Demon in White

by Christopher Ruocchio

  We came at last by many turnings to a water garden built of the whitest marble. Bright fountains played on waters thick with pale lotus blossoms and the azure blooms of nenuphars. Two women sat in one corner softly plucking at harpstrings while His Radiance sat in a humble seat beside a small table. Four of his Excubitors stood near at hand, watching me through mirrored masks. I bowed as my guard saluted, right hand over my heart, the left thrown wide. “Your Radiance,” I said, “I am honored to have been summoned.”

  Caesar William rose from his seat—setting aside a small, black book he’d been reading—and approached me with a jovial wave and a warm smile. “Sir Hadrian! It is good to see you again.”

  I looked down at my feet. “I wanted to apologize, Radiance, for speaking out of turn at the soldiers’ audience earlier.”

  “It is forgotten already, cousin! Please! Stand upright that we may see you.” The Emperor smiled as I stood and gestured to dismiss my escort. The Excubitors retreated backward, folding away between painted columns, leaving me with the impression that they were not truly gone, but waiting invisibly amongst the pillars. “We have not yet had occasion to thank you for your service at Aptucca. That is two of these Cielcin princes you’ve put an end to.”

  Bowing my head, I said, “Again, you honor me, Radiance.”

  “The honor is yours.” The Emperor waved one velvet-gloved hand, rings glittering, indicating that I should walk with him. “Would that all our servants were so effective.”

  I had no response to that and so said nothing, but walked in step with His Radiance around the pools, our shadows leading the way. The Emperor was taller than I, and though I knew him to be more than four times my hundred years, there was no silver in the red of his hair. But for the red velvet of his long gloves and slippers, his suit was of the most brilliant white silk, chased with gold. If I had felt underdressed outside the Sun King’s Court, I felt insignificant in Caesar’s presence. His rings alone might have fetched the price of a planet—not for their gems or their craftsmanship, such things could be manufactured cheaply enough—but for their age. I did not doubt that each of them had come out of Old Earth before the fall.

  “They are singing your praises throughout the Empire, you know? Defeating the Pale at Aptucca without spilling a drop of human blood.”

  “Would that it were so,” I said soberly.

  The Emperor stopped his steady pace. I could feel his eyes upon me, burning a hole in my cheek. “It is so. We have decreed it so, and you would do well to stand by the official tale.”

  “As you say, Radiance.” I dared not turn and meet his gaze, risked only a sidelong glance. His Imperial Radiance William XXIII was frowning, a slight furrow slashed between his eyes. Then it was gone, expression returned to one of pharaonic calm. Recalling that expression makes me hesitate even to this day. Aptucca was a stunning victory, but the lies the propagandists in the Ministry of Public Enlightenment piled atop the truth made it shine out all the more.

  “You’re certain the prince is dead?” Caesar asked, resuming his orbit of the pool.

  I glimpsed one of the Excubitors between the pillars, watching through the hollow eyes of his mask. “Quite certain, Your Radiance. I killed Ulurani myself.”

  His Imperial Radiance nodded, traced the line of his jaw with one velvet-wrapped finger. Something plainly was weighing on the Imperial mind, but we walked on in silence a moment, passing delicate frescoes on the walls of the quadrangle depicting fantastic tableaus of nymphs and angels.

  “Tell me something, Hadrian,” the Emperor said. Something in his tone caught my attention, and I turned to look at him. “Are you my man?” He had abandoned the royal we, and in doing so revealed himself—though it is blasphemy for me to record these words—as only a man, and one exhausted by the crown and station he bore upon too-narrow shoulders.

  I did not know how to answer him. “Your Radiance?”

  “Enough of that. Answer me. Whom do you serve?”

  Had he seen that treasonous medallion Carax had tried to give me? Did he believe I plotted against his throne and family? I felt my knees begin to bend and cursed myself for it. To kneel would be to appear contrite and so guilty. So I did not kneel, though I sensed a great many things hung upon my answer, my life not least of all. “I am a soldier of the Empire,” I said. What else could I say? I had not wanted to be, but few is the number who live the lives they wish for.

