Demon in White

by Christopher Ruocchio

  My eyes had wandered to the jointed stone of the tunnel above our heads. Valka stood just behind me, further along, with Pallino, Alexander, Siran, and the others gone on through. Focus falling to Gibson’s face, I answered him. “I hope so.”

  “I hope so, too.” He tapped his cane on the paving stones. “I don’t pretend to understand any of this well enough to tell you what to do, my boy, but be careful.” And to my surprise, the old man offered a rueful smile. “Don’t lose your head.”

  I rubbed my neck with my gloved hand. “I’ll try.”

  Gibson had dropped his eyes to the floor.

  Taking a step nearer the old man, I said, “I guess it really is farewell now. This time.”

  The old man leaned on his staff, the image of a wizard from some forgotten storybook. “Probably.” His eyes were shining. “I don’t suppose I’ll live long enough for you to return here.”

  “And I’m not even sure I will return,” I said. “I may not be allowed.”

  The scholiast nodded along with me. “Perhaps not.” He was quiet a moment, then sucked in a deep breath. “Hadrian, I cannot pretend to understand everything you’re caught up in. But I will say this: I think you’ve finally found a drama big enough for you.”

  I laughed, but I had to screw my eyes shut against the tears that came. “I suppose I did.”

  “Nothing they teach us here can help you, I think,” he said, gesturing at the arch of the tunnel above.

  I drew my cape tight around me and bowed my head. “The only thing here that could teach me more is sealed beneath the Archives.”

  “You saw how it terrified them.”

  “It terrifies me,” I said, and shrugged, releasing my cape. “But I have what I came for.”

  Gibson tapped his cane against the stone. “What do you think you’ll find?”

  What could I say to that? Only the truth. “I have no idea.”

  “Wisdom!” Gibson proclaimed, weakly. “You are learning.”

  “Socrates.” I grinned.

  “Socrates.”

  Without warning, the old man embraced me, and I was astonished to feel the strength that yet remained in those withered limbs. “You are every inch the man I hoped you’d be, my boy,” he said. I’d never heard Gibson’s voice choked with feeling before—not even when we’d met again in the grotto underground. “I am proud of you.”

  I said nothing—for what was there to say?

  Gibson broke away and held me at arm’s length, his cane hooked over one arm. There was too much emotion there, new territory cut across the sharp lines and folds of his face. Tears ran, and his smile quivered, torn nostril flared. “You’ll take care of him, won’t you?”

  This question made no sense to me, and it was not until Valka answered it that I realized he was asking her. “Depend on it,” she said, and stood beside me. “I am glad I got to meet you, Doctor Gibson.” She used the full English word, Doctor, not Tor.

  Gibson did not bother hiding his emotions. He had grown beyond the Strictures and the apatheia. Beneath that arch, on the edge of his cloister, he was only an old man, not a scholiast at all. “And I you, Doctor Onderra,” he replied, speaking the standard. Then he inhaled sharply, and I saw the gears of his training struggling to assert their program once again. His trembling stilled. “Grief is deep water, they say.” He recovered his grip on his cane. “But not all tears are grief.” He drew back, putting some small distance between us. “I sometimes think we do more harm than good, teaching what we teach. Reason. Reason is such a small part of being human. We scholiasts climb our towers, look at the sky, and forget the world. So often we don’t see the truth because we won’t look low enough. Chasing reason, chasing facts . . . we forget to be human. To be human is the greater thing, dear boy. Now go . . . before I go with you.”

  He offered me one last smile.

  Valka’s hand was on my arm, trying gently to turn me.

  “You were a father to me,” I said.

  Gibson bowed his head. “You have a father.”

  “I have two,” I said, “but only one bled for me. I wish I could have said goodbye then, and thank you.”

  “You have said thank you, Hadrian, and you never had to.”

  I rode over him. “All my life I thought I was too late. That I’d never have a chance. Better a late goodbye then, than none at all.” I did turn then, and walked with Valka a few paces before turning back. “I will come back. One day. I will come back. I’ll see you again.”

