‘Sire Cleander of House von Castellan comes with all majesty to this place, and greats you in the spirit of mutual prosperity and honour,’ boomed Josef, his voice rising over the sound of the sea wind. ‘Glory to the radiance of the Emperor. Glory to those that prosper under his light.’
‘Thank you, Khoriv,’ said Cleander, ‘most right and proper.’ He inclined his head to the wizened pair, noticing first that they had moved and then that both were wearing goggles of black glass. He smiled more broadly. They cannot see, he realised. So much time in the dark of their books, bent over text and quill, that in the daylight they are blind.
‘Master Sardus, Mistress Ki,’ he said pitching his voice to carry clear, ‘my thanks for agreeing to greet me and hear my request. It is a pleasure to meet you in person.’
One of the pair, who Cleander guessed was Ki, shook and then opened cracked lips.
‘Your message promised much,’ she said. ‘How could we refuse such an offer?’
‘The question,’ said the other, who would be Sardus, ‘is what you want in return?’
‘I have said nothing of wanting anything,’ said Cleander lightly.
‘Everyone wants something,’ said Sardus. ‘Come inside, out of the light.’
VII
‘Go on – ask,’ said Tristana.
The words surprised Viola, and she looked up at where Tristana had paused. They were far from the door and the hag now. They had sunk down and down into the quiet dark. They had passed through levels of half-collapsed shelves, and through corridors that wound through walls made of rotting heaps of manuscript. At last they had reached a spiral stair, its treads and banister hung with fronds of pale mould and beaded with damp. They had descended, lights and eyes tracking the doors and landings that led off. In places, Viola had seen brass plaques bolted above the arches of doors cut with number codes, some just shadows of digits, others still readable under the layers of corrosion: 115, 122, 116, on and on like the jumping count of a confused mind.
After twenty minutes of descent, Tristana had called a halt. Covenant and Severita had taken positions higher up, watching the dark above. Tristana had gone to stand on a step just below Viola, closed her eyes and taken a deep breath through her nose, and then swayed her head slowly from side to side. The gesture made Viola think of an animal sniffing the air. Viola had been watching the guide when Tristana spoke.
‘Go on,’ she said again, opening her eyes and looking at Viola. ‘Ask.’
Viola began to form a denial, then stopped. Tristana’s eyes were dark and unblinking in the light of the cherub-held glow-globes.
‘What did you do?’ asked Viola at last. ‘For you to be condemned to live down here – what did you do?’
‘I was a scholar,’ said Tristana.
‘No,’ said Viola, shaking her head once. ‘You were a thief, weren’t you?’
‘Is there a difference? All learning is a type of theft, isn’t it?’ Tristana shivered and shook herself. ‘Come on, we should get moving. I think it’s safe to carry on down.’
They began to descend again. Water dripped from somewhere above.
‘What was it you stole?’ asked Viola after a few minutes.
‘Tried to steal,’ said Tristana. ‘You think I would be a guide for overcurious souls if I had succeeded?’ Viola looked up the stair shaft, which vanished into blackness above them. The cyber cherub holding the glow globe above Severita was twitching as drops of fluid hit its chrome skull. ‘Do you know what the Tractate Serith is?’
‘A work on the nature of divinity by Catullus Ven, a proscribed text,’ replied Viola, ‘thought destroyed in the scouring of Himsezia. Only fragments exist.’
‘Impressive,’ said Tristana, and Viola thought she caught the ghost of a smile on the guide’s face. She was moving down the stairs level with a landing from which a fresh set of arch doors led off. ‘Except that your summary is incorrect. A complete copy does exist.’
‘That is unlikely,’ said Viola.
‘True though, and it is here, on this water-drenched world in the sealed vaults of Archive Node 090. I know, I saw it.’
‘That can’t be true,’ said Viola. A drop of water hit her shoulder.
‘True enough to cost me my life,’ said Tristana.
