realise what he has done? He has squandered our one chance of escape, and all you can think of is his welfare?”
The bridge lighting faltered, and an alien pattern of lights ran across the bridge consoles. Viprion put his hand to the floor and levered himself up, eyes wild, nostrils flaring.
“Viprion, what are you doing?” Wolff demanded. “Can he control the ship?”
Jed’s teeth were bared. “I can’t see why not, once he grafts to it, he’s of the Blood.” She reached to the table, not taking her eyes off Viprion, and her fingers closed on the knife she’d used to cut herself. “He must die before he gains full control!” As she uttered these words she made a lunge past Wolff toward Viprion, who rose unsteadily from the floor, a demented grin stretching his lips back over his teeth.
Wolff gripped Jed by the shoulders, forcing her to face him. Her muscles were rigid and she trembled with anger. “Jed, go back to your ship.”
“He has desecrated hortica and the Code!” Jed’s voice hurled flecks of spittle into Wolff’s face. “He must die for his sacrilege!”
“If he gains control of the ship and you’re not on the Shamrock, he could undock and leave us trapped here.” Wolff spoke in a low voice, hoping Viprion would not hear him and get ideas. “You need to get back now.”
Jed’s eyes darted from Wolff’s face to look over his shoulder at Viprion.
“Let me kill him, Jed.”
Fractionally, he sensed tension leaving her body, and she stepped back away from him. “Kill him,” she said in a low breath. “It’s the only way you’ll get the interface off him in one piece. There is still hope.” She turned, still looking over her shoulder, and went aft toward the airlock.
Viprion swayed on his feet, and his eyes made darting motions. Odd sounds came from the bridge computer. Wolff pulled his multipurpose tool out of his belt and switched the knife into position. “Samphrey.” He held out his hand to the girl. “Go back to the Shamrock. Follow Jed.”
Samphrey took one step toward Wolff, her face full of confusion.
Viprion grabbed her by the arm. “The Archers took my sister from me!” His voice was a fervent scream, terrible to hear in the space of the bridge. “They will not have my cousin too!”
“Viprion, you made an oath!” Wolff shouted back at him. “An oath and I hear
d it with my own ears! You made an oath, in the name of the Blood paragon and in the name of the Pagan Atheist, with me and Samphrey as your witnesses!”
Viprion reached out his hand to steady himself, looking at it as though it didn’t belong to him. “Listen not to this fool Gerald Wolff, Samphrey. He is not of the Blood, and he is a criminal who trespasses upon the sanctity of the Archers themselves.”
“What does it matter if I am of the Blood or not? You made that oath to Jed of the Shamrock, an Archer, a man of the highest Blood there is, and now you renege upon it!”
Viprion pointed at Wolff. “Do not worry yourself, fool, with matters that don’t concern you and that you can’t even hope to understand.”
Wolff stepped back. He set back his shoulders and stood at his full height. “You are a Blood traitor Viprion, the lowest of the low!”
“Bastard halfBlood swine!” Viprion pushed Samphrey aside and came at Wolff, who held out his knife at the ready. As the man leapt to him, gravity ceased, and Viprion soared into the air, his foot aimed at Wolff’s head. Wolff tried to duck, but there was nothing to duck against. Then Samphrey crashed into him, knocking him back toward the door.
“Quickly!” Wolff took hold of Samphrey’s hand. The moment gravity returned and his feet touched the ground, they both ran aft. As they turned into the airlock, Viprion was close behind them, and he grabbed Samphrey around the waist.
“Viprion, let her go!” Wolff held onto Samphrey by her arms, and she held him back. He pulled her over the threshold, toward the Shamrock’s door.
“You would abandon your own Blood in favour of this?” Viprion pulled back and Samphrey screamed, in pain as much as in protest.
“You’re hurting her!”
“I am hurting her? Are you sure it is not the halfBlood peasant dragging on her arms that’s hurting her?”
“Gerald Wolff might be a halfBlood,” Samphrey yelled, “but his half of the Blood is better by far than your whole!”
Viprion snarled and pulled harder on Samphrey. Her fingers slid down Wolff’s forearms, her nails leaving deep scratches in the skin. Her eyes were closed tight in a grimace, and a cry escaped her, then Wolff lost his grip on her and fell back against the Shamrock’s door. The last thing he saw was Viprion’s eyes, burning with anger, before the Larkspur’s door closed.