  The old fellow shook his head. “Go on, Hadrian.”

  “Goodbye,” I said.

  I turned back once more when we’d come out from under the wall. Gibson had turned himself at the inner gate. Above, one brother called to another and the portcullis and pneumatic doors began to hiss and rattle slowly closed. The old scholiast raised a hand . . . and was gone.

  CHAPTER 64

  THE LAST COMMAND

  WE MADE IT ALL the way to Aea and the blast pit where our shuttle waited before the next blow came. It found me in another tunnel, this one leading from the terminal beneath the landing field to the hollow of the pit itself.

  “Had, a word?”

  Siran spoke from behind me. She’d lingered while I’d stopped and spoken with the porters to ensure the last of our luggage was aboard for the return flight to the Tamerlane. Valka had gone ahead with Pallino, Doran, and the prince. I hadn’t even noticed she was there. Mark of a good shadow, that.

  Something cold moved in me, a sense of dread that settled on the raw place Gibson’s farewell had made in my heart. And so I was short with her. “What?”

  Whatever she heard in my voice gave her pause, but she didn’t stop. She had waited for this moment—the very last moment—and it was now or never. “I’m staying.”

  In the end, I was not even surprised. It was as if some part of me had known all along. “Staying,” I echoed, not looking her in the eye. “Here. Why?” But the answer came to me a moment after. “Your fisherman. From Thessa.”

  “Lem,” she said, arms crossed. She thrust out her chin. “Are you going to stop me?”

  “I wish you’d have told me sooner.”

  Siran shook her head. “You would have stopped me.”

  “I wouldn’t have,” I said. We both knew it was a lie. She had waited until the last possible moment, waited until I could not object without ordering the others to seize her and drag her onto the shuttle like the criminal she once had been. She’d chosen her battlefield well.

  I almost smiled, could only shake my head.

  The woman took a half-step back. “You’re . . . not angry?”

  “Angry? Of course I’m angry. There’s a war on, Siran! You think you can just leave? You think any of us can?” I was not quite shouting by the end, my fists balled at my sides.

  She did not shout, did not even uncross her arms. “I’m old, Had.”

  “You’re younger than me,” I protested.

  “You’re palatine,” she shot back. “You don’t count. If it weren’t for that work you had done for me and the others . . .” She trailed off, perhaps remembering the oath she’d sworn me as my armsman. “I should be a grandmother. I should be dead. Instead I’m still here. It . . . I have to stop. I can’t do it anymore.” She ran fingers over her nose, the nose that had been healed of its criminalizing scar when I’d had her elevated to the patricians. “Don’t think I’m not grateful. You gave me a second chance in that coliseum. Me and Ghen. We’d have died on Emesh if not for you, but Ghen’s gone, and if I stay . . . well . . . how long ’til I’m gone, too? I’ve given a life to this fight already, more life than I ever thought I’d get.”

  I interrupted her. “No one understands giving their life for this better than me. Or have you forgotten?”

  “Don’t!” She pointed a finger at my face. “Don’t guilt me, Marlowe. I wasn�
��t there, but I saw Pallino’s footage and I sure as hell don’t think Pal would lie to me. I don’t know what you are, but I’m willing to bet I won’t come back.” She was shaking her head, but wouldn’t turn her eyes to face me, as if she were ashamed. Of herself? Of what she was saying? Of me? “You’re my friend. You’ve been my friend for . . . fuck, almost a hundred years now. But I don’t understand you. I don’t understand any of this . . . this shit you can do. I can’t do it. I can’t go on.” By the end there were tears in her dark eyes, though she half-turned her face from mine. In a voice pressed flat and very small, she added, “I’m an old woman, and I’m tired.”

  Behind me, the sounds of dockworkers making ready for our shuttle’s departure played. Shouted words above the rush of exhaust ports, the rattle of fuel hoses and the grind and snap of gantries pulled back. I was suddenly, sharply aware of the shadow I cast back along the terminal hall, the shadow that swallowed Siran whole. I did not move, did not step aside.

