Demon in White

by Christopher Ruocchio

  My last thought was that Siran was dead. Pallino had survived the Irchtani. Valka had survived the knife-missile. But this third time paid for all. I crashed into the pavement shoulder first, crushing my mangled arm. The pain whited out my vision and my ears permanently rang.

  Dimly, I was aware of someone shouting my name.

  “Had! Had!”

  Not Hadrian, I remember thinking. Not Halfmortal.

  CHAPTER 49

  REGENERATION

  I DREAMED OF WARMTH and the color red. I remember floating. Muffled voices. Distorted faces. The whine of surgical armatures.

  My mind slipped into darkness, falling through deep water and the ink that lay beneath, past sleeping white hands and green eyes and the memory of blood. Was I dead again? No. Black though the waters of my mind had become, the Howling Dark was blacker still. I drifted weightless, and lo! Before my eyes a funeral procession marched, glowing in the black hollow of my dreams. Seven lords carried seven canopic jars, organs preserved forever in formaldehyde: eyes and heart, stomach and liver, lungs and spinal cord—and the brain came last of all. Whence they were bound I could not say, nor whose viscera they carried. A white arch rose ahead, piercing the gloom with ghostly radiance. The Arch of Titus? Or the arch of masks in Devil’s Rest? My vision blurred, and the arch blurred with it, dividing as a drunk man sees double.

  The procession marched between them, taking neither road.

  “Should be dead.”

  “Lost too much blood . . .”

  “Don’t know how he was even conscious.”

  “He’s awake.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Look at the EEG.”

  But the darkness yawned once more.

  * * *

  I was lying in a bed, a drip in my right arm and a waste unit on my pelvis. My head ached. Black corrective tape striped my left arm, my fingers, and the palm of my hand, which was immobilized by a brace that kept the digits spread apart.

  My legs moved, and taking this for a good sign, I tried to sit up.

  A hand seized mine, small and warm. A hand striped and spiraled over with hair-fine fractal tattoos.

  “You know,” came the beloved voice, “we aren’t supposed to take turns.” She was smiling down at me, dark shadows beneath her eyes, hair lank and unwashed-looking.

  I managed a weak laugh and croaked, “You’re supposed to be asleep.”

  Valka ignored me. “Doctor Okoyo says you’re nearly healed. She had you in a regen tank for weeks knitting all the muscles you tore with that stunt of yours. You know you’re lucky to be alive.”

  “A regen tank . . .” That explained the floating. “But why are you awake?”

  The xenologist leaned toward me, studying my doubtless ghastly face with those golden eyes of hers. “ ’Tis nice to see you, too, anaryan.” Her hand squeezed mine before she let it go. “Corvo woke me up when Siran brought you in.”

  “Siran?” I echoed stupidly. I must have misheard her. Siran was dead. I had seen the empty shuttle on the strand, seen the dead pilot officer. “She’s alive?”

  A minute nod. Valka settled back into her seat. “She’d run off toward the Colosseum when the panic started. You must have passed her.”

  “I thought she was dead . . .” I said. “The shuttle.”

  “Whoever planted the bomb must have used the commotion you caused in the arena to do their work.”

  “The Chantry,” I said, trying to move my right hand to rub my eyes and failing. “The Empress. All of them, maybe.” I wanted to tell her everything that had happened since the Inquisition took over the Tamerlane. She’d missed so much. “Bourbon,” I added. “Augustin Bourbon did this. He used Breathnach. The Chantry. That poison . . .” I was sure I sounded mad, sounded stupid, but it was important for her to understand.

  Valka was nodding along. “I saw. Lorian said it was a Chantry poison? I saw the footage. It was broadcast all over the capital. I’m sure it’s gone offworld by now.” She gave me a wry smile, voice gently mocking. “They say no sword can cut the Devil down.”

  I snorted, regretted it instantly as my head pounded. “I like it,” I replied, voice pitifully weak in my own ears. “And the Empress? She was trying to humiliate me. It didn’t go as planned.” Maria Agrippina had meant to ruin me, meant to show all the galaxy the Halfmortal Hero of Aptucca was a fraud and a greedy little social climber, a pervert who consorted with homunculi and foreign magi. Instead I had risen higher.

