In Dark Service

by Stephen Hunt

  Duncan rocked in surprise. They’re taking me off the station for good? ‘But I was never a teacher back home.’

  Cassandra giggled as she marched through the ship’s corridors, everyone giving way to her and bowing low. ‘A tutor? How ridiculous, I already have one of those. Doctor Yair Horvak. He is a slave, too, of course, given as tribute by one of the conquered dominions that excel in science and philosophy. He is judged the finest mind in the empire. Are you so quick of intelligence?’

  Well, Duncan would never have predicted this turn of events, for a start. ‘I reckon not. But if you don’t need a teacher…?’

  ‘You shall taste my food before I eat it. Check my bed for snakes and spiders. Ensure my bath has not been secretly connected to a fatal electrical source. Keep your eyes open for treason and assassins. You have already proved yourself highly adroit in that regard.’

  ‘I guess I have.’ Duncan could barely keep the grief out of his voice. When would he see Willow again? How long would his sister survive without him in that floating hell, nothing but work and death ahead of her?

  ‘This is a promotion for you,’ said Cassandra, staring quizzically at him. ‘Do you not understand? You will be of the hostile-upper caste, superior to all slaves save those that serve the emperor directly.’

  ‘I thought I was being dragged away for a flogging.’

  ‘You showed personal constancy to one of your caste, when that could only be to your cost. You owed that man a debt, yes, the slave who was flogged? A matter of honour? It is by such devotion as yours that a house becomes preeminent. That trait can never be purchased, no matter how rich a house grows through its holdings. It can only be uncovered.’

  Was that her damn mother talking? Sounded like it. If Duncan could have remained behind in the sky mines, he would have taken a flogging and be damned. ‘I never asked for this.’

  ‘If you had, you would not be the appropriate choice to serve my house. You need not fear; the last food tester to perish eating from my plate passed many years ago. Even when our house’s enemies don’t fear my mother’s revenge, they usually cower at the thought of my grandmother’s. In that, they are wise.’

  Duncan recalled the station’s blasting powder stores rigged to explode and murder the girl’s mother, thousands of slaves sacrificed to facilitate a single assassination. Yes, wise indeed to fear Circae. ‘She’s the one who wanted to kidnap you from the sky mines?’

  ‘Of course. I am all that she has left of my father.’

  ‘You never get to see your grandmother?’

  Cassandra leant in conspiratorially. ‘No. If I did, I would slip a dagger through Circae’s heart for what she did to my father.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘She stripped him of his caste and had him sent to the legions for defying her, for marrying my mother when the match was forbidden. He died outside the imperium. Not as a general, but as a common captain in the wavering-lower caste. I can forgive Circae for a death in battle, in imperial service, but how can I forgive her for that indignity? Circae may as well have made my father a horse in a cavalry unit.’

  Duncan looked in amazement at the little girl. ‘How old are you, Your Highness?’

  ‘I have reached my fourteenth year.’

  Duncan shook his head in consternation. And I thought I had it rough being the son of the great Benner Landor.

  ‘In two years I will be of age to be challenged by our house’s rivals. I will travel always with a duelling blade and pistol on my belt. Our enemies will no longer send assassins; they will send my cousins and siblings with weapons to test me.’

  She was such a slight thing, petite and demure. Duncan couldn’t see young Cassandra being able to lift a decent blade, let alone cracking steels in a duel. ‘And no champions?’

  ‘They are forbidden. If I am not strong enough to stand for the house, then how would I be strong enough to raise, equip and lead forces for the imperium when it comes to war? Many enemies surround the empire. There is not a nation bordering the imperium that would not try to unseat us should we permit them to grow bold, and our borders are almost as endless as Pellas itself.’

  Duncan felt a weight heavy on his heart. And yet he and his sister could have happily died of old age a world away never having heard the empire’s name. That would have been a good fate. The one Willow deserved. The one that every Weylander dead and dying in the sky mines deserved.

