Demon in White

by Christopher Ruocchio

  Her good eye fixed on me, head hanging like dead weight on her neck. “Probably,” she said. “At home, maybe. On Edda. In Tavros. Maybe . . .” Her words trailed off, and she shut her eyes. “I don’t know what he did to me.”

  The line moved around us, men limping back to the safety of the Wall. In the distance, I could see the smoke of the burning fleet rising, red-lit from below.

  When next she spoke, it was in Panthai, so the others would not understand. “Maybe you were right. Maybe I shouldn’t have come here.”

  I twitched, eyes pulled back to her face. For an instant, it was as if Urbaine’s curse had never happened. She looked like herself, head hung low, eyes hooded, red-black hair matted to her scalp. “Don’t say that.” I squeezed her hand and did not let go when the tremors started. “We’d all be dead if not for you.”

  Switching back to Galstani, she whispered, “We might still die.”

  “We might,” I said. “But not today.”

  “Not today,” she snorted. “Tomorrow.”

  She pulled free of the Irchtani minding her and slumped into my arms, laying her full weight on me. I held her, and pressed her cheek to mine. “Tomorrow,” I agreed. “Tomorrow may be all the time we need.”

  Haltingly, she wrapped one arm around my neck. Her whole body shook. How light she seemed, insubstantial as the paper lanterns lit at funerals. Almost I feared to let her go, afraid that she—like the lanterns—would fall into the sky. She was so unlike herself, so frail and fading, as though it were a memory of Valka I held and not Valka herself.

  “Put me on . . . on ice,” she said. “I don’t know if ’twill get worse.” My grip only tightened, and she said on, “Just until you can . . . can get me home . . .”

  I was nodding, swallowing hard. “Tell Lorian I ordered it.” Pulling back, I pressed my forehead to hers, screwed my eyes shut. “I’m sorry, Valka. I’m so sorry.”

  “I’m not,” she said. “I saved you.” She kissed me again, and half-stepping away, she staggered back into the arms of the Irchtani. “Take me,” she said to them, a measure of her former command creeping into her tone. I watched her go, supported by the two xenobite auxiliaries, half-carried, half-stumbling. I blinked back tears and—once more screwing my eyes shut—turned to walk back along the line. I would be the last of our little force back behind Deira’s walls.

  “Hadrian!” she called after me, and turning I saw her looking back over her shoulder. I stopped walking. “I love you!”

  The tears welled up again, and I sucked in my breath to still them, Gibson’s antique remonstrances echoing in my mind, urging my heart to stillness. It would not still. In all our long years, I could count the number of times Valka had said those words to me upon my fingers. Not because she did not feel them, but because she was who she was, and who she was was guarded.

  Letting all the air out of me, I called back the only answer that fit. “You’re not wrong!”

  Her smile was the last I saw of her as she vanished beneath the mighty arch, and it lifted my heart. She vanished within the fortress, the line grown short behind her, men and Irchtani filing in.

  “So few . . .” croaked a voice from behind.

  Kithuun-Barda had landed beside me. He was right. A thousand of his people had flown out from Gododdin to face the Pale. Less than half that number remained.

  “Another victory like this,” I said, “and we’re finished.”

  The inhuman chiliarch made a low chirruping nose and tucked its beak against its armored breast, gripped its crossed bandoleers with its talons.

  “They died bravely,” I said, placing a hand on the old bird’s shoulder.

  “They died,” Barda said. “So many young ones gone before their nesting.”

  “Dead,” I said, “is not gone.” Sensing the creature’s eyes on me, I added, “Death is not the end, kithuun. Nothing ends.” The elder had nothing to say to that, and together we watched the line pass on. Bahudde’s words danced inside my skull and seemed to caper and rub unseen hands there. Your time has ended.

  Urbaine’s word joined them: You are fighting the end. Your end.

  I prayed they were both wrong.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know that’s cold comfort.” I looked down at the tribesman and smiled my broken Marlowe smile. “Udax saved my life.”

  Barda croaked loudly, making me think of nothing so much as an overlarge parrot. “Udax owed you his life. This he repaid.”

