Empire of Silence

by Christopher Ruocchio

  The scholiast’s ghost-trace of a smile told me I was right even before he admitted it. “Very good!”

  “Well, what else could it be?”

  Gibson shifted noisily in his seat, groaning from some complaint of time. “With Cai Shen destroyed, House Marlowe becomes the largest licensed supplier of uranium in the sector.”

  I swallowed, leaned forward to rest my chin on my folded hands. “They want to make a deal, then? For the mines?” But before Gibson could form an answer, a darker question settled on me, one I couldn’t ask in Lothrian, and instead I whispered, “Why wasn’t I informed of this?” When Gibson did not respond, I remembered his earlier remark and breathed, “Orders.”

  “Da.” He nodded, trying to pull me back into Lothrian.

  “Specifically?” I sat back sharply. “He said not to tell me, specifically?”

  “We were instructed not to share the news with anyone not cleared by the propaganda corps or without the archon’s countenance.”

  I stood, and forgetting myself, still spoke in Galstani. “But I’m his heir, Gibson. He shouldn’t—” I caught the scholiast glaring at me and returned to Lothrian. “This sort of thing should not be concealed.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, my boy. Truly I don’t.” He switched smoothly to Jaddian, glancing out the window as a maintenance worker ascended on a scaffold past stained glass in the shadow of a buttressed wall. If I craned my neck I could almost see the vast gray expanse of the Apollan Ocean beyond the curtain wall, stretching east to the bending of the world. “Just keep acting like you know nothing, but prepare yourself. You know what these meetings are like.”

  Frowning, I sucked on the inside of one cheek, and following his language change, said, “The Cielcin, though? They’re sure it was a raid?”

  “I saw the attack footage myself; the Consortium broadcast the last news packets from Cai Shen along with their visit announcement via the wave. Your father had Alcuin and myself up all night reviewing with the logothetes. It was the Cielcin, no mistake.”

  We sat there a long while, neither one moving. “Cai Shen’s not in the Veil,” I said at last, referring to the frontier beyond the Centaurus Arm of the galaxy comprising the bulk of the war front against the Cielcin. I looked down at my hands. “They’re getting bolder.”

  “Latest intelligence says the war’s not getting better, you know.” Gibson turned his misty eyes away from me again and looked out the window and across the deliberately antique merlons and purely symbolic ramparts that hemmed in my family’s house. The servant was still out there, polishing the glass by hand.

  Again silence reigned, and again I broke it. “Do you think they’ll come here?”

  “To Delos? To the Spur?” Gibson eyed me pointedly, bushy brows contracting. “It’s nearly twenty thousand light-years from the front. I’d say we’re safe for now.”

  Still in Jaddian, I asked, “Why does Father insist on keeping secrets from me? How does he expect me to rule this prefecture after him if he won’t keep me involved?” Gibson did not answer, and as it is the peculiar nature of youth to be deaf to silences, I did not take his meaning or see the answer presented there. I forged ahead, caught in the gravity of a question I could no longer shake: “Does Crispin know? About the Consortium?”

  Gibson gave me a long, pitying look. And then he nodded.

  CHAPTER 3

  CONSORTIUM

  BY THE DAY OF the Consortium’s arrival, the castle could no longer hide the signs of preparation. Wong-Hopper, Yamato Interstellar, the Rothsbank, and the Free Traders Union: these institutions transcended the boundaries of our Empire and bound the human universe together. Even in far-flung Jadd the satraps and princes bent to the demands of industry, and for all his greatness, my father was only a petty lord. Every stone and tile of the black castle I called home was made ready, and every uniform of every servant and peltast of the house guard showed immaculate. All preparations that could be done had been done: the gardens were trimmed, the hangings beaten, the floors waxed, the soldiers drilled, the guest suites brought online. Most telling of all: I had been banished from the premises.