  His Radiance huffed through his nose. “The Empire . . . very good. In that case, I have a job for you.” His irritation fading to amusement, he turned his back on me and examined the nearest fresco. It depicted an icon of Beauty rising from the sea, high-breasted and golden-haired. “Have you heard about this business on Gododdin?”

  “Gododdin?” I echoed, not sure I’d heard the name correctly.

  It was the first time in my life I’d heard the name. The name of the planet I would one day destroy. How insignificant it seemed to me in that moment! A meaningless word, a meaningless world.

  “It’s a primary Legion base between the Sagittarius and Centaurus Arms of the galaxy. We’ve been using it to stage troop deployments across Centaurus as the Cielcin advance. Intelligence dispatched a Legion to Nemavand in Ramannu Province, but it never arrived.”

  Something cold turned over in my stomach. “Another lost legion?” More than a dozen had vanished in the last century, convoys hit while traveling at warp, the soldiers taken or slain in their icy sleep. I had been sent to locate the 378th Legion on Arae decades earlier, and but for a few survivors, I had failed. “The Cielcin?” It had not been the xenobites on Arae, but the Extrasolarians.

  “Quite possibly. Ramannu Province is badly in need of supplies and reinforcements, and the loss of the caravan may cost them dearly. We do not wish to lose another province, cousin. We require that you make all possible speed for Gododdin, ascertain what has happened to our legion, and return them if possible.”

  I felt the jaws of the trap close around me. It was an impossible task. On Arae, at least, there had been a planet nearby, a place worth searching. Though our chances had been slim, we’d had a trail to follow. They may have been singing my praises throughout the Empire, but they sang too loudly. I had flown too close to the sun—and standing so near the Emperor, the Firstborn Son of Earth—that thought nearly brought a smile to my grim face.

  The sun, indeed.

  I was meant to fail, that I might return humbled and be made to abase myself before the Solar Throne, to crawl the length of that interminably long hall beneath the eyes and nervous laughter of the high lords and ladies of half a billion worlds.

  But something was missing. The Emperor would not have called for a private audience to tell me what any of his servants and logothetes might have done. I looked again around the garden, at the lotus blossoms and nenuphars and the icon of Beauty reclining upon her shell. At the Excubitors and the eunuch functionaries lurking in the shadows, always waiting for the Imperial order to approach and be useful.

  I looked at the Emperor again, and because it was expected of me, said, “As you command, Honorable Caesar.”

  His Imperial Radiance did not reply at once, but remained standing with his back to me. “For more than seven hundred years now we’ve been at war. Too long.” He raised a hand, two ringed fingers extended, like a priest issuing a benediction. “We are going to tell you something, Sir Hadrian. Something that is not to leave this garden.” And here he turned, hand still raised, eyes narrowed. “Assuming, of course, that you are truly our man.” I knew better than to say anything, to interrupt that most exalted personage. Still His Radiance waited as if in expectation of a reply. But I had stood before the throne of the Undying in Vorgossos, where the hours fell like seconds and were lost. I had learned to out-sit Kharn Sagara. I could out-sit the Emperor. His placid face twitched in the smallest smile I have ever seen. “Very good.” He let his hand drop and, without preamb
le, said, “I am old, cousin. I would see this war end before my reign does.” The royal we was gone again, but he amended the breach as he continued. “You are thinking that we do not look old, but you are palatine. You know how quickly the end comes for us when it does. We must think to the world we wish to leave our children—and to the children we wish to leave our subjects. And so we have a request—one we will not require of you.” I did not believe that for a second, as the barest request of the Emperor was ever the gravest command. “In your travels to Gododdin, you will take our son, Alexander. He is an admirer of yours and in need of seasoning.”

  You will take our son, I thought. A request indeed.

  “As you wish, Radiant Majesty.”

  “Nemavand lies on the border between Centaurus and the Norman Expanse. We are not willing to lose this province, Sir Hadrian, or to risk the Cielcin spilling from the frontier into the mass of our Empire,” the Emperor said, looking back over his shoulder. He clasped his hands behind his back, the red of the long gloves standing out bright against the white of his coattails. “We trust the Halfmortal-Hero-of-Aptucca will not fail us.”

