Empire of Silence

by Christopher Ruocchio

  Safer out here than in many parts of the castle, Gibson matched my Standard, if only for a moment. “I understand that particular pain. Periods of change can be most upsetting, but they present the most opportunity for growth, I find. You’ll face what comes—”

  “Or I won’t,” I cut in.

  The scholiast sniffed, permitted me to lead him down the wall toward the knobby finger of Sabine’s Tower, almost a full mile around the arc of wall from the scholiasts’ cloister and the lower gardens. After a second of this progress, Gibson—in Classical English again—breathed the words, “Fear is a poison, my boy.”

  “Another aphorism?” I smiled my best Marlowe half smile.

  “Well . . . yes,” Gibson almost grumbled, “but it applies.”

  “Don’t they always?” I mused, detaching myself from the old scholiast’s grip and switching to Lothrian as a patrol moved past—though this part of our conversation, at least, was entirely innocent. We made a habit of switching like this, cycling between Standard, Lothrian, Jaddian, and Classical English, sometimes supplementing with the mongrel Demarchy languages. Occasionally we even practiced the Cielcin language, which I spoke almost fluently even in those early days. That we usually reserved for more private lessons, as anything to do with the Pale xenobites drew suspicion from the Chantry devout.

  “Teukros is far warmer than this place,” Gibson said, matching my Lothrian. “There wasn’t enough cometary mass in-system to start a lasting water cycle when it was terraformed. The settlers use sand plankton there to regulate the air because the surface temperatures run high enough in summer to bake more delicate flora.” Switching back to Classical English, he added, “You’ll want to lose those ridiculous coats of yours.”

  I shrugged my long coat more tightly around me, its high collar close to my face. “I think I’ll keep this one.” The truth was that I knew I would soon be parted with the garment and given either the white and sable of the Chantry or the scholiasts’ viridian. “If we meet again, I’ll be in green like you.”

  “We won’t meet again.” He did not say it cruelly. From a scholiast, it could be no more than a plain admission of fact. But it stunned me as much as my father’s blows had done, and I said nothing, taking the time to let this sobering realization sink in. I had known that I would never see any one of these people again. The Empire was vast and the human universe vaster still, and I was traveling across that quietude, frozen in fugue for years. I’d leave them all behind.

  Into that silence Gibson injected the magic words, “I’ve written your letter.”

  I brightened at once. “Have you?” I had to compress my joy, to stamp it into apathy as Gibson did to keep it from bleeding forth.

  “And some ideas about getting offworld, aye. Ones that don’t involve gambling on the charity of pirates.” The old man tucked his chin against his chest and advanced to stand in the shadow of one massive merlon, looking for all the world like some green-feathered owl, his robes flapping in the wind. His hands were tucked into his voluminous sleeves, and they fidgeted with something concealed there. “Do you know, my boy, that we live on a truly beautiful world?”

  That was not the sort of question one expected of a scholiast, even of one as human as Gibson of Syracuse, and so I was taken aback and turned to look at him. There were dark circles under his eyes and a profound weight upon his stooped shoulders. He seemed an aged Atlas, nearing the end of his heroic struggle to carry the weight of the world. Overcoming my surprise and the previous moment’s grief, I said, “Yes, I suppose we do.”

  Gibson smiled, a gesture fine as gossamer in the burnished light. “You sound unconvinced.” Against my wishes, I turned back and looked at the edifice of black granite and mirror-glass that comprised the Great Keep and bastion of my home. That same sunlight that frothed the sea to silver glass had no luster for the castle of my forefathers, which—though it was perfectly sunny—seemed cast in cloud-shade. I heard the scholiast laugh. “I suppose you don’t believe me, but you haven’t seen this.” And without looking, I knew he meant the ocean.

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “Kwatz,” the scholiast spat, rebuking me. “You are only looking. You have not seen.”

  I looked.

  The ocean was as I have told you: a sheet of rippled glass edged with leaden fire. The Wind Isles were invisible at this hour and from this altitude, and what few clouds there were cut deep shadows on the sea, turning the silvered water to a black that gleamed like the deep of space. Gibson was right—it was beautiful.

