The Lesser Devil

by Christopher Ruocchio

  The scriptures did not lie.

  Get up!

  Hadrian’s voice again, urging him to rise.

  Crispin did not feel like rising. He did not feel like breathing.

  His last thought was that Hadrian would be disappointed in him. Then the gunshot sounded.

  Not the hiss of disruptor fire, not the roar of plasma.

  The honest, clean bang of a bullet striking home. White blood fell on Crispin, and looking up through darkening eyes he saw the hole punched clean through Carlo’s chest and the light coming through it. Then another bang sounded loud and clean as lightning, and another hole sprouted in Carlo’s head, blowing the golem’s artificial brain out the back of its ruined skull. The force of that second shot peeled Carlo off him, and the Durantine machine-man fell away as air and blood returned to Crispin, and his eye was saved.

  “Va au diable!” came the defiant voice from the far end of the bridge.

  Tipping his head back so that he saw the world upside-down, Crispin saw his savior. Jean-Louis Albé had laid his MAG rifle across one of the console chairs and aimed it with his one still-working hand.

  “What did you say?” Crispin called.

  Though his words were slurred from the disruptor fire he had taken, Jean-Louis answered in Galactic Standard, “I said he could go to hell.”

  Crispin relaxed a second, catching his breath. Well, he thought, I am the devil.

  Lud offered him a hand up again, “I’m sorry, sir. I froze up. That … machine, I—”

  “Sword!” Crispin shouted down the fellow’s stammering.

  Lud pressed the weapon into his hand, and moving to Carlo’s still-twitching form, Crispin cut off its remaining arm and legs in one single motion. There would be a Chantry Inquisition after this, and the pieces of the golem would be incinerated, its ashes scattered in the black of space.

  But it wasn’t over yet.

  The Lady Lyra Orin-Natali had collapsed in a chair near the captain’s console. She had not spoken, did not speak as Crispin approached her. He stopped at the top of the steps once more, one hand on the rail for balance, the other still clutching his active sword.

  “I have to give you credit,” he said coldly, “you don’t give up easily.” Still she did not speak.

  Crispin swayed, head pounding, but he held his place. “I still want you to surrender. The rest of your people do not have to die. Get on the comms and tell them to stand down. Do it, and I swear by Holy Mother Earth and Her Chantry I will grant you mercy.”

  “Mercy!” she repeated, and spat on the floor between them as though she were no more than a common fishmonger’s wife. “There is no mercy from House Marlowe.”

  “You are not dealing with House Marlowe!” Crispin practically yelled. “You’re stuck with me!” He pounded the rail with his fist. “My men are coming! Any minute now they’ll be on that lift. Tell your men to stand down.”

  Her wrinkled and bruised face contorted into a vicious sneer. “And what? You’ll give me a quick death, is that it? I’ve been dying slowly for centuries, boy! What mercy could you give me after what I have lived through. Kill me or don’t—just don’t waste my time philosophizing over it.”

  The young lord shook his head, “No.”

  “No, what?”

  “I’m not going to kill you,” he said, and deactivated his sword. The blade melted into thin mist and vanished on the air. He turned and tossed the deactivated sword to Lud. In a voice void of any emotion, Crispin said. “You don’t have much time.”

  Unsteadily, aided by her cane and her medical prosthesis, Lady Lyra found her feet. Trembling—though with rage or sorrow Crispin could not say—she said, “For what?”

  “Do you still have that knife you tried to kill me with?” he asked, still empty of all feeling.

  Lyra’s face went white.

  Far below, the grinding noise had stopped, and distantly could be heard the sounds of shouting.

  “Tell your men to stand down, and I’ll allow this final courtesy.”

  “Courtesy!” she exclaimed, eyes wide and white as her robes.

  “Escape, then!” Crispin said.

  The woman howled and turned away, impotent in her fury. Fury.

