In Dark Service

by Stephen Hunt

  ‘How is this going to assist us?’ asked Jacob, growing impatient.

  ‘You must hear the song,’ said Narlrem. ‘Sit within the circle. Each of you must lay a hand on a stone. Jok, try and think of who you were before you were destroyed by the Land Mother. Khow of the gask-kind, hold your child inside your mind, focus on his captivity.’

  ‘And what must I think of during this ritual?’ asked Sheplar.

  ‘You and the twice-born must clear your minds as best you can. We need to focus solely on Jok and your gask companion.’

  ‘Return to me my wings and I will happily fly away from these plume-plucked barnacles,’ complained Sariel.

  Jacob did as he was bid, sitting inside the stone circle with the expedition members while the council of diviners passed wooden bowls around the gathering. The gads dipped their fingers into the same evil tasting paste that had left his head spinning out on the plains. He laid a hand on the nearest stone. Its surface was cool in the shade of the trees, perhaps colder than it should be. A primordial shiver crept down his spine. Beyond the stones the diviners had joined hands and swayed in unison, the other gads incanting a deep, moaning refrain. If this were a blessing, it couldn’t be counted a joyous one. It sounded like a death dirge to Jacob’s ears. But the gads were a superstitious people, and Jacob needed all the help he could get, however tenuous.

  ‘Their song will destroy the stones,’ muttered Sariel. ‘It always does.’

  Making a lie of his words, the gads’ singing appeared to have a more subtle effect than destruction. Alien runes cut into the stone began to glow gently as though they had been filled with luminescent lichen, reacting to the gads’ lament by pulsing into life in the half-light. Under Jacob’s hand the stone surface tickled his palm, vibrating, an itch growing stronger and stronger. He tried to pull his hand away from the rock but it was as though his skin had melted into the stone – as if he was becoming stone himself. Jacob tried to shout, to protest, but the vibration became too strong, his throat’s dry shout lost to it, stone and skin quaking and trembling, every iota of his being converted into an excited shudder. Outside the circle, the distant chanting joined with the stones’ song. A protective bubble had formed around the stone circle, protecting the gads from the ferocity of the energies being unleashed within it, the victims sealed off. Fire seemed to rotate around them. Jacob moaned in terrible agony, even that noise lost. A trap after all, then. That’s what you got for trusting in the kindness of strangers – letting your guard down for a second. Jacob felt as if his head was going to explode, his last thoughts only regrets. Carter, my son! All the lost chances passed between them, the mislaid opportunities that had filled Carter’s life and ruined his future. Jacob yearned to travel back to that moment, so long past, on Rake’s Field and take a different path. Make peace between Carter and Duncan Landor; force his son to see sense over Adella and Willow. Pack his family off for a trip to the coast before the slavers struck. So many paths, so many choices, and how few of them ended up here. It was as if Jacob walked the paths of the great fractal tree that the gask spoke of. He fell to his knees, his hands fused with the stone. Sariel, Khow, Sheplar, their bodies hummed, shaking so fast they were blurring. Plasma danced off the stones’ surface, coiling fingers of star-stuff, as though the sun itself bled through these rocks. Then a fierce discharge claimed everyone inside the circle. And the very final fragment of the diviners’ visions was at last given truth. You’re meant to be dead; your body obliterated in an explosion.

  Duncan had expected Willow to cry when she stepped off the helo and onto the landing field. When she saw her brother was still alive… let alone when he gave her the joyous news that she was now a free woman. What Duncan hadn’t expected was her to launch herself at him, swinging at him and nearly knocking him to the tarmac. He had played this moment inside his mind a dozen times, but it had never ended with him falling against the cold steel of the helo’s hull, the surprised pilot walking away, only glancing back as Willow tried to hammer Duncan with her fists.

  Duncan grabbed Willow’s arms, pushing her back and trying to hold her still. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘What are you doing? Dressed here like some imperial lord while our friends are starving and dying in the sky mines? What about Carter and Kerge and Anna and everyone else? So they have to keep swinging a pickaxe at the princess’s enemies, while you and I eat off the gold plates they’re being murdered for?’

  ‘I can’t help them,’ said Duncan. ‘I can’t help everyone.’

  ‘You’re a Landor, all right,’ said Willow. ‘You’ve helped yourself just fine.’

  ‘Don’t you understand,’ spluttered Duncan, ‘what a feat it is to be raised from a slave to a citizen? How hard and rare that is? Not just for me, but for you. We can stay here; see a whole new world – an empire so large every nation of the league could be squeezed into a single imperial province. Or we can travel home. Back to Weyland.’

  ‘And how would I ever look our farmers in the eye again, knowing I had left their sons and daughters to rot to death under the whip?’

  ‘Tell them you escaped,’ said Duncan. ‘Isn’t that the truth? We have escaped!’

  ‘I haven’t escaped! I’ll never escape this foul place, not if I lived to be a hundred as a hermit in the Rodalian mountains. Part of me will always be trapped in the sky mines. You might as well ship me back to the station. I’d sooner take my chances with our people than accept anything from a single dirty Vandian.’