  ‘I will stand for you all,’ continued Cassandra. ‘When my time comes. Behind me will stand Mother, and you, and Paetro here, and Doctor Horvak, and the shade of my father and all of my ancestors. You don’t need to worry about finding a champion for me. When the day comes, Circae is the one who shall suffer. I shall make her cursed soul a gift to my father for every misery she had inflicted on us.’

  The giant soldier walking by their side spoke at last. It was like listening to a granite boulder trying to converse. ‘And when the time comes, Princess, you will be ready.’

  ‘By training and blood, I shall. Father died well, didn’t he?’

  ‘Captain went down like a tiger,’ said the hulking Paetro. ‘Boots slipping on the blood of a mound of dead barbarians he’d laid around him, a sword in one hand, still swinging hard, a pistol in the other, trigger clicking on an empty magazine. Wasn’t a fighter in the legion who ever went down grander on a battlefield than your old pa, little Highness.’

  ‘And that is how I shall stand when my time comes.’

  ‘Aye, you will,’ growled the soldier.

  Duncan bit his tongue. Back in Northhaven, for all of his father’s many faults, Benner Landor had tried to raise his children to live well. Here, it seemed they were raised to die well. You didn’t need to be born a slave to be a prisoner of the imperium.

  The three of them left the ship through a ramp lowered to the ground from its nosecone, heading towards an odd-looking aircraft parked under the shadow of the ship’s prow. The aircraft rested on a tricycle configuration of rubber wheels. Its yellow-and-black-patterned fuselage resembled a plump metal hornet, a single pilot’s seat up front, two seats behind, and a third – closer to a throne – facing the other two at the rear. Its passengers would be exposed to the air on the side; heads covered by a clear hemisphere-shaped canopy; while above that, the contraption had a large double rotor, no wings and a smaller tail rotor at the rear. Paetro helped the young girl up into the rear, to take the large comfortable seat, and then turned to Duncan.

  ‘Watch me, and learn. This is how we check a helo. And we always check a helo before we allow the little Highness to take off in it.’

  Duncan watched the soldier open a panel at the rear of the craft, exposing an engine which he proceeded to detail, dipping inside with his hands to search for explosives. Then they opened other hatches, checking storage compartments below the seats for good measure.

  ‘You’ll learn the faces and names of everyone on the staff,’ muttered the brute as he worked, quickly and efficiently, with a dexterity that surprised Duncan, belying his large hands. ‘You never board a helo with a strange pilot, only ones on the list. That’s Hesia on the flyer’s stick – she’s Lady Cassandra’s regular pilot. She never gets sick, do you Hesia?’

  The pilot removed a bulky helmet and Duncan saw that she was indeed a woman, her long dark hair tied back in an elaborately braided ponytail. It was no wonder he hadn’t noticed her gender before; the pilot’s helmet came with a mirrored visor that swung down to cover her features. ‘Only sick of hearing your ground-pounder’s war stories.’

  ‘Aye, she’s good enough to fly for us, even if she did serve with the Imperial Sky Force. Don’t let her take off if it’s too foggy, though. Can’t read a chart to save her life.’

  ‘At least I can read.’

  Paetro grunted, amused at the banter. He indicated the far side of the craft, where a large weapon sat mounted on a tripod. ‘That’s my seat… side gunner. In case another helo gets too close.’

  Duncan nodded. Not a m
istake that many got to repeat, he suspected. They climbed up into the rear of the craft, settling in the two spare seats as the helo’s rotors began to rotate, spinning so fast it became a blur, and then the little four-person aircraft jolted into the air, rising vertically as if it had been plucked into the sky by an invisible hand. He followed Paetro and Cassandra’s lead and pulled the seat belt over his chest, clicking it into place inside a locking mechanism. It seemed a very flimsy protection against lurching through the air, dipping over the islet’s buildings before following a bridge across to the mainland. Steel ships travelled below, long sail-less things with wheels on their sides churning the water, as well as many smaller boats that might have been fishing vessels or private yachts. Fog rolled in from the water; great swathes of it, heading for the city ahead, just like their helo. They left the water behind and came across the harbour, hitting land and banking above a maze of buildings that grew taller and taller as the helo progressed. They flew through canyons of stone, vast polished granite towers rising as high as mountains. Tapered towers, hulking and massive, rises spotted with thousands of windows. Hundreds of storeys tall, so many levels that Duncan couldn’t even count them, fog hiding the streets below and clouds concealing the spires above. Bridges spanned these man-made canyons at multiple heights, moving walkways filled with crowds no larger than ants, rails below the bridges where fleeting steel arrow trains travelled, suspended beneath them like bats, disappearing into tunnels cut though the buildings’ sides. Duncan was left reeling by the city’s scale and mass. This was Vandis. You could fit Northhaven and all of its puny city limits on roof of a single building here. Squeezed it under the crystal sheeting of the one of the tower-top greenhouses they passed over, hidden it among the enormous fields of enclosed greenery lit by a peculiar, pulsing orange light. Duncan watched the nearest tower-top greenhouse tremble, shaking from turbulence of a nearby stream of electrical carriages; almost hypnotising, the way vehicles passed along the raised roadways, an endless river of carriages emerging from tunnels through the towers.