  She was what Fury was, wasn’t she? Crispin knew the image well, had seen the statue in temple time enough. An old woman, transfigured by rage, more beast than human, bent on vengeance. No one left sacrifices at the altar of Fury, and her candles were always dark. Then she spoke in that same stiff fashion she had when she had called to Carlo from the room below, saying, “This is Lady Orin-Natali. Stand down. Stand down.” Her voice broke on the last word, and her posture slumped. And when she turned to face Crispin, the ceramic blade was in her hand. “This is the mercy of a Marlowe!” she said icily, holding the weapon up for his inspection.

  “No,” Crispin said in answer, “my father would have you tortured; my sister would as well. But it’s like I said: You’re not dealing with House Marlowe. I’m not House Marlowe. I’m just me.” He turned his back and limped down the stairs.

  He did not look back.

  Chapter 17

  A Devil’s Gratitude

  The sun was going down in fire red as blood by the time the Marlowe shuttles descended. Lighter craft still circled the valley, their sail-like wings pitched high against the tangle of smoke and cloud that broke the sunlight from red and golden to colors without name.

  Crispin watched them go.

  The soldiers had given him a set of clean fatigues and he had washed himself in a basin in one of the villagers’ homes. He was ready to be home, ready to be truly clean again.

  Lyra Orin-Natali was dead. He had seen her body carried out of her ship before the thing was flown to Meidua to await the Inquisition. It was over. He rested his chin on the head of her cane. Two of his men had been fighting over it when they carried her body away, and Crispin had taken it from them. Now it seemed an oddly appropriate memento. “That was father on the holograph,” Sabine said. “Security has advised him not to leave Devil’s Rest. He says there’ll be no mention of any of this on public broadcast.”

  Crispin turned to look at his sister. Sabine still wore the same clothes she had when they’d left Meidua: the same black jacket with crimson lining, the same tight-fitting white trousers and high boots. In a tired voice, he answered, “He doesn’t want any of the other houses to know how close we came to being killed. Even though Aunt Amalia wasn’t behind …” he waved a hand at the ruined township, “any of this, it might embolden her if she has any animus towards Father.” “You think she does?” Sabine asked.

  “I don’t care right now …” Crispin said, sitting on the low stone wall that lined the road into the village. He looked down to where three decades of Marlowe soldiers waited by their shuttle below. Van and Ored’s injuries were being seen to, and Lud’s. Crispin had sent a runner down with orders to fetch a physician, and was waiting for their return. He had a debt to repay.

  And speaking of debts. “When we get back to Meidua, our man Ludwig should be promoted,” Crispin told Sabine. “Knighted, if Father will allow it. Earth and Emperor, he should be Sir Ludwig. That man saved my life more times than I care to count these past few days.” He laughed, but even weak laughter brought pain.

  Sabine sighed. “It is a pity the Orin woman died,” she said, “I’d have liked to put her to the question. There might still be someone behind all this. She had to get funding for these mercenaries from somewhere.”

  “It’s better this way,” Crispin said, thinking of the fevered hate in the old woman’s eyes. “It’s over.”

  “If it’s over,” his sister corrected.

  Crispin did not argue with her. It was too much like arguing with Hadrian. He always lost—even when he was right. After a moment watching the lighters tack against the upper airs, he turned back to look at his sister, “I do assume Grandmother knows, though. Why we’re late. Someone told her and Amalia?”

  His sister sat on the low
wall beside him, her hands between her knees. “Yes, I’m sure. But knowing Father it will have been some abridged version of what happened. Maybe no mention of the name Orin, even. But the Inquisition will be all over this. Odds are the best Father can do is keep this from getting to the plebs. The vicereine will know all about it, but after this I don’t know… Maybe there’s no threat from House Kephalos. And if there is …” Here she clapped Crispin on the shoulder, “maybe they’ll think twice about messing with us Marlowes, eh? This did not go the way Lady Orin imagined it would.”

  “No,” Crispin agreed, gingerly touching his forehead. He winced. “No, it did not.”

  Sabine wrapped the hand on his shoulder around him and leaned in, rested her head against him. “I’m glad you’re all right.”

  “You, too.”