  No sword can cut the Devil down . . .

  In the weeks to come, footage of my duel with Irshan would be transmitted by Public Enlightenment telegraph to the magnarchal seats and provincial capitals across the Empire, there to be devolved to the local datasphere transmission grid and broadcast at light speed to every planet and moon and station. He stops highmatter with his bare hands, they would say.

  But who had turned their knives on Hadrian Marlowe? The Empress would not be blamed, nor Bourbon. The Extrasolarians were responsible. That would be the tale. Hadrian Marlowe had detected an Extrasolarian threat to the Empire, and the Extras wanted him dead. The Jaddian Maeskolos Marlowe fought would be a changeling, a homunculus they’d planted at court as a secret assassin. The poison that felled Irshan was simply the result of a kill switch his Extrasolarian masters had built into him should he fail or fall into Imperial hands.

  “Has there been word from the Emperor?” I asked.

  Valka nodded. “An apology. He says he was detained and was unaware of what was happening in the Colosseum.”

  “Detained?” I thought I could guess. “By the Legions? By the War Ministry?” I took her silence for a yes. “Neatly done,” I said.

  “You think the Empress was working with the War Minister?”

  “I’d bet my left hand,” I said, managing to sit up at last. Valka half-stood to protest, but I raised my hand to stop her. “Or my right, on second thought. The left one’s earned its keep.”

  “I don’t understand why she’d want that.”

  “Because of you,” I said, coughing. Realizing the look of shock on her face, I backpedaled. “Because of her children. Alexander and Selene. The Empress thinks I am dangerous, to them, to her family in general—to the whole bloody Empire, I suppose. She doesn’t want me mentoring her children, much less marrying one.”

  Beside me, Valka shifted where she stood. “What does that have to do with me?”

  I looked away, saw the dim reflection of her in the glossy white wall. “Everything. You’re a witch, Valka. That makes me a man who sleeps with witches. The Empress doesn’t want me anywhere near her children.” I could sense Valka waiting to object. “It’s not just you. It’s Lorian, it’s Ilex, the Irchtani . . . it’s all the fucking Normans. It’s Vorgossos, it’s this.” I tried in vain to raise my left hand. “It doesn’t matter there’s no praxis in my arm, it came from Vorgossos. Which makes me a witch, too. At least to some people.” I stopped mumbling, shook my head.

  The doctor fell back into her seat. “Even if we could prove it was her, what good would it do? You nobiles get away with murder on a daily basis.”

  “I don’t have to prove it,” I said, surprised by the coldness in my tone. “I know it was them.” I told her about my encounter with Bourbon that day after the Council meeting when I’d met with Cassian Powers. “He may as well have autographed that knife-missile after that.”

  “And the order for Sir Lorcan’s execution,” Valka said.

  “Is he dead?”

  A frown creased Valka’s face. “Given to the Chantry, I think. Lorian said something about him being shipped offworld. Some bastille on one of those little moons.”

  I made a small ah sound and fingered the controls to raise my bed into a sitting position. The strain of sitting up had grown too great. Sir Lorcan wasn’t dead at all. He’d be iced and put into some cubiculum under Cha
ntry control until they or His Radiance decided what to do with him. In a hundred years perhaps, or two hundred, he would be thawed out and sentenced. Not to hang or to the White Sword—who would care in so many years? He would be packed off to Belusha or Pagus Minor to live out his days as a bond-overseer in the prison camps, comfortably in exile.

  And Bourbon? Nothing would become of Lord Augustin Bourbon. He was one of the greatest lords of the Sollan Empire, a cousin of Prince Charles himself, descendant of kings, untouchable almost as the Empress herself.

  The thought set my teeth on edge.

  Maybe Valka had a point about us.

  “Where is Lorian?” I asked, picking up from what Valka had said last.

  Valka blinked at me. “Hereabouts somewhere. Do you want me to find him?”