Viola was about to reply when Tristana went still, head up, muscles taut. Viola turned to look around at the wide stair shaft. Covenant and Severita had also gone still. The gun mount on Covenant’s shoulder twitched.
‘What–’ began Viola.
A circle of teeth at the end of a huge serpentine body plunged from the dark above. Viola caught the impression of vast, pale coils unfolding, scales and soft flesh rippling. Water fell from its mouth as its jaws hinged wide. Gunfire tore the dark and silence to burning shreds.
TWO
‘This is fabulous…’ Master Archivist Ki spun the hololith projection with a skeletal left hand. The images of pages of script and illuminated illustration changed and snapped into grainy focus. ‘You have the originals? You have them here?’
Cleander took a sip of water. The smile had not left his face since he had stepped off the lighter, but he let it broaden now.
‘I have brought a selection in my lighter. The remainder are on my ship held in stasis chests ready for shipment here as soon as we have an agreement.’ He let the crystal cup hover by his lips before taking another sip. ‘If we come to an agreement, of course.’
‘These are artefacts of script and record of profound value,’ hissed Sardus, coming to his feet. ‘They should be here. They are part of the summation of record, they–’
‘Belong to me,’ said Cleander smoothly, as he placed the crystal glass of water down on the table set before him.
The Archivists had brought him to a greeting chamber in the tower connected to the landing pad. Sealed shelves and stasis-field-wrapped cabinets lined the curved walls. Cleander could see spidered writing and gilded illumination through the skins of buzzing energy. Wrought iron frames held blocks and wafers of data-circuitry. A handful of guards stood at the edge of the room, in sight but not intruding. Cleander had been permitted to bring only Kynortas and Josef with him, and both stood behind his chair. Even in here, in what he supposed to be one of the most deliberately refined areas of this island, a smell of dust, damp and overheating circuits filled the air.
It was not an island, though, he reminded himself: none of the parts of the archipelago were. Each was just a surface node of the archives that extended down into the depths of Serapho’s oceans and into the bedrock beneath. Node 001 was a growth of metal plating and rivets, capping a metal mountain hidden beneath the waves. In the guts of that mountain were records, books, scrolls, data-blocks, and memory cylinders gathered and sorted by the Archivist guilds over thousands of years.
So much lore had been hoarded here that the archive had spread out and out, across and through the planet’s sea bed. Node 001 was just one amongst many islands that had broken the waves as the archive had bloated. In its deepest regions all of the areas of the archive connected to each other, so that someone could walk from Node 090 in the northern seas to 001 on the equator. That was theory rather than fact, though: at those depths, areas of the archive had flooded, collapsed or fallen to the creatures that fed on the rotting books and parchment that had been lost to time and entropy. And much had been lost. Even as the guild Illuminators and Transcribers laboured to copy and create more, so the treasures of the past decayed in the depths. Yet the hunger of the Archivists for more records and books knew no moderation or limit. At least, Cleander hoped that it did not.
‘I just wanted to be clear,’ said Cleander, still smiling. ‘These volumes are the von Castellan dynasty’s, collected by my late mother–’
‘Stolen from the Night Trail Cluster by a murderer and a thief,’ snarled Sardus. He had not taken a seat, but stalked the circle of th
e chamber, robes rustling, and the silver fingers of his quill-hand twitching. Cleander gave a small shrug and kept his expression amused and indifferent.
‘She saved them from the fires of war, most wise Master Sardus. Tell me, would you be more polite if I had come to bargain with a box full of ashes?’
Sardus glared at him. Ki shifted in her high-backed chair, and then leant forwards, a smile trying to form on her desiccated lips.
‘We appreciate that you are here to pass these works to our trust,’ she said.
‘If we come to an agreement, mistress…’
‘Just so,’ she said, and leaned back. ‘What do you want, Sire von Castellan? We can pay in brokered credit, in jewels, in gold, even human flesh and blood if you so desire.’
Cleander reached for the bronze ewer and poured a fresh stream of water into the crystal goblet, sat back and took a large swig. The water tasted of metal, but he was sure that it was the purest the planet could provide.