  ‘That’s not your decision,’ said Duncan. ‘One thing’s the same here. I get to inherit the house, and you get to do what I order.’

  ‘You can stick it,’ said Willow. ‘Your inheritance and your fine Vandian clothes, both. You’re not free. You’re a greater slave than anyone back in the mines.’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ said Duncan. He pointed to the woman from the castle that was meant to show Willow to her rooms. ‘Escort her inside until she’s come to her senses.’

  Duncan heard Paetro chortle behind him as his sister was led away shouting abuse back to him. ‘It’s not funny. What just happened here?’

  ‘In a woman’s mind? Who’s to know, lad. But with the best will in the world, it was always going to take her time to adjust to the news.’

  ‘I thought she’d be grateful – I thought she’d be happy!’

  ‘She’s out of that hell anchored above the volcano,’ said Paetro. ‘You did the right thing by her, whether she’s grateful for it or not. Whatever your sister feels about freedom, it’s beyond your influence. The best a man can do only is what he knows to be right – how the rest of the world reacts to it is up to them.’

  ‘I’ll visit her later; after she’s had a chance to calm down,’ said Duncan.

  ‘One thing I learnt in the legion,’ said Paetro, ‘it’s that everyone around you has to take responsibility for their own fate. You can lead people to battle, get them to the right place at the right time, but you can never make them fight. You contest your own little corner of a campaign and trust everyone else will do what they need to… to survive and win through.’

  ‘Does Willow really expect me to wave a magic wand and set every slave in the empire free?’

  ‘Not even the emperor could emancipate the slaves,’ said Paetro. ‘Not with all of the imperial houses relying on them for labour. Old Jaelis Skar would be out on his ear the moment he reached for pen and parchment to sign such a decree.’

  Duncan cursed her under his breath. Who did Willow think she was, arriving here and making him feel like a traitor after all he had done for her? Maybe he should have let her sweat in the castle for a month or two as a slave? Then she might show a bit of gratitude for being raised to a citizen.

  ‘No, I like her,’ said Paetro. ‘Your sister has fire. Maybe the princess could petition the emperor to strip Machus of his title and make your sister a baroness instead!’

  ‘I suspect Willow’s going to be insufferable enough as a citizen,’ said Du
ncan.

  ‘Come away, lad. Lady Cassandra intends to visit Hesia before she’s transferred to the secret police’s tender mercies. I want to see what Hesia has to say for herself, first. I don’t want the young Highness any more upset over the attack than she already is.’

  It was true; Cassandra had taken the betrayal by her personal helo pilot badly. And she wasn’t the only one who wanted answers. ‘I thought Princess Helrena would insist she interrogated Hesia first.’

  ‘The only thing Hesia has to tell us is why. And that won’t help us sleep better at night, not when we already know the who. The princess is happy to let the imperial torturers get their hands dirty.’

  Except that Hesia would tell her interrogators about Adella’s involvement in the attack on the castle. It shouldn’t have mattered to him. Adella deserved everything Helrena was going to throw in the direction of her treacherous cousin. After Baron Machus lay dead, Adella would be without a master or a protector. She could be sent back to the sky mines for all that Duncan cared, along with a message that she’d betrayed the Weylanders’ escape attempt. ‘Cassandra wants to know why Hesia sold us out, even if her mother doesn’t.’

  ‘So do I,’ sighed Paetro. ‘But I have other reasons.’

  He didn’t elaborate on them as they travelled inside the castle, down the deep, damp concrete passages that led to the hold’s bunkers. And its cells. They reminded Duncan of the slave pens back on the skel carrier. Hesia squatted in a cage on her own. Her face was badly bruised, purple marks and swellings everywhere. It appeared Apolleon’s hoodsmen hadn’t been over-gentle when they captured her sabotaging the castle’s gun control system

  ‘I wondered when you’d come,’ said Hesia.

  ‘And here I am,’ said the bodyguard. Paetro sat down on the edge of a bare table. The gaoler nodded to the pair of them, announcing he was going to leave for a couple of minutes to collect his lunch.

  ‘Cassandra wants to come and visit you, too,’ said Duncan. ‘She needs to know why you did it.’

  ‘She can wait until the imperial torturers have finished with me,’ said Hesia. ‘Then she can read their report and be sure.’

  ‘I want to know,’ said Paetro. ‘Imperial torturers be hanged! Aren’t I worth an honest answer; or has Circae bribed you too well to talk, even now that you’re captured and blown?’

  ‘My sister has bone cancer,’ said Hesia.

  ‘Your sister?’ said Paetro, incredulously.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hesia. ‘Aradela doesn’t have more than a couple of years left. And the only cure for it is in the hands of the imperial surgeons. A treatment reserved, like everything else, for the upper-celestial caste. Circae’s agents found out about her illness and approached me. Circae said if I brought down the defence grid during the gathering, she’d arrange for one of the surgeons to save Aradela’s life.’

  ‘You should have told me! Princess Helrena could have helped you, helped her.’