  “What about the others?” I asked. “What should I tell them?”

  “I told Pallino and Elara already,” she said. “On Thessa.”

  That hurt more than the rest of it. Pallino and Elara had known . . . and they hadn’t told me. It was Switch’s ghost, I knew. The memory of the other myrmidon’s departure had left its mark on us. I should not have banished him. How could they trust me as they once had after that? What had been friendship had turned to something colder and more distant, and I hadn’t even noticed. Maybe Gibson was right.

  Maybe I was my father’s son.

  I hadn’t spoken, and so Siran continued, “I asked them to come with me.”

  The cold feeling inside grew colder. “And?”

  “They said no. Pallino wouldn’t hear it.”

  The sunlight seemed for a moment just a little brighter. “Good old Pallino.”

  “They’ll get themselves killed,” she said. “Like Ghen. Or worse.”

  “I won’t let that happen,” I said.

  She planted her hands on her hips. “Tell me one thing.” Siran paused, seeming almost to hold her breath. “Are you what they say you are?”

  “What?” I asked. “The Earth’s Chosen? You know I’m not. You should know better than anyone. No blade can cut the Halfmortal down?” I was peeling my glove off as I spoke to bare the old and ugly scars. The decade we’d spent on Colchis had not washed them away, and they stood out deep and silvery against my pale flesh. “It wasn’t a miracle, Siran. It was my prosthetic!”

  “But what that Pale prince did to you wasn’t,” she said. “What happened?”

  “That’s what we’re leaving to find out!” I said. “Come with us!”

  She thrust out her chin once more. “No.”

  I turned away snarling. “Then I can’t answer you! Because I don’t know! You think I like this?” I gestured at the shuttle, as if that motion might encompass the whole of creation and all my past.

  “Yes.” She did not even hesitate. “Of course you do.”

  “Of course I do . . .” I repeated, whispering round the corners of a pained smile. “Of course I do . . . Siran! I want this to be over! I want to travel the galaxy with Valka, I want to stop fighting—to have a family! But I don’t get to choose, and I’m not sure what makes you think you do!”

  My myrmidon friend looked at me with an expression that to this day I do not understand “You don’t get it,” she said. “I don’t have a choice, either. I made up my mind a long time ago.”

  “We have a duty.”

  “You have a duty, maybe,” she said. “But I didn’t swear an oath.”

  “You did,” I hissed. “You swore to me. You, Pallino, and Elara. My armsmen!”

  “Your armsmen?” she echoed, “or your friends?”

  You can’t have both, whispered a voice that sounded so much like my father’s in my mind.

  “Just go!” I said, and thrust a hand out, first and final fingers extended as if to lay a curse on her. “Faithless!” I jerked my hand down, afraid I’d gone too far. She did not deserve my anger. I turned my back. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m sorry. Just go.” For some reason, I felt my shoulders tighten, almost in expectation of a blow.

  She was silent so long I thought she’d gone. “You’re really not going to stop me?”

  Not turning, I said, “Do you want me to?” I was thinking about what Gibson had told me not three hours earlier. To be human is the greater thing.

  “No.”

  “Fine, then.” I rounded on her once more, my shadow filling the terminal hall, dancing on the white floor. “One last command for you, Siran of Emesh.” It was all I could do not to clench my jaw.

  Something in my tone set her back a step.

  It was not too late. I could still call the guards, call the starport security. She did not have to go. But what would be the point? I could keep her obstinately in fugue. I could execute her as a traitor—that was what most Imperial officers would have done. But I was not an Imperial officer. I was Hadrian Marlowe.

  I might have executed Udax on Gododdin, but I had not, and Udax was a stranger.

  This was Siran. Siran, who had been with me since the beginning, since she was a prisoner and I a gutter rat in Borosevo. I could not banish her as I had banished Switch, for banishment was what she desired—and Switch had committed far more grievous crimes. What could I do, or say, without making myself something other than what I was?