  “In spite of all that’s happening out there around the farther suns,” Gibson intoned, hands still fidgeting within the sleeves of his robe, “and in spite of events here . . . In spite of all that ugliness, Hadrian, the world is beautiful.” He drew his hands out, and I saw that in one he clutched a small, brown leather book. “Hold that tight.” Gibson took in a deep breath. “A final lesson, then, before you go.”

  “Sir?” I accepted the book and read its title aloud. “The King with Ten Thousand Eyes? Kharn Sagara?” I flipped the front cover open, turning the book to its first page. Tucked in tight against the binding was a small, off-white envelope. The letter I had asked Gibson to write to the scholiasts. I shut the book quickly, fearing that a camera drone might fly overhead at any moment, though the air was clear save for the distant circle and cry of the gulls. “The pirate king? Gibson, this is a novel!”

  Gibson raised a hand to quiet me. “Just a gift from an old man, eh?” He waved that raised hand in dismissal and self-deprecation. “Now hear this. Here’s a lesson no tor or primate of the college will ever teach you, nor any Chantry anagnost—if it even can be taught.” He turned again and looked out to sea. “The world’s soft the way the ocean is. Ask any sailor what I mean. But even when it is at its most violent, Hadrian . . . focus on the beauty of it. The ugliness of the world will come at you from all sides. There’s no avoiding it. All the schooling in the universe won’t stop that.” So overawed was I to hear a logician like Gibson speaking like this that I did not stop to wonder what he then meant by the ugliness of the world. Now I wonder if he knew what that very day held for us both or how quickly the boot would descend, as it had on the face of that poor slave in Colosso. “But in most places in the galaxy, nothing is happening. The nature of things is peaceful, and that is a mighty thing.”

  I did not know what to say, but I was spared at once when Gibson closed the subject, saying, “You’ll do well, whatever happens.”

  I slipped the book up into the crook of my arm and acting on impulse, again hugged the old man who was better to me than a father. “Thank you, Gibson.”

  “I don’t think you’ll let any of us down.” I made an objecting sound low in my throat, but before I could get the words out, Gibson added, “Your parents, either. They will learn it after you’ve gone.”

  “I’m not so sure.” I released the old man. I had two weeks to make my preparations, to say my farewells. But aside from Gibson, there was no one much worth saying farewell to.

  Gibson smiled, showing a rank of small white teeth. “None of us ever is.”

  Was it my imagination? Or some trick of the silver light? I thought I saw a shadow fall across Gibson’s face, as though the sun had gone behind a cloud. When I bring Gibson’s face to mind, it is as I saw him in that moment, stooped and wind-tossed on the battlements of the seawall, shrunken and sad. An old man leaning on his staff. To recall him in any light other than that of that beautiful day is somehow sacrilege, as though all our other days were ugly.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE SCOURGING AT THE PILLAR

  MY WORLD CHANGED WITH the ringing of the bells. Deep as the cracking of stones beneath the earth they rang.

  High in my chambers, I dropped the white shirt I was folding for my trunk and listened. The sound shook the very stones of the mighty keep, clear and low and loud. I checked my terminal. It was nearly an ho
ur before noon but not on the hour. That was my first clue that something was wrong before even I recognized the bells calling for special assembly. Hurriedly I stuffed the book Gibson had given me, The King with Ten Thousand Eyes, into the footlocker that was to accompany me into exile. I threw my coat over the top of the contents and shut the lid. I had an uncanny feeling that those bells tolled for me. Was this to be my father’s formal declaration that Crispin would be his heir? It would be like him to perform such a ceremony while I was still present.

  But I went, descending in the lift and emerging into the atrium and the shadows of the twin banners, the Marlowe devils capering with their tridents. Boot heels clacked on the copper mosaic depicting the Imperial sunburst. I was halfway to the massive doors when a realization struck me. The plaza would be filling with castle staff: red-uniformed servants and black-armored guards, the gray and brown suits of the various logothetes, with here and there the white-and-black-striped cassocks of Chantry anagnosts hurrying to their prayers and the brighter costumes of the guilders up from the city for business. All eyes would be on me if I came through those doors onto the balcony above the plaza. I looked round, half expecting to see my father and his lictors emerging, already shielded, from the green room kept ready just beside those main doors.