‘I have all the jewels I desire, and the glitter of coin has a habit of becoming irritating. Besides, my price is much more within your means – a simple trade, something that you have for the things you want.’
Sardus narrowed his eyes. Ki blinked.
‘What do you wish in exchange?’ she asked.
‘Knowledge,’ he replied.
VIII
Viola ducked back, brought her pistol up and fired. The creature coiling on the stairs looked like a worm or larva, pale and bloated to vast size. Gunfire split the dark. Blood fell all around her, and a chunk of scaled flesh struck the balustrade just next to her. The spiral stair was shaking and twisting, the worm creature coiling around it. Rivets shrieked as they tore from rusted fittings. Viola saw one of the cyber cherubs flutter close to the worm, glow globe clutched in its hands, cog-work and wings buzzing in confusion. The creature’s head snapped around and the cherub was gone. Viola saw its toothed mouth opening and closing as it chewed, fronds of feelers running down the side of a blind head, flesh and scales the colour of parchment.
She put three las blasts into it. It coiled back, mouth opening in a hiss of pain. The remains of the cherub tumbled from its maw as a wad of oil, cogs and feathers. Burnt chunks of meat tore from its gums. She could hear the buzzing shriek of Covenant’s flechette blaster and the booming of bolt rounds as Severita fired into its coils. The thing shook like a punched bag of fluid.
Viola surged to her feet. All her youth had been spent in training at the hands of her family’s tutors. Much of that had been to shape her mind, but she had spent hours and days learning to shoot, fight, live and kill. She had never been gifted, but no scion of the von Castellan line was allowed to be less than competent in the arts of war.
The beast’s head lashed down at her. She felt the warm reek of its breath: mould and iron and raw meat. She activated her power sword as she slashed it up. It was a light naval sabre, balanced for speed and relying on the energy field wrapping the blade for killing force. But in that moment speed was worth more than power. The edge met the teeth in the creature’s bottom jaw and sliced through fangs with a flash of lightning. The thing’s head snapped aside. Viola leaped backwards, hit the balustrade of the stair and brought her pistol up to fire again.
‘Down!’ roared a voice from above her. Viola heard the command and ducked back. Tristana dropped onto the worm from above. She had one of her spears in her hands, and now Viola could see that the core of its shaft was a power pack like one of those used in a high-brilliance lamp. Its barbed tip struck the top of the creature’s head and punched through. The flesh of its head twisted, bunching and bulging around the spear, but the barbs dug into the meat of the roof of its mouth. Tristana twisted the shaft and leapt free as the worm reared. Arcs of electro-charge lashed out from the spear. A smell of cooking fat and static filled the air. The creature writhed, juddering in place.
‘Now!’ shouted Tristana. ‘Tear it apart!’ Bolts and hard rounds slammed into it, shivering its flesh and scales as it twitched. Within three heartbeats there was only a heap of pulped matter, and rivulets of pale blood pumping away to fall into the dark of the stairwell. Tristana’s spear stood upright in the quivering mass, pulsing arcs of charge into the torn meat.
‘Some of these things can knit themselves back together if you don’t leave them with a pin in them.’
‘Neuro-disruption,’ said Viola, half to herself. ‘What kind of creature was it, I wonder?’
‘They breed down here, feed off the parchment mulch and whatever else comes close,’ said Tristana. ‘This is a big one, but you get bigger.’
Viola raised an eyebrow. ‘We should get going, then.’
‘Never a truer word,’ said Tristana, unslinging her gun again and starting down the stairs. ‘To the place that you asked to go to, it’s another eleven levels and then across another archive hall. We are deep here, so things might have changed.’
‘Changed?’ asked Viola.
‘Collapsed, flooded, infested, take your pick.’
Viola glanced down at the hourglass hanging from her waist.
‘Oh, you might still have time, mistress…? Sorry, I forgot your name.’
‘Viola.’