  “And your tribe has paid hundreds of times,” I said. “Your people will be honored throughout the Empire, you have my word.” Not knowing if I had the power or the right to make such promises, I added, “You should be made full subjects of the throne.”

  The elder said nothing, but watched the line go by. When at last the hindmost had passed us and passed on toward the gate, the kithuun leaped away, flapping to join its men without another word. Alone then, I glanced back toward the wreck of the fleet and the fighting. Pallino’s men would follow soon. Thunder rolled, and lightning cracked the far horizon, lighting the blackened sky.

  A ghastly white light bathed the landscape, a great questing beam scouring all the space from the Wall to the burning fleet. Fearing some weapon like the orbital laser, I flung an arm across my eyes and ducked my head in expectation of the final blast.

  No blast came.

  The beam dimmed, became a faint glow that illuminated the gray expanse of the field and the white rims of blasting pits and set the whole of the Storm Wall to shining as though it were wrought all of moonstone.

  “Lord Marlowe, get back to the Wall!” came Lorian’s whisper in my ear.

  He didn’t have to tell me twice. I turned and ran. It wasn’t three hundred feet to the bronze-fronted gates, and less than that to the edge of the shield’s inclusion zone. I ran, pteruges snapping at my knees.

  I did not make it even halfway.

  “Surrender!”

  The word fell like a blow and smote all of Berenike, so loud was it and incredible. The ground shook and dust ran like rain down the surface of the Wall above me. I froze, realizing only haltingly that the word had been spoken in the tongue of men.

  Again, that word filled the vaults of air and shook the world with its winding.

  “Surrender!”

  The light on the Storm Wall flickered with movement like the reflection of a white garment in dark glass.

  “Hadrian,” Lorian asked, all formal protocol forgotten, “are you seeing this?”

  Something moved in the corner of my vision, and I spun round, hand sliding toward my sword. But that same hand fell away in futility and in horror when I saw what awaited above the plains of Deira.

  It was a giant to dwarf the mightiest of our colossi, an image of terror and majesty to dwarf even the high parapet of the Storm Wall, so tall the points of its iron crown were lost in the roiling clouds. It was a holograph miles high, a luminous shadow cast upon the plains from the evil fortress above. Ghost-blue it was and insubstantial. I saw the clouds through it, and so faint was it in outline and so uncertain its resolution that its feet were altogether lost. Above, legs vast as towers and clad in enameled armor rose for hundreds of feet to the too-narrow torso and shoulders, above which rose the long neck and hideous smooth face of the dark lord of the abyss itself crowned in silver and iron.

  Eyes like twin pits surveyed the land below, and a sucking dread moved in me, for it was a face I’d seen before, the same sepulchral visage I had witnessed in dreams and in visions of times unrealized. The Prince of Princes and Prophet of the Cielcin, anointed of the Watchers who dream beneath the stars. Aeta ba-Aetane and Shiomu. The Scourge of Earth. The thing that would be king.

  Syriani Dorayaica.

  “Surrender!” the thunderhead image spoke, seeming to crouch over the Wall and the city behind it. I was an ant at its feet, wholly unseen.

 
; Lorian spoke up. “My lord, they’re hailing us.”

  “Can you put me through?” I asked.

  “I . . . yes, my lord.”

  “It’s trying to impress us,” I said. “It wants us to cower.”

  The commander’s voice came tight over the line. “We can’t surrender.” I heard the rest of Lorian’s thought without him having to say it. They’ll kill us anyway. Both Aristedes and myself were silent a long moment, and he added, “We can’t negotiate with the Pale.”

  I barked a hollow laugh, standing just inside the shadow of the gate, the better to see the awful specter and remain unseen. That was the truth, and one I’d paid dearly to learn. “I know they’re going to kill us,” I said. “Put me through.”

  “My lord,” Lorian said, “it would be better to leave it. We are as safe here as we can be. We might be able to stall and await the fleet.”

  “All the more reason to keep it talking,” I said. “It doesn’t know they’re coming.”

  A moment’s silence, then Aristedes said, “Audio only. You’re on.”