  No one appeared. I would have heard Father orating had he already been outside, but the only sound through those massive doors was that of the murmurous crowd roiling. I lingered for a moment in the hall, ignoring the five hoplites by the throne room, then went out through a postern door instead, down a narrow stair, and out into the yard. Mindful, I activated my personal shield with the control pack on my belt, felt the energy curtain come online around me. Then I pushed out into the crowd, dressed plainly enough that I did not attract an enormous amount of attention. A few stares came my way, but enough members of the crowd were used to seeing me that they held their places and their silence. Though I did not know it then, a trio of peltasts—unshielded and in light armor—peeled off the perimeter and shadowed my steps.

  Short as I am, the plebeians in the crowd were shorter, and I could see over their grayed and balding heads to the main doors and the railed balcony I had spurned. New instinct kept my hand clasped about the leather hilt of my knife. The whole population of the castle was in evidence, clustered around Lord Julian’s statue, packed shoulder-to-shoulder like legionnaires slumbering in the fugue creches of a troop carrier. I pushed forward, trying to get a better view of the platform just outside the doors to the Keep. Someone had brought the huge ebony podium out of the green room and set it at the balustrade, and hovering camera drones tagged with the decals of the Meidua Broadcast drifted above the crowd. Ten hoplites in full battle armor stood at attention along the double staircase approaching that platform, their energy lances at the ready, shield curtains glimmering.

  The bells ceased, and a herald—a red-skinned and leathery little man—emerged carrying the Marlowe banner on a silver staff. “Presenting the Lord Alistair Diomedes Friedrich Marlowe, Archon of Meidua Prefecture by the order of Her Grace, the Lady Elmira Kephalos, Vicereine of Auriga Province, Duchess of Delos, Archon of Artemia Prefecture; and by the will of His Imperial Radiance, the Emperor William the Twenty-Third of the House Avent, our Lord of Devil’s Rest!” Its clear, high voice marked it for a homunculus, one of the little androgyns—not quite human—bred and tailored for such roles as this. The sound system on the platform amplified its voice a dozen times over, and it filled the plaza unto the walls of the encircling colonnade.

  Recorded martial trumpets played from the court speakers, and their fanfare clashed against our dark towers, rebounded off buttressed walls and pointed windows to drown out the unquiet crowd. My father appeared, bracketed by Sir Roban and Sir Ardian in their best armor, Dame Uma and the other lictors behind him, their lances held ready in defense of their lord. Crispin was there too beside Tor Alcuin and the ever-present Eusebia and Severn, dressed like Father in the black frock coat and red toga expected for such formal appearances, his block of a face oddly expressionless. No one had sent for me. Had I been forgotten already? And where was Sir Felix? Surely the castellan ought to be among the assembled party.

  The trumpeting ceased at a raised hand from Father, and I could just see the shield glimmer faintly around his party. Father’s eyes took in the crowd but skipped right over me unseeing as he lifted up his voice and said, “My people, I come before you with disturbing news.” He paused, ever the master, just long enough to allow the possibilities to begin forming in the minds of the gathered hundreds, building up until they leaked out in whispers. He allowed just enough time to let them believe it was the Cielcin and that their world was ending. I believed it, too. Believed that an invasion had come, if only for a second. But it was only my world that was ending. “As many of you know, my eldest son, Hadrian, is set to be leaving us in but a few days’ time.” I almost missed his next pronouncement, for I stood transfixed. He had used my name. Lord Alistair never used my name. A pit opened in my stomach, yawning and cavernous. “He will be taking the journey to Vesperad to take his rightful place as a pious member of the Holy Terran Chantry.”