  They were still sitting that way when two soldiers came up the hill flanking a woman in the white and green of medical staff. Crispin stood to greet them, and despite Lady Orin-Natali’s cane, Sabine had to catch and steady him to keep him from falling.

  The woman and soldiers all saluted as they came to a stop, and she said, “Had a man come say you needed a physician, lord.” Her green eyes seemed to pick over him, “Should I call for a float chair?”

  “No, doctor,” Crispin answered, “I can walk.” He took a moment to take Sabine off his arm, that he might stand apart, then added, “Besides, it isn’t me I want you to see to.”

  • • •

  Crispin and Sabine watched quietly as the physician looked over Jean-Louis. Not knowing where else to put him after the soldiers had flown them down from Lyra’s dark tower, Crispin had arranged for the adorator to be left on the couch in Jacqui’s living room. Jacqui herself stood nearby with her son, and Crispin smiled at them both, glad at least that their little house had survived. At young Léon’s urging, Father Laurent had come, and was sitting stonily and ashen-faced in a corner. Crispin understood the man had performed some ritual healing or some such thing on Jean-Louis, anointing him with oil. Even now, the old man was clutching some beaded necklace with another of the omnipresent crucifixes on its end and murmuring to himself.

  At last the doctor came away, and Crispin stopped her.

  “He’s suffered severe damage to the major nerves in his left arm. The ulnar nerve’s just … gone. No feeling in his left side from the neck down. His thumb and first finger still work on the left side, but the others are good as dead. If I could get him to a proper hospital we could fit him with prosthetics, but even then he’ll not feel again. All the little peripheral nerves got burned right out. But he’s lucky. If that stunner graze had been just a hair more on target it would have taken out his spine—maybe killed him.”

  From the couch, a slurred voice answered, “Forgive me, madame docteur, but I do not feel lucky just now.”

  Crispin shouldered past the smaller woman and seated himself on the coffee table before the couch. Leaning in, he took Jean-Louis’s hand in both of his. “You saved my life,” he said, and looked up and over at the old priest, “you all saved my life—and my sister. I’m sorry.” He squeezed the hand, realizing as he did so that the adorator could not feel it. “Jean-Louis Albé, I owe you my life, and so you have my word as a Marlowe and as a palatine lord of the Imperium …” he trailed off, finding that he could not look the young man in the face. He knew the magnitude of what he was saying, but knew still more that it needed saying, “I will pay for your healing myself, but I want to offer you … I want … I would see you raised to the patrician class, and given a post as one of my armsmen.”

  Even Sabine was silent.

  It was no small thing, and Jean-Louis’s eyes widened, comprehending. Elevating Lud to knighthood was one thing—he was already a soldier— but this? Jean-Louis was only a serf, the very lowest of Sollan Imperial society. With a single stroke, Crispin would elevate him to the position of minor nobleman. More than that, Crispin would purchase for him the necessary surgeries and genetic therapies that would transform the lowly plebeian from … what was it he had called the man? A muck farmer? From a muck farmer to a man of the universe. Patricians were not palatine, but still they might live for two hundred years or three—and their children would live so long afterwards, and in good health. What Crispin was offering the young pagan was beyond price, and everyone knew it. What was more, the gene recombinance therapy would force the young man’s cells into a neotenous state while his genes rebuilt themselves. His nerves would be regenerated, and though they might not ever be as good as new, but he would regain full function—and might regain his sense of touch in the damaged organ.

  Jean-Louis did not reply. Perhaps he could not, and so Crispin raised his eyes and looked to Father Laurent. “I know I can’t bring back the people you’ve lost, but I will have a corps of engineers sent here and working until every stone is back where it belongs. I swear it. I will never forget what you and this village have done for my family.”

  The priest bowed his head, but he did not thank Crispin. “That will do my people good.” If he was angry, Crispin could not blame him. To Lord Alistair, the few dozen soldiers lost and the peasants, too, were a reasonable price to pay for the lives of his children. To the villagers, it was the lives of their children they had paid with. This was no Colosso match. No game.

  Silence reigned all about them.