‘Viola… good name. That lot back there, what’s the story? Wealthy magnate? I mean you have the smell of something a bit… roguish. But the others…’ Tristana flicked a look up at Covenant and Severita. ‘They have an air of the Imperial about them, of high authority.’
‘I thought the guides in the sealed archives just showed the path rather than asked questions,’ said Viola archly.
Tristana gave a small shrug, and continued on without answering.
THREE
‘We will give you no book, page or word from this world,’ said Sardus.
‘Not even for stacks of paper and words that you seem to want so much?’ asked Cleander. ‘Not even for…’ He made a show of pulling a small book from his pocket, holding it up and opening it to squint at the title page. ‘The Testament of Gius Vive… No, wait, that’s just a way of writing four in an over-elaborate manner, isn’t it? The Testament of Gius the Fourth of Julna.’ He opened the book more widely. The green leather spine creaked. Ki winced, her hands darting out as though to snatch the book from Cleander’s hands. Sardus came forwards at a speed that belied his withered frame. Josef took a step forwards, his power-armoured torso growling as he raised a hand. Sardus stopped.
Cleander kept his face impassive, closed the book and put it back in his pocket.
‘Sacrilege,’ hissed Sardus.
‘But my property,’ said Cleander. ‘And the von Castellan dynasty, the dynasty that I rule, will happily trade with you for it, or… we put it in the fire.’
‘You can’t,’ said Ki, and Cleander could hear the genuine despair in her voice.
‘I can, and I am very pleased to see that you both understand that.’ Cleander put his hand back in his pocket, took out the small book and tossed it to Ki. She caught it.
‘What is this?’ asked Sardus.
‘A gesture of good faith,’ growled Josef. ‘I should have thought that obvious.’
Ki was looking down at the book like a pauper holding a ruby.
‘We have understanding and now I hope we will have an element of trust,’ said Cleander.
Sardus had gone to stand next to Ki. He was looking at the book, too, the anger on his face replaced by something that might have been hunger.
‘If you will not accept riches then we have nothing else to offer besides what our archives hold, and that we cannot barter,’ said Sardus.
‘I didn’t say I wanted any of your books or bits of parchment,’ said Cleander. They looked at him, and he was pleased to read the puzzlement on their faces. Part of him, a part that he let pull the smile back onto his lips, felt the old kick of joy at how easy it was to pull the strings of someone’s life if you knew w
hat they wanted. ‘I said I wanted to trade for knowledge. Everything you have seen that we have, every book, jot and page from the collection for one small piece of knowledge that is not even in your archives. Now, do you want to know what it is?’
IX
‘How did you plan to steal the tractate?’ asked Viola. She had kept close to Tristana as they left the long spiral of stairs and passed through an archway. Shelves lined the hall beyond in cliff-like rows, forty metres high. The remains of ladders, rails and ratchets hung from the cases. Half dissolved parchment had dribbled from niches and bound volumes carpeted the floor. The reek of rot and mould was thick. Clumps and balls of semi-luminous fungus glowed in the shadows.
She felt herself shiver again, and blink. Just adrenaline working its way out from the fight with the worm, she thought.
‘It’s a contradiction, isn’t it?’ said Tristana, her head and eyes moving across the spaces and floor before them. ‘The Archivists hoard books and writing, and guard them as though they were more precious than souls, but down here and across this world there are things they once treasured left to rot.’
‘It is about possession, isn’t it?’ replied Viola. ‘They have to possess these things, but they cannot preserve all they hoard.’
‘That’s it, more or less,’ said Tristana. ‘Better no one have a book than let another have it. No one is allowed to read a complete record or book on this world, did you know that? The Archivists will not allow it.’
‘There must be ways though, surely? Ways to get something out of the archive.’
‘There are,’ said Tristana, with a humourless laugh. ‘There are…’
‘So how did you do it?’ asked Viola.
Tristana stopped and looked around at Viola. Further back, Covenant and Severita continued to close, their eyes and guns on the towering shelves and the dark between them.
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