  I clenched my hand around the hilt of my long knife, the fingers aching with remembered pain. Pious indeed. But Father was still speaking, his words growing softer, perfectly amplified and modulated by the plaza sound system. His sudden hush dragged the crowd in closer as he said, “This noble plan was jeopardized by a traitor.” Here he curled his hands into fists before his face before lowering them to the podium. “A traitor who would have seen my son kidnapped and sold to the Extrasolarians.”

  “What?” I cried, pushing forward, drawing surprised expressions from the logothetes and servants around me. But my words were lost in the sudden tremor of the crowd, the mounting rumble as they conferred with one another, questioning with one voice. What was Father on about? I looked around sharply, as if to find an answer writ on the faces of those gathered hundreds. There was none. And then I saw it. A simple wooden post, half again as high as the tallest palatine, stood slightly crooked between those sweeping steps, slotted into a hole in the ground, its bent shadow pointing nearly straight at me.

  A whipping post.

  My heart froze in my chest, and I turned to glare up at my father at his podium in time to hear him say, “Had this plan not been uncovered, my son would have been delivered into the hands of those barbarians, maybe even to the Pale themselves.” He shook his head. “Bring him out.”

  I turned, eyes wide and wild, to see four hoplites dragging a piteous, white-haired figure between them. A white-haired figure in green robes. “Gibson!” It wasn’t true; it couldn’t be. I tore sideways through the crowd, shoving the plebeians aside. The trio of guards I had not seen hurried forward and seized me by the arms. The scholiast looked up at me, and I swear he smiled. Not the sardonic little ghost of a smile that crept its way onto his face from time to time, but a true smile, small and sad and sure. I strained against my guards, but the old man shook his head. I turned, wanted to scream that it wasn’t true, but then I remembered the letter secreted in the pages of an old adventure novel. Gibson’s meaning was plain enough. I choked back my objections and looked wide-eyed at my father, and so I did not see Gibson’s thin arms being lifted, manacles rattling as they were looped onto the hook atop the whipping post.

  The guards at my side cleared a wedge through the sea of gray and red uniforms, frog-marching me up the white marble stairs to the platform. Father watched my progress with hooded eyes. “Tor Gibson,” he said, “you have been caught colluding with barbarians in the kidnapping of my son!” As Father spoke, the guards pushed Gibson to the ground, so that he sprawled beneath the balcony like a puppet with its strings cut.

  Some clinical, detached part of my soul reflected that this was precisely what Tor Gibson had referred to that morning—was it just that morning?—when he spoke of the ugliness of the world.

  Father was s
till speaking. “Three hundred and seventeen years you have served us, Gibson, and our father before us. Three hundred and seventeen years you’ve been with us.” My father advanced toward the railing, spread his hands on the balustrade. “Is it true that you intended for my son to be delivered into the hands of these backspace barbarians?”

  Gibson clambered to his knees and looked up at us on the balcony. He caught me staring and shook his head sharply, pointedly. “It is true, sire.” He shook his head again, more brusquely this time, and I realized the gesture was for me. The contrast between word and action was lost on those gathered round, even on Alcuin or Alma, who should have noticed. It was meant for me so that I would know the truth and not interfere.

  I’ve had years to think about this. This moment. Years to work out Gibson’s reasoning. To work out why he did what he did, why he took the blame for my attempt to flee. Perhaps you see it? He must have known about the money or deduced that I had done something like what I’d done. If Father and his intelligence corps believed that the plan was Gibson’s, they might not look so closely at me. His confession saved me from further scrutiny and made everything that followed possible. Oh, Father would blame the idea of fleeing on me, but in his mind, so grand a plan would require a conspiracy. The sort of thing a scholiast might concoct.

  There was no conspiracy.

  There was only me.

  I’ve said it before, but Gibson was the closest thing to a father I have ever known. And this moment cemented that fact more than any other. Gibson died for me. Not there, not then, but on the distant planet of his exile. He gave his life for me, gave up his comfortable place in my father’s court so that I might have a chance at the life I wanted. I am glad he did not see my future, for it was not a future either of us would have chosen for me, fraught as it was with hardship and suffering.