  “Of course not, Radiant Majesty,” I said, shutting the trap about myself. To fail now was to lie to the Emperor. And to lie to the Emperor was death. I bowed my head, hoping the angle and my fringe of ink-dark hair would hide my face. Was the Emperor threatening me? Or only mocking?

  The Emperor waved one hand glittering with gold. “Then go. Our logothetes will inform you as to the particulars of the Gododdin mission, and a messenger will be sent to find you when you must collect Alexander. You are to be careful with him, but to treat him as you would any squire.”

  “As you wish, Radiant Majesty.” Aware of the Excubitors, I dared, “May I ask His Imperial Radiance a question?”

  The Holy Sollan Emperor replied, “But of course, cousin.”

  I inhaled sharply. “I have had a request for access to the Imperial Library on Colchis pending for the last fifty years.” Fifty-three, in point of fact, but that was not the moment for pedantry. “I would very much like access to the archives.”

  His Imperial Radiance frowned slightly. “The archives? Whatever for?” Access to the Imperial Library at Nov Belgaer was limited to the scholiasts who staffed it. Not even my position as a Knight Victorian could open the doors; only a writ of approval from the Imperial Office could do that.

  How could I answer the Emperor? I could not tell him the truth, that I sought answers about what had happened to me aboard the Demiurge. About the howling Dark beyond death. About the Quiet. Kharn Sagara had told me the Mericanii machines believed the God Emperor of old had been aided by the same forces that had delivered me from death. It stood to reason that somewhere, buried in some forgotten corner of that most ancient library, there yet remained some clue, some scrap of evidence to further my quest. But to acknowledge there were alien forces in the universe older and perhaps greater than man was a heresy punishable by death. Even to admit my knowledge of the Quiet would have been enough to invite disaster—and not only for myself, but for Valka, for Pallino and Crim and all the others who knew the stories of Hadrian Halfmortal were not stories at all.

  But the Emperor’s eyebrows were rising with each passing microsecond, and I had to say something. “On Vorgossos, the Undying said the Cielcin have been raiding our worlds for far longer than we believe. That this war is only the full-scale invasion following centuries of smaller attacks like the first battle at Cressgard. The Colchis library is meant to keep a copy of every text in the Imperium. It is possible some account of these earlier raids exists, but lacking reference to the Pale directly has been overlooked. I am not only a knight, Radiance, but a scholar. If there is something in these accounts which might aid the current war effort, I think it worth the cost of a few years of my time to uncover it.”

  “Do you?” the Emperor asked, and clasped his hands behind his back again. “It is for us to decide what the years of your life are worth, Sir Hadrian.” He bit the words off sharply, and it seemed that some shadow passed behind his mask-like face. “But perhaps . . . This request of yours is new to us! It had not been brought to our attention these past years,” he said. That, I thought, was a lie. A request from one of his Knight Victorians—particularly his youngest and most well-used—would have crossed his desk at once. He had ignored it. “We will consider it upon your return.”

  CHAPTER 3

  THE EMPIRE OF THE CLOUDS

  “WITH RESPECT, MINISTERS, THIS isn’t much to go on,” I said, steepling my hands before me, elbows on the polished, black glass table. I surveyed the eclectic mixture of military and ministerial personnel gathered for the briefing, high palatines and upjumped peasants alike.

  In snide aristocratic tones, Sir Lorcan Breathnach replied, “I am quite confident the great Devil of Meidua will prove equal to the task.” This elicited titters from the older men on the bench, among whom I was disheartened but unsurprised to find Lord Augustin Bourbon, the Minister of War himself. “We all sleep more soundly at night, Sir Hadrian, knowing that you are guarding the door.”

  As well you should, I thought, but only offered my tightest smile. Breathnach had been Director of Legion Intelligence for more than three hundred years, and despite the scars still visible on his neck and hands, his patrician life extension was running out. There was gray in the brown of his hair, a rime of frost at temples and forelock, and the craggy lines of his face seemed worn, as by countless winds. He was—or so I guessed—the sort of self-made man who despises such as I, we sons of ancient houses accorded positions which he believed we did not deserve.