  “Live,” I said. I turned away then for the last time. “And light a candle for us in sanctum,” I said, who did not believe in the power of such things. “We’ll need it.”

  I’d taken a half dozen steps before her words caught me, my bootheels ringing on the tile.

  “You’re a good man, Hadrian Marlowe,” Siran said.

  “No, I’m not,” I answered her, stopping just inside the open blast doors, my ungloved hand on the frame. “But I’d like to be.” It was an appropriate answer, totally in character . . . because it was true. “Goodbye, Siran.” I paused, and remembering that she was an armsman and no mere soldier and sworn to me, I added, “I release you from my service.”

  In the end, I did not shake her hand, did not embrace her as I had Gibson. There was no lingering farewell, no lasting sentiment.

  Only that last command.

  After her, the sunlight that fell down the deep blast pit struck its floor and glassy walls in an oddly muted way. I hardly felt it, or the way my cape hung limp in the still air. The shuttle sat before me, still wired and hosed into its cradle, ready for launch. Ice formed on its hull, relic of the supercooled fuel being pumped into its reservoirs. It was time to leave at last, to return to the quest.

  I caught myself remembering a story of Cid Arthur and his knights. In their quest for the cup of enlightenment, each man entered the forbidden woods in the spot that looked darkest to him, for there surely was light to be found.

  Pausing on the tarmac, I looked up. Though it was daylight, we were deep enough below the surface here that faintly I beheld the brightest stars against the daytime gray of the sky.

  There is nowhere darker than space.

  At last I mounted the ramp and climbed into the shuttle. The others were already seated. I passed Doran and the guards with a perfunctory salute and made for the front compartment. Pallino, Valka, and the prince sat within, each in a forward-facing armchair near the thin bulkhead that separated the passenger space from the pilot officer. Without speaking, I took my seat beside Valka and touched her hand.

  “Where’s Siran?” she asked.

  Belting myself in, I glanced over at Pallino before responding. The old officer sat in his crash harness, gripping the straps in either hand, looking studiously out the small porthole at the sides of the blast pit, pretending he wasn’t there.

  I had no ire for the man.

  I let him be invisible and answered,
“She isn’t coming.”

  CHAPTER 65

  THE LONE AND LEVEL SANDS

  “THERE’S NOTHING HERE,” OTAVIA Corvo said, peering from the holograph scan of the planet our light-probes had made.

  She wasn’t wrong.

  We’d traveled far beyond the edge of the explored galaxy, circled the core at full warp for almost fifty years, striking out where none had gone before. Had settlers come, they might have passed the system by. Even the mining surveys might never have come here, so remote and desolate a system was it: a solitary, ugly world orbiting a red dwarf star. Waterless. Airless. Lifeless and unremarkable. It shone a rusty brown in the holograph, capped at either pole with crowns of frozen air. Carbon dioxide. Methane.

  Tor Varro said, “There are signs of water a long time ago, do you see?” He gestured at deep channels that recalled the fabled canals of ancient Mars, canyons and dry riverbeds miles deep and hundreds of miles long. “Of course, who knows how long ago it was.” Such riverbeds were common on lifeless worlds. Water was not the cosmic rarity our ancient ancestors imagined. Only planets that could retain water were. “There just wasn’t enough of an atmosphere to protect whatever ecosystem there might have been.”

  “Or will be,” Valka said darkly, recalling what Horizon had told us.

  I tried to imagine time running backward, pictured towers and domes rising black as Calagah from the desert sands, wrought of that strange matter that was not matter at all. Not atoms or molecules.

  Varro shook his head, disbelieving.

  I could not blame him.

  “Surface gravity is an estimated 1.0037 gees,” the scholiast continued. “That’s as near to Earth standard as I’ve ever seen. It’s larger than Earth, though. Less dense. Surface temperature at the equator is just about 280 K. Chilly, but not freezing. If it had an atmosphere it might be livable.”