  “We simply do not have the equipment, lordship,” said the Mining Guild representative. Lena Balem flattened her hands against the desktop, wine-colored nails gleaming in the ruddy overhead light. “The refinery at Redtine Point is badly in need of repair, and without increased attention to containment, worker death is likely to exceed five percent by the end of the standard term.” From her file, I knew her to be about twice my age, just on the far side of forty years standard. She looked so old. Her plebeian blood—undoctored by the High College—betrayed her in the graying of her golden hair, in the creases at the corners of her mouth and eyes, and in the softening of the flesh of her jaw. Time was already taking its toll on her, whereas she was little more than a child measured against the centuries I anticipated. I must have stared, or else been too quiet for too long, for she broke off abruptly and said, “I’m sorry, but I thought I was meant to be addressing your lord father on this matter.”

  I shook my head, sparing a glance in the mirror above and behind her desk at the black-armored peltasts who awaited me by the gray metal doors, all leaning on the hafts of energy lances taller than they were. Their silent presence gave me pause, and it was all I could do to keep the crooked smile from my face. “My father is irretrievably detained, M. Balem, but I am happy to field any of your concerns. Though if you would prefer to wait, I can take whatever problems you have to him directly.”

  The Guild representative’s brown eyes narrowed. “That isn’t good enough.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “There has to be money to replace some of these machines!” She thumped the table with one hand, scattering a tangle of storage chits. One fell from the desktop at my feet. Without being asked, I stooped to collect the chit for her. It was a mistake, not a thing one of my rank ought to do, and I imagined the shade of white my father’s face might have turned to see his son so help a plebeian. Not commenting on my gesture, Lena Balem leaned across her desk to face me. “Some of the radiation suits for our miners are twenty, twenty-five years old. They’re not adequate to protect our workers, M. Marlowe.”

  Without being prompted, one of the guards took a half step into the room behind me. “You will address the archon’s son as ‘sire’ or ‘my lord.’” Her voice was flattened by the visor of her horned helmet, vague and impersonal in its threat.

  Balem’s prematurely sagging face whitened as she realized her mistake. I felt a strong urge to wave the soldier into silence, but I knew deep down that the woman was right. Father would have ordered the mining representative beaten for the offense, but I was not my father. “I understand your concerns, M. Balem,” I said carefully, focusing my attention on a spot just over the woman’s slumped shoulders, “but your organization has its mandates. We require results.” Father had been precise in describing what I was allowed to say in this meeting, what was acceptable to command this woman’s obedience. I had already said it all.

  “Your house, sire, has kept quotas at the same level for the past two hundred years, all while doing nothing to recoup the losses to our equipment. We’re fighting a losing battle, and the more uranium we extract from the high country, the deeper we inevitably must go. We lost an entire drill rig to cave-ins along the river.”

  “How many workers?”

  “Excuse me?”

  I placed the recovered data chit back on the edge of her faux-wood desk with the utmost precision, labeled side up. “How many workers did you lose in that cave-in?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “You have my deepest condolences.” Surprise flickered in the eyes of the peasant woman, as if the last thing she expected from me was anything resembling the faintest human kindness, hollow and meaningless as it was. Words are often that way. Still I felt it was on me to try. This was a tragedy, n
ot a statistic, and the woman before me had lost people. The surprise held her mouth open a moment.

  Then it was gone. “What good are your condolences to the families of these people? You need to do something about it!” Behind me I heard the peltast who had spoken earlier edge forward, and I headed her off with a gesture that went unseen by Balem, who continued, “It’s not just accidents, my lord. These machines are ancient—some of them as old as my grandfather, Earth take him. It’s not just the drill crawlers either but the refineries, as I’ve said, and the barges we use to sail the yellow cake downriver. Every part of the operation is on the edge of breaking down and falling apart.”

  “Father does love his profit margins.” The pathos, the bitterness in my voice surprised me. “But you must understand, I am not empowered to offer reparations at this time.”

  “Then there has to be money to replace at least a portion of these machines, m’lord.” She reached across her desk and dragged a small block across stacks of paper. “As it is, we’ve got men and women working down those tunnels with pickaxes and hand spades. Thirteen-hour shifts.” Her voice grew louder. “Do you have any idea how many people it takes to match the output of those machines?”