  It was Jean-Louis who broke it. “I can’t do it,” he said. “I can’t accept.” Crispin felt his brows contract involuntarily, and it was with a shadow of his father’s scorn that he asked in one word. “Why?” How dare the pleb refuse him. Refuse a palatine lord of the Sollan Empire! Did he not know what was on offer? Not only a cure to his condition but life itself. Centuries of it, for him and for his children alike!

  The peasant shook his head, half his face sagging loosely on his bones. His words were slurred, but he put his weight behind every word. “I cannot leave my people. My family. I won’t abandon them or God.”

  “I’m not asking you to abandon your God,” Crispin sneered. Couldn’t the man see it? He wasn’t asking Jean-Louis to join the Legions, to swear an oath by Earth and Emperor. How could a pagan swear such a thing? Crispin knew there were pagans in the legions, Cid Arthurians and the like. Such men were whipped and discharged without pay, even executed. “I couldn’t care less about your religion. You’re a good man, and you saved my life. I’ll never forget that.”

  “Yes,” Jean-Louis answered, “but your heirs might. I’ll not feed my grandchildren to the lions for a little comfort. I’ll take the doctor’s implants, please.”

  Crispin could only shake his head. This talk of heirs made him think of Lady Orin-Natali, of her vengeance. Of the blood his father had spilled and the way he and Sabine had nearly paid for it. “If that’s your answer, then.”

  “It is, seigneur,” Jean-Louis answered. He raised his good hand— the hand with which he had saved Crispin’s life—and offered it to Lord Marlowe. “I cannot bow as I am,” he said by way of an explanation.

  Crispin took the hand and shook it. “You don’t have to.” Then to the doctor said, “Bring a pallet for this man. I want him on the first shuttle you have returning to Meidua. Get him the treatment he desires. Whatever the cost.”

  • • •

  It was almost night by the time the wounded were all tended to and resting, either in the Marlowe shuttles lined up on the edge of the farmland or in the church of St. Maximus. All the fires were out and the smoke of them had vanished from the air. Sabine had gone on ahead—flying at Crispin’s insistence in a separate shuttle bound for home. Crispin had lingered only for one final purpose, and though Sabine had asked to stay behind with him, he had insisted, and for once, she had not argued with him.

  The ruined tower—blasted and burned—half-stood by the perimeter of the city. Crispin leaned heavily on Lyra Orin-Natali’s cane as he picked his way over the uneven ground. The ozone smell of plasma was long gone, and the damp sweat of night beginning, activating the charcoal stink of dead fi
res.

  There was no sign of her.

  Crispin was unsure just how long he wandered about the site, ignoring the dark shapes of his guards watching from a distance. He shouldn’t have been surprised. Not much of a human being could survive contact with that much hot plasma. Not even her bones.

  Let me do my job, Kyra had said.

  “Well,” Crispin said aloud, “I’m still here, captain, so consider your job well done.” He tamped the earth with the tip of his cane. He thought about what she had said, about how it had been she who’d helped Hadrian flee all those years ago. He hoped Hadrian was all right, wherever he was. “Your secret is safe now, I suppose,” he said, “or you’re safe from it.”

  She’d had a family, Crispin recalled. A husband and children. He would make sure that they wanted for nothing, too. Another casualty. More damage. He’d told Lyra Orin-Natali that someone would have to break the cycle of violence, but the truth was that no one ever could. There were always casualties, was always damage. There always would be.

  Laurent was right. Those who answered violence with violence only inherited violence without end. Perhaps he had tied off one loose end with House Orin, perhaps not. But how many loops were opened now? Fresh wounds bleeding, fresh hates aflower?

  “Have you lost something, son?”

  As if Crispin’s thoughts had summoned the man, old Father Laurent appeared in the gloom. Crispin waved to his guards to let him pass. All the while, he tried to think of something clever to say, something about losing everything—or more than he’d bargained for. Or about gaining something more. In the end, he said none of these things. In the end, he said only the truth. “I was looking for my captain’s bones. I’d hoped to have something more than a prayer lantern to give her family.”

  Wordlessly, Laurent passed Crispin his flask of whiskey.