  ‘District eighty is owned by our house,’ said Cassandra, proudly. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the roar of the rotors. ‘All of it.’

  And everyone in it, Duncan thought. Including me.

  Cassandra noted Duncan staring at the weird pulsing light from the greenhouse below. ‘Crops propagate tall under electrical stimulation. We produce our own food as much as possible, so we never grow over-reliant on the grain merchants. We suffer few food riots, even during famines.’

  Good to know I won’t starve, here, then. Duncan cast his mind guiltily back to the orders he had heard Princess Helrena give as he was dragged out of the station. Half rations. And Willow had been barely keeping up with the pace of work before. He couldn’t shake his fear about her fate. A premonition?

  They flew through the titanic city for half an hour more, dipping between towers where blocky stone statues leaned out of the walls, watching like gods over the populace below. Other helos skimmed through the air around them – oblivious to the hordes visible packing the moving walkways below and ignoring the rivers of electric carriages queued on the aerial highways. Duncan got the impression that flying by helo, like so much else inside the imperium, was a matter of caste. Only the highest allowed to travel through the air, beyond the stench and clamour of the common herd. Fog began to filter into the void between the towering buildings, a cold, clinging vapour that chilled him to the bone. It felt odd, after the continual heat of the sky mines and the constant furnace presence of the vast belching stratovolcano. An actual chill, with slow drizzle running down the helo’s canopy. Duncan couldn’t remember the last time he had seen rain. Certainly not in the sky mines – not unless you included the showers of ash. They pushed on. Traversing this sector of the capital before the helo reached its destination. They had arrived back at the sea. Towers and skyscrapers fell away, concrete canyons replaced by a flat plain of formal gardens stretching out below, and then, overlooking the blue waters, a palace of sorts; a great mass of concrete domes and bulky fortifications, their ugly function barely concealed by trellises of ivy. It was built on a rise, high white cliffs, gun emplacements pointing menacingly out to sea. So, this was where Princess Helrena ruled over her wedge of the capital. Her piece of the action. There were no bridges visible on this side of the land, but a high bank of white fog was rolling in to blanket the palace.

  ‘This is the Castle of Snakes,’ said Paetro, as the helo began to descend towards an open stretch of concrete between two domes. Yellow lights blinked inside a circle, guiding them in. Other helos were visible grounded below, columns of armoured soldiers marching in eerie unison as they sang. Fog filled the parade ground.

  ‘The poisonous kind I’m meant to check Lady Cassandra’s bed for?’

  The guardsman shook his head. ‘Not real snakes – it’s just a name, lad. The foot of the cliffs are a breeding ground for eels. In spring the water thrashes like a living thing with millions of them.’

  Castle of Snakes. Given Duncan’s unhappy experiences with the empire, it seemed an apt name on so many levels. The helo’s rubber wheels bounced once and they settled on the ground. Duncan’s new life had begun. As little choice in the matter as ever, since being beaten to the ground by skels, chained up and carried away from Northhaven. Still a slave, but perhaps something slightly more, now?