  I felt my smile falter as it dawned on Balem that she had just raised her voice to one of the peerage. I imagined Crispin ordering his guards to strike her and set my jaw instead. I was not Crispin or my father. “M. Balem, those machines are produced offworld.” I wasn’t certain where. “With the Cielcin harrowing the colonies in the Veil, interstellar commerce comes at a premium. It’s very difficult to—”

  “There must be something.” She cut me off, turning the cube over in her hands. Only a paperweight, I realized, staring at it. For a moment I had thought it was a storage crystal of the sort used to hold sim games and virtual environments. But no, the lower class was not allowed such things. They were forbidden even the technical know-how to replace their battered mining equipment. The means of production were left entirely in the hands of the noble houses and the handful of artisan-manufacturers who worked for them. High technology, even entertainment devices like sim games, were the province of the elite. This was a paperweight and nothing more.

  “There very likely is.” Keeping my voice soft, I shifted my eyes away from the steel in hers.

  Before I could continue my thought, Lena Balem cut in, “And the current mines will only last for so long, m’lord. Without those drills we’ve no way of cutting new shafts, unless your father wishes for us to use our hands.”

  He may wish that, I thought, swallowing. “I understand, M. Balem.” I drew another breath.

  “Then why is nothing being done to fix the problem?” Her voice grew in volume again. I was losing control of the conversation, if I hadn’t lost it already. One of Lena Balem’s hands closed around the steel cube, red nails like bloody claws closing around a heart.

  “The Guild representative should remember that she is speaking to the son of Lord Alistair Marlowe.” The other peltast this time; both of them were watchdogs for my father.

  The color fled Lena Balem’s cheeks, and she caved back into her seat. My father’s name had that effect in his lands and on the rest of Delos. Though ours was but one of 126 lesser houses in-system sworn to the planet’s vicereine-duchess, ours was by far the richest, the noblest, and the closest in council to Lady Elmira. Father had spent increasing periods of time in Artemia at the vicereine’s castle in recent years and had even served as her executor years and years ago, when she was offworld. It was not impossible that before long we would be asked to leave Meidua and Devil’s Rest to take up a fief and title on some new world all our own.

  “I beg your pardon, m’lord.” Lena Balem set the paperweight down as if it had burned her. “Forgive me.”

  I waved her apology aside, resuming my politest smile. “There is nothing to forgive, M. Balem.” I bit my lip, thinking of the soldiers behind me who had thought there was something to forgive. “I shall of course take your complaints to my father. If you have projections regarding the cost and benefits of these replacement machines, I think both Lord Alistair and his councilors will want to see them.” I checked the time on my wrist terminal, eager to be off. I still had a chance to catch the arrival of the Mandari visitors. “M. Balem, I also suggest you prioritize your needs before speaking with my father and his advisory council. But I must beg your pardon.” I made a show of checking my terminal again. “I’ve an appointment to keep.” My chair scraped the tiled floor as I stood.

  “That’s not good enough, m’lord.” Lena Balem rose as well, looking down her overlarge nose at me. “People are dying in those mines regularly. They need at least adequate environment suits. My people are dying from radon gas, radiation . . . I have photos.” She rummaged through the collected sheaves of printouts on her desk, glossy images of lesioned torsos and scabrous flesh.

  “I know.” I turned away as my guards moved forward to place themselves at my sides. I felt the point of my parrying dagger bump my leg. I felt in that moment that this woman might attack me. She would never behave like this with father. I had been too soft. Father would have this woman whipped, put in the stocks along Meidua’s Main Street naked. Crispin would have beaten her himself.

  I merely left.

  * * *

  “Success, my lord?” asked the young lieutenant after our flier took off from the Guild complex in the lower ward of the city below the limestone cliffs. We rose slowly above the tiled rooftops and past the sky-spires of Lowtown, ascending to join the sparse air traffic. Below us the city of Meidua unrolled like an anatomical sketch along the seaside beneath the mighty acropolis on which my ancestors had raised the ancient fastness of our home.