  “No. No,” I said. “I do want to see Siran, though. I thought she was dead, Valka. Like I thought . . .” I could not say like I thought you were dead. I could tell from Valka’s face that she understood. “That’s three now, counting Pallino. Not counting . . . everyone else.” Three people this plot had almost killed at any rate . . . while trying to kill me. “Everyone else shouldn’t have to pay for . . . for whatever I am. Am I . . . are we still doing the right thing?”

  She didn’t answer at once, didn’t answer for a long time. I almost thought that I had fallen asleep, had drifted off, left Valka in the waking world and gone where I could not hear her answer. When she did answer, it was in a small voice, thin and tired. “I don’t really know what we’re doing anymore, Hadrian.” The only sound for a long moment was the soft beeping of medical instruments chiming in time with my pounding head. I could feel my heart beating in my raw and newly regenerated ears. The blushing light and white surfaces of the medica pained me. I shut my eyes, wishing for the inky dark of dream again.

  In dream, at least—though there was horror—there was peace.

  “I thought we left Emesh to make peace,” she said. “Now we’re fighting a war. A war we might have ended ’twas not for Bassander Lin and that Hauptmann bastard.” And in an even smaller voice, she said, “And if you hadn’t killed Nobuta.”

  I held my breath and my retort with it, turned the curse to wind and blew it out my nose. “That’s not fair. You were there, Valka. You saw what they did. How can you forgive them for being what they are when you can’t forgive me for being palatine?” Dryness scratched at my throat, and I coughed. “Have you so little faith in your people?”

  “How can you ask that?” Valka said, and though I shut my eyes again I felt hers on me. “They tried to kill you, Hadrian, at least three times!”

  “Augustin Bourbon tried to kill me,” I said. “Or the Empress. Or both of them together. Or the Chantry did.” I realized I was repeating myself and shut my mouth a moment. Marshalling my thoughts, I pressed forward. “They aren’t humanity, Valka. They’re just part of it. I don’t have any faith in them. But I had faith in Smythe and Crossflane. And Ghen. I have faith in Corvo and Lorian and the rest. Siran. Pallino and Elara.” I reached for her hand. “And I have faith in you.”

  She took my hand. “I don’t know what we’re fighting for anymore,” I told her, “but I know I’m fighting against them. Against the Cielcin. Against the Extras. Against the Chantry, and Bourbon, and the Empress, too—if they get in my way.” My voice trailed once more to silence. Neither of us moved. “I came back from the dead, Valka. You saw it. How can I stop fighting?”

  At last—at long last—she had no answer for me.

  I must have drifted, though I seemed only to blink. For when I turned, expecting an answer, I saw Valka dozing in her chair. She looked older—though in fact by then I was older than her, having spent so many more years awake on our journeying. Reaching out with my good hand, I ran dry fingers along her tattooed arm, patted her knee. She stirred. “Go get some sleep,” I said. “I’m going to be fine. You look like you haven’t eaten in days.”

  Sitting forward, she nodded woozily. “ ’Tis nothing.”

  “Go on,” I said, and watched her rise and gather her wine-dark jacket from a hook. I swatted at her as she passed, and she glared down at me, reproaching.

  “Glad to see you’re better,” she said with mock scorn, and tucking her hair behind one ear leaned in to kiss me.

  Smiling a wistful smile as she straightened, I said, “I’ll be out of here before you know it.” She made it to the door and pushed the button to open it before I said, “Would you ask Siran to come see me? I . . .” I wanted to see that she was really alive. “I’d like to see her.”

  Valka’s smile told me she understood. “Of course.”

  “And one more thing, please!” I called. Valka was halfway through the door, but leaned back to listen. My voice darkened, and I added, “Find Crim for me.”

  CHAPTER 50

  EVIL EYES

  “WAIT HERE, SIR. THE Council is meeting with His Radiance. You’ll be admitted shortly.” The hairless court servitor bowed and left me in the company of four Knights Excubitor. We stood together in the hall outside the water garden where the Emperor had charged me to take Alexander to Gododdin. My faceless companions stood unmoved, mirrored armor reflecting the golden filigree and white plaster, the deep crimson of the rugs and Corinthian pillars. Each held his highmatter sword straight before him, blue-white light gleaming. They made no move as I peered into their featureless visors. Not for the first time, I wondered if the Emperor’s closest guardians were truly human. In Rome of old the emperors’ Praetorians had been their greatest enemy as often as their protectors; an elite cadre of fighting men so near the throne its occupant was their captive as much as their master.