  Carter swam through a daze, an endless ocean of raw, red pain bringing him buoyancy. Occasionally he would surface for a few moments of lucidity, realise that this fever was the legacy of his punishment flogging. People cared for him. Kerge maybe; others, too, taking turns in relays between mining duties; which can’t have been easy, given how weary they’d be while working two rocks. A woman appeared sometimes. She might have been Willow, if her hair hadn’t been burning and shifting like fire, and she wouldn’t extinguish it however Carter begged. There was a cream being carefully applied to his back, burning like acid where it met his skin. A thin gruel forced down his throat. Once, he came to and heard shouting in the background. Someone arguing about the water and food being wasted on him, maybe a fight too, after that. He knew exactly where he was – the chamber where the sick and dying were isolated, in case their infections should spread. But being flogged wasn’t contagious. Maybe rebellion was. Those moments of lucidity would slip through his fingers and he’d be left drifting across the heat again, as though flying disembodied through the sky mines’ upper regions. In between the flashes of clarity and fever-wracked weightlessness, Carter became an observer to visions which twisted his mind with intense head-knifing agony. Sights that seemed as real as anything on the station, perhaps more real than the fever room where he had been tossed, shadowy figures moving in and out of his perception.

  Skels, the twisted men; not as they were now, but as they had lived in the ancient past. A mighty horde controlling the stratovolcano. The Vandians’ ancestors their serfs in the fields and mills, disposable underlings who wept under the skels’ whips and goads. Riches and cities beyond imagination, jewelled mountains of concrete and glass and steel where night was remade as day by strange engines. He witnessed the revolution that displaced the skels, as bloody and merciless as any revolt in history. Millions of skels slaughtered and left to rot in mass graves, skel survivors taking to the air in giant carriers, all that was left of a once-mighty skyguard overrun by their own slave mechanics and airfield workers. Carter watched this cycle repeated between the ages and between countless peoples, common pattern humans, and men so twisted that he could put no name to them. And then, as if Carter hadn’t had his fill of this grim procession of past outrages, his vision’s focus widened. Some faces he recognised… tried to reach out to. His brothers, his mother, friends and neighbours from Northhaven. Dead and alive in the same moment, time twisted. He saw Lucas Lettore in his burrow of books. He saw the old tramp who had arrived begging at the library’s gate an age before… Sariel. Carter’s visions briefly coalesced. The tramp’s face lingered, sp
inning in and out of focus.

  ‘All the stories,’ said Sariel, running a finger down his coat’s illustrations. ‘All the tales of the world, they’re all true. If not now, before; if not now, one day soon. The when and the weave both the same.’

  ‘I’m going mad, old man. My mind is frying inside my head.’

  ‘That’s good. Madness is the only sanity,’ said Sariel. ‘It will protect you.’

  ‘From what?’

  ‘From what? I don’t remember. But it must be bad, Lord Carnehan. It might even be the truth.’

  ‘Why don’t you remember?’

  ‘I rebuilt myself with magic… from such a trifling speck of blood. Poor murdered Sariel. But I didn’t do it properly. I am a spur-galled wimpled copy, erased and ignorant.’

  ‘I have something for you, I think,’ said Carter.

  ‘And I for you,’ said Sariel. ‘It’s a gift. The end of things. You have to die to live.’

  ‘I’m getting there.’

  ‘Stay alive for me, Lord Carnehan. We’re coming…’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Hell is coming. A devil to fight stealers. In such a conflict, only a devil will answer the purpose.’

  Carter begged for more tidings, but the vagrant faded from view and only his crazy tales remained twisting through Carter’s visions – dolphins that danced and bees that laughed and men that leapt through the air on springed boots, heroes and villains from a thousand impossible lands before breakfast. When Carter’s fever finally broke, he found himself on the bunk, sopping wet, and it was as if his body was newborn, as though he had been reincarnated in someone else’s form. A water canteen lay just out of reach on the floor and he groaned as he reached for it. Kerge appeared and scooped it up, passing it to him. Water. Carter remembered the cold, headache-inducing liquid he had drunk in the strange labyrinth below the volcano. The sweats it generated. Was the tomb water somehow the cause of his visions? Or had he been poisoned by vapours and gases during his failed escape attempt?