  “I am glad, sir, that despite the many labors crying for your attention you still find time to sleep at night,” I said. It was unbecoming of one in my position, but as a Knight Victorian I did not answer to Sir Lorcan.

  Breathnach’s jaw tightened, but before he could reply, one of his junior aides interrupted. “The caravan’s beacon data hasn’t hit the datanet yet. Once it does we’ll be able to narrow our area of search.”

  “Assuming the beacon transmitted at all,” said Otavia Corvo from her place at my right hand. My Norman captain gestured at the starmap holographed above the conference table, indicating the crimson line that stretched from Gododdin system toward Nemavand on the Norman frontier. “We’ll have to retrace their flight path exactly and just hope we catch something on our sensors.” She pressed the fingertips of one hand against the desktop to underscore her next thought. “I’m sorry, but why are we doing this? This is a job for interstellar patrol, not a special company.”

  Before Breathnach or one of the others could answer, I said, “Because the Emperor ordered it, captain.”

  “And you will do your duty!” snapped Lord Bourbon.

  “As you say,” I said, trying to take the council’s ire from my officer onto myself. “But gentlemen, you must understand. You’ve given us little by way of intelligence. Peace.” I held up a hand for calm, studied the map once again. For more than sixteen thousand years the Sollan Empire had been expanding, its influence spreading across an ever-widening and lengthening wedge of the galaxy, spreading along the spiral arms until at last some brave pioneers made the leap across the gulfs that separated one arm from the next. Perseus at the outer rim; then Orion, where Earth lay in smoking ruins and mankind was born; then Sagittarius; Centaurus; and at last to the source of the Norma Arm so near the core where we had first encountered the Cielcin. Gododdin glowed brightly red, a lonely mote in the midst of the emptiness between the mighty shoals of Sagittarius and Centaurus. I followed the lost legion’s progress: a blazing thread woven across the gulf into Centaurus and across it, moving almost straight toward the core and galactic north. Their destination, Nemavand, lay on the far edge of the Centaurus Arm near the core, near the frontier and the freeholds of the Norman Expanse wherein I had spent so much of my youth. Somewhere in that distant country—nearly twenty thousand light-ye
ars from Forum—was Emesh at the very edge of Imperial dominion. And beyond that were Pharos and Rustam and Nagramma. Even with the Tamerlane, which was by design among the fastest ships in the Empire, we would be gone for decades, perhaps even a century.

  Even if I succeeded at this dreadful task, I would have been removed from court life and the attentions of the Imperium for so long that to return would be like being born again. A lot could change in a hundred years, especially when one slept the frozen sleep of the sailor and did not change oneself. Whatever friends I had at court and whatever momentum my celebrity had won for me at Aptucca would be gone. I would never gain access to the Imperial Library, and all my efforts in the Imperial service would be for naught.

  It was a kind of death sentence, and I did not doubt that one or more of these fine gentlemen had suggested it to the Emperor. Bourbon, perhaps? I could see the old minister’s full moon face whispering at His Radiance’s side. How Bourbon could manage to be so exalted a palatine and yet so corpulent was a mystery, yet corpulent he was: as round of body as he was of face, with thick sideburns and a thicker mustache that recalled some species of walrus or manatee such as swam in the royal aquaria. He was a man of evil reputation, treacherous and venal. I’d heard it said that Augustin had sold out his own father, Philippe, when House Bourbon turned against itself centuries ago, backing his uncle—Prince Charles LIV—for the throne. He whispered then, muttering some comment or other to the gaunt man at his side—a senior logothete I could not name.

  Sir Friedrich Oberlin, the junior logothete who had intervened with Breathnach moments before, cleared his throat. “Nemavand is crucial to the defense of the Centaurine border. Until Hermonassa, the Cielcin had not crossed the gulf in force for nearly four centuries, when they raided as far south as the Sagittarius.” He indicated a belt of systems far closer to Forum and the heart of the Empire. I remembered those raids. They had come when I was just a boy on Delos. One of those attacks had destroyed Cai Shen, a Consortium mining colony, and made my father far wealthier than he had already been. “Since then the bulk of their efforts have been concentrated in the Norman Expanse, we think because they have territory there.”