  I narrowed my eyes, gaze locked with the gaze of reflection in the knight’s mask.

  Homunculus, I thought, recalling the mamluks of Jadd, the cheap clone soldiers who swelled their ranks to rival our Legions in times of war. I was not certain I was right, but were I Emperor, I would ensure my closest guardians—the ones to whom I entrusted my family—were implicitly loyal. What better way to accomplish such a thing than to breed them for that purpose? To hobble their minds so disloyalty was never even a possibility?

  What better way to keep the demonstrably human Martian Guard from turning?

  “Do you have a name, sir?” I asked the Excubitor.

  But the Excubitors never speak.

  Bored, I turned to the ancient oil painting that hung on the wall. It showed an ancient city burning in the shadows of massive white pyramids that pierced the clouds. Beneath a clocktower by the river, a pale Georgian dome topped with a bronze crescent stood shattered. The very sky was burning; tiny figures were swarming in the streets, fires blazing; and in the distance loomed the mushroom cloud of atomic devastation. Drawing closer, I read the small plaque screwed to the frame.

  The Fall of London, or Reconquest.

  Beneath that ominous title followed the name of the artist and the date of its painting. The canvas—impeccably preserved in vacuum behind filter glass—was more than twelve thousand years old. I was not quite certain what London was at the time, but I knew the pyramids and recognized the white star outlined red and blue upon its face.

  The Mericanii.

  This was a painting of William’s Advent, the return of the kings of Earth to smash the machines and their masons, the men who built them. It was a painting of the liberation of men from their own creation, the daimons we’d made to serve ourselves—that had mastered us instead. Passing on down the line, a painting just as old showed the God Emperor standing—as his icons always did—upon a shattered cube. In this one, an iron snake writhed from inside that box, only to meet its fate beneath the point of William’s sword.

  The iron gates to the garden rattled behind me, and a small cluster of logothetes in customary gray and black emerged, among them green-robed scholiasts and the Lords High Minister. Prince Hector inclined his head to me as they passed. Le
da Ascania smiled and Peter Habsburg made gentle salute as I drew near, all hurrying to their next assignments. One figure in particular saw me and made to hurry away.

  “Lord Augustin!” I called, coming to a stop on the edge of the group.

  The Lord Minister of War swiveled to face me, looking up with his round moon of a face, small eyes narrowed defensively. Reaching up, I found the silver buckles that ran the length of my left arm and undid the leather gauntlet there. Removing the glove, I went to one knee before Lord Augustin. “I wanted to thank you. I understand you’ve taken charge of the investigation into my attack personally.”

  “I . . .” The War Minister glanced sidelong. Cassian Powers and Haren Bulsara had remained to watch, and several of the more junior logothetes and secretaries lingered. “You’re welcome, my Lord Marlowe. It’s a dreadful business. Dreadful. And to involve Prince Philip and our dear Empress so . . . But we’re certain to catch whoever is behind the deed. They won’t escape us long.”

  Flashing my broken smile, I raised that left hand, Aranata’s ring and the ivory one shining, and held it palm up. It was a gesture all understood, the gesture of a faithful knight before a lord, a request to show his fealty. The new scars from Irshan’s highmatter blade shone on fingers and palms—so white they were almost silver in the sunlight streaming through the garden gate. More scars shone angry and bright, striping the surface of my arm.

  Pressured by his audience, Bourbon gave me his hand. I tightened my grip on his soft fingers until I knew he could feel the latticed surface of my false bones. I saw his eyes grow wide as I kissed the fleur-de-lis on his ring.

  “I pray you do,” I told him, smiling once again. “I pray the scoundrel gets what he deserves.”

  Augustin Bourbon yanked his hand away. “Your hand . . .” he said, cradling his own. “What are you?”