  I did not speak at once, but stood there, unmoving beneath twin statues of Ever-Fleeting Time carved to either side of the great door. The two-faced statues peered in and out, one youthful, one aged, watching all approaches to the gates of the city. The wounded still massed within, the atrium crowded with men and Irchtani and medical staff bearing the sign of the green star. Of Lin and Valka there was no sign. I sensed eyes on me: the eyes of men and bird men and of the nurses in white caps. I sensed too the hollow gaze of the holographed giant outside, though it had not fixed upon me.

  Still unseen by the enemy, I stepped into the center of the arch and watched the ghostly titan looming above, crown higher than the crown of many mountains. Looking past the blue-white image to the false moon occluding the sun, I raised my voice. “I have been waiting a long time for this moment,” I said.

  The giant cocked its head, eyes contracting behind lids and nictitating membranes. “Your voice . . .” It spoke in perfect Galstani, voice cold and high as the clouds that wreathed its head. “I have studied you for years, kinsman. Well met at last.”

  “Kinsman?” I took a step back, uncomprehending.

  “We are the same, Lord Marlowe.” I could just see the shape of glassy teeth projected in the ship-sized face above. “You conquered Otiolo. We are brothers, you and I. Aetamn.”

  “Aetamn,” I echoed. Both Aeta.

  The Prophet bared its teeth in a monstrous smile. “You killed Aranata. By our laws, you are Aeta. Aeta ba-Yukajjimn.”

  The King of Vermin, I translated. “The Rat King.” I had nothing to say to that.

  “But a king nonetheless,” the Scourge of Earth replied. “And you slew Ulurani as well, I hear. You are doing my work for me.” The conqueror drew itself up, and though its image stretched more than five thousand feet into the sky, I wondered if it was not smaller than Aranata had been, narrower in the shoulder. But the sharp edge of command cracked in its voice, and it spoke the tongues of men with a polish I’d not thought to find in such a creature. “But your reign is done. You will surrender yourself and come to me.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “You must not refuse,” Syriani Dorayaica said.

  “Why me?”

  “Because you belong to it,” the Prophet answered. “It is an abomination. You are an abomination. You call it Quiet, but it is no such thing. Its word has been heard across the stars, its challenge to the very gods.” I was silent, not knowing what to say to this pronouncement. Syriani knew of the Quiet. Of course it did. Had not Iubalu said it had spoken with the Watchers themselves? That it had visions, same as me? “You know of what I speak, kinsman,” it said.

  The wailing of an infant sounded in my ears, and the image of the egg and the cathedral beneath the dark emptiness of the sky. The war. The one war. Had the Prophet seen what I’d seen? Its armies marching across the stars, burning planet after planet? Had it seen the Demiurge and heard me speak those terrible words? Had it seen me in chains beneath the black dome above the sea of lofty pillars?

  “And if I surrender, you’ll spare the rest of my people on this world?” I drew back as I spoke, deeper into the shadows of the arch between the twin icons of Time. “You’ll guarantee their safe conduct offworld?”

  “Hadrian, no!” I heard Lorian shout. I silenced his line with a gesture on my terminal.

  “Safe . . . conduct,” the Cielcin prince repeated. I wondered if it struggled with the concept of negotiation as Aranata had. There was something in Syriani’s eyes—even in holograph—that chilled me. A depth of wisdom and antiquity, an antique malice that reminded me more of Kharn Sagara than it did any prince of the Pale. “One life for millions. You value yourself too highly.”

  “Those are my terms,” I said. “And you will return any prisoners you have captured this day to us.”

  The Prophet laughed, a high, braying sound that thrust daggers of ice between the discs of my spine. “This I will not do! You are in little position to be making demands.”

  “I have cut off two of your fingers!” I said. “I will take the whole hand if you try me.”

  “With what men?” the Prince of Princes asked, laughing still. “Your force is broken. My vanguard was sufficient to take your city from you. Your fleet is no more. The beast, Hauptmann, is dead. You have nothing.”