  I risked a glance at the lieutenant, shook my head. “I’m afraid not, Kyra.” The shuttle passed through a plume of white steam rising from a seaside nuclear plant as we banked wide over the water to approach Devil’s Rest from the east. Atop its acropolis of white stone, the black granite of the curtain wall and Gothic spires within drank the gray sunlight, looking out of place against the limestone bluff on which it stood, as if some inhuman power had pulled the stones still smoking from the heart of the planet, as indeed it had.

  “Sorry to hear that, sire.” Kyra tucked a bronze curl up under the lip of her flight cap. I glanced sidelong at the two peltasts seated in the back of the shuttle, feeling their eyes on me.

  Leaning forward against my straps, I said, “You’ve been with us for some time now, haven’t you, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, sire,” she called back over one shoulder, briefly looking my way. “Four years now!”

  The afternoon sun streaming in through the front canopy edged her face in snowy fire, and I felt a pang for her. There was something in her that struck me as somehow more real than the palatine ladies to whom I’d been introduced, more alive. More . . . human.

  “Four years . . .” I repeated, smiling at the edge of her face that was visible from my place on the back benches. “And did you always want to be a soldier?”

  She stiffened, something in my voice putting her on edge. The accent, perhaps. I have been told several times since that I speak like the villain in some Eudoran opera. “I wanted to fly, sire.”

  “I’m glad for you, then.” My attention could no longer stay on her face, and flushing, I looked out the window at the city—my city—taking in the tangle of it, the way the streets spiderwebbed across the bluffs beneath Devil’s Rest and above the sea. I could see the verdigris dome of the Chantry with its nine minarets like lances thrust at the sky, and at the opposing end of the main street the great ellipse of the circus, today open to the elements. “It is beautiful up here.” I knew I was babbling, but I found it distracted me from the thought of what I was flying toward: my father and the Mandari guests he’d meant to keep from me. I thought of Crispin and his jagged smile. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “Only the other
fliers, lordship.” I saw the corner of her mouth rise and, briefly, the milky flash of teeth. She was smiling.

  I smiled too. “Yes, of course.”

  “Do you fly, sire?” she asked before adding demurely, “If his lordship does not mind my question.”

  Turning in my seat, I looked pointedly at the two peltasts sitting by the exit ramp at the back of the flier, their gauntleted hands clasping support loops that drooped from the gray-paneled ceiling. “I don’t mind. And yes, I fly. Not so well as you. Ask Sir Ardian about it sometime.”

  She laughed. “I will.”

  Unable to shake the cloud settling on me, I changed the subject, now looking pointedly at the short-carpeted floor of the cabin. “Has the delegation arrived at the castle yet?”

  “Aye, lordship,” the lieutenant answered, pushing our flier into a steep descent that brought us below the crown of the bluffs where the living rock ended and the imported black granite began. Somehow, looking at the old place from beneath like this, I always imagined the crash of thunder. “Some hours ago.”

  It was as I’d feared and expected: I was going to miss the ceremony. “What does your father do, Kyra?” I had not meant the words to escape me, yet they had—small things, and dangerous.

  “Sire?”

  “Your father,” I repeated. “What does he do?”

  “He works the city’s light grid, sire.”

  My lips twisted, formed a poor joke. “Do you want to trade?”

  * * *

  The castle at Devil’s Rest, product of an age grander than our own, was itself large as a city, though less than a tenth the number of souls dwelt within it than clambered about and below its walls. When its first walls were raised, the Sollan Empire sat heavy on the stars, unopposed in might and majesty, the sole human power in the cosmos. While those halcyon days of blood and thunder were long since gone, still she endured, a confusion of buttressed spires and knuckled masonry rising like so many weathered bones from the hill above Meidua. Grand as she was, the old fortress was small by the standards of the day. The Great Keep, a massive, square-sided bastion of steel fronted in dark stone, rose only fifty levels above the plaza in which it sat. Still it dwarfed the other structures in the castle, even the minarets of our own private Chantry. The small, twelve-storied tower of the scholiasts’ cloister looked pitiful in its extreme corner by the gardens and the outer wall. I strode toward the Keep, passing through the shadows of a colonnade, boot heels clacking on the mosaic.