  A pang went through me. So, it knew about Hauptmann. But I marshaled myself, and looking up at the mile-high giant hovering over the plain, I answered it. “We have millions.”

  “Cattle!” the titan sneered in its turn. “Not fighters.”

  “But they will fight,” I said. “We will not be the first men to endure you.” As I spoke, it occurred to me that it was precisely for our habit of digging in for sieges that the Pale called us vermin. Rats. True warriors would meet them in the field, in the black of space, and not hide beneath thousands of tons of stone.

  This time Syriani did not laugh. The giant apparition shifted, one taloned finger pointing down at the line of the Wall with supernatural derision. “Surrender yourself to me, and I will withdraw from this system, but I will not relinquish the prizes we took in the city. My soldiers must feed.” I pressed my tongue against the roof of my mouth and did not reply, tried not to think about the people in the tunnels we had failed. “That is my offer, kinsman. Do with it as you will.” The cloud-bound giant turned as if to walk away and vanish into the coming storm.

  “Wait!” I cried, and stepped out from the arch. Still unseen by the giant and by the Cielcin who watched from above, I said, “What assurance can you give that you will honor this bargain?”

  The Prince of Princes clasped ringed and taloned hands behind its back. Silver chains hung from its horns and the iron tines of its crown and twinkled in its braided, chalk-white hair. It peered back over one black-robed shoulder. “You doubt me?” It turned away, raised one hand. “I shall allow your men on the field to return to your fortress unharmed.”

  Against my will, my eyes closed with relief. The fate of Pallino and the men in the field had hung heavy on my mind ever since I returned to the fortress. I had a choice to make. Accept the prince’s terms, sacrifice myself, and save every man and woman on Berenike—or refuse, and fight to the last. It was not really a choice. I thought back to my visions. Had I stood alone in chains before the black dome? Or had my men stood with me? It seemed I remembered both visions. By agreeing to the prince’s terms, was I placing myself on the path that led to that end?

  Or . . .

  “Lorian, how long before the fleet is projected to return?” I asked, switching the lines with a twist of my terminal controls.

  The answer came faster than I thought possible. “Anywhere between twenty-seven and thirty-one hours. Hadrian, I know what you’re thinking. Just refuse, we can hold another day, don’t—”

  I killed
the call a second time and shut my eyes again, thinking. There was a chance, narrow though it was, a chance that we would not have to suffer another day of fighting at all. I could not trust Dorayaica or any of the Cielcin to keep its word, but to keep its word for a day? To allow Pallino and the men back into the Wall and to hold their fire just long enough for Otavia and the whole of the Imperial fleet to converge on Berenike with fire and sword? I had risked my life for less. I had only to make the choice.

  To create is to choose, that was what the Quiet said.

  I chose.

  “Very well,” I said. “I will surrender myself at this time tomorrow.” Days on Berenike stretched for nearly forty hours. It was more than enough time to give the fleet time to appear.

  “You will surrender yourself now,” the prince said, still not turning back to face me.

  “No,” I said. “I must set my affairs in order.” I looked up at the giant towering among the clouds. “You’ve won, Your Highness.” If the prince expected me to grovel or throw myself upon its mercy, I did not quite disappoint it. “I ask you only for this small mercy. Ndaktu.”

  “Ndaktu.” The prince’s shoulders hunched. It was a formal plea for mercy, the sort of plea a slave might make of its master, as Uvanari had once made to me.

  “You have until the sun rises above your Wall tomorrow,” it said. And with that, the Scourge of Earth vanished, its titanic phantasm vanishing in a swirling of gray cloud and grayer dust. In its wake came quiet and the sound of wind. In the heavens far above, the dark shadow of Dharan-Tun slid off the face of the sun, and pale sunlight fell once more upon the world of men. I watched the fortress go; black and mottled white it fell across the sky like an evil moon. Not gone. Only biding its time.

  Beneath the black towers of smoke from the wreck of burning ships, I saw the white shapes of men returning home alive. Alone then but for the wounded men behind me, I staggered a few steps out from the bronze gate and the arch and sank to my knees on the pavement. Not caring who saw, I wept.