  ‘What, help the relation of a lowly helo pilot, someone who doesn’t even serve in the house? The low-caste daughter of a soldier and a freed slave? You know the imperial medical college is only allowed to operate on the celestial-upper caste. But Circae has something on one of the surgeons. She’ll force the cure out of them. What would the princess do? Petition her father to make Aradela a countess so she can get the care she needs? This was the only way.’

  ‘You betrayed your house.’

  ‘Family, house, empire, gods,’ said Hesia. ‘In that order. Who taught me that?’

  ‘You’re a damnable fool!’

  Duncan raised his hand towards her, but she spurned his act of sympathy, pulling back away from the cage’s steel bars. He glanced over to the armoured lock-box on the wall that held the cell’s keys. What would I have risked to save Willow if she was sick? As much as this?

  Hesia turned her back on both of them, ‘I was raised that way. I’ll die, but she’ll live.’

  ‘You expect Circae to keep her word?’ said Duncan.

  ‘The old witch wouldn’t last long at court if she didn’t,’ said Hesia.

  ‘It won’t matter,’ said Paetro, annoyed almost beyond words, gripping the bars of the cell so tight his hands turned white. ‘When Apolleon’s torturers have finished with you, they’ll know why you betrayed the mistress. Do you think Apolleon will let Circae keep her word? He’ll arrange an unpleasant accident for Aradela to send a warning about the cost of betrayal. Aradela’ll end up raped and strangled, or with a blade in her back during a city riot. That’s all you’ve achieved for her. A quick nasty death rather than a long, slow one.’

  ‘I wasn’t intending to get caught,’ retorted Hesia. ‘Leave me your knife and I’ll end matters honourably. I’ll make sure I never reach the secret police alive.’

  ‘Aradela,’ groaned Paetro. ‘Why, why did it have to be her? She should have told me.’

  And then it hit Duncan. The low-caste daughter of a soldier and a freed slave. Hesia’s sister. But Paetro’s daughter. And now he was going to lose both of his children at the same time.

  Paetro’s hand went to the dagger hanging from his belt. Then he shook his head. ‘My duty, lass, to the house. To hand you over to Apolleon’s people.’

  ‘Leave me your knife!’ she begged.

  ‘It’s too late for that,’ said Paetro. ‘You’ve made your choice and now you must live with the consequences.’

  They went into the passage outside to wait for the gaoler to return with his food.

  ‘Paetro—’ said Duncan.

  He raised his hand as he strode away, brooking no argument. ‘There’s nothing more to be said. The young Highness isn’t to be allowed down here. We’ll tell Lady Cassandra she sold us out for money. It’s better she grows up hating Hesia than feeling pity for her.’

  ‘You’re sure about that?’

  ‘Aye, of course I am,’ said Paetro. ‘I wish to the gods I still believed she’d betrayed us for the money.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Duncan.

  ‘And a helo stick is meant to be a solid, safe job,’ said Paetro. ‘The legion does the dying while the pilots do the flying. That’s the saying.’

  Duncan could still hear Hesia begging and shouting for a knife, but at least they didn’t have to look at her anymore. When the gaoler returned, he was late, breathless, flustered and empty-handed.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Duncan.

  ‘Damnedest thing,’ said the gaoler. ‘A patrol’s caught a gang of vagrants in the gardens. Must have wandered in during the attack while the defences went down.’

  ‘Vagrants?’ said Paetro. ‘The guards were meant to be searching for murdisto.’

  ‘Well, this lot are no assassins,’ he laughed. ‘Tinkers and travellers more like. They were found blotto, drunk out of their gourds and totally passed out. They’d made a camp in the centre of the Stone Garden, set a fire in the centre and nearly burnt the place down!’

  ‘There’ll be hell to pay for the guards on the ramparts,’ said Paetro. ‘And the sector police in the district, too. If they can’t even keep a gang of drunken beggars out.’

  ‘Peace, Paetro, our boys were shooting towards the sea and the sky at the time, rifles and no radar,’ said the gaoler. He moved against the wall as the patrol came marching down the stairs, flanking the captured vagrants.

  Paetro muttered something about that being the point of an effective diversion, but Duncan had stopped listening to his friend. Among the vagrants was someone he recognised. Someone who shouldn’t be within a million miles of the Castle of Snakes: Jacob Carnehan, the pastor of Northhaven! He looked a state, his clothes dirty and travel-worn, his face gaunt and ill-shaven. But he had undergone a more fundamental change than that; the soft contented glow the man had carried around like a halo was gone. In its place was something sharp and dangerous, the still calm replaced by a barely suppressed fury. Jacob Carnehan didn’t look like a vagrant. He looked like a madman escaped from an asylum, his veins filled with brimstone a
nd a wrath that had addled his mind.

  ‘Landor!’ cried Jacob. ‘Duncan Landor!’ The pastor sounded groggy, as though he had been drinking. But as far as Duncan knew the churchman was teetotal. And that was the least bizarre part about his near miraculous appearance here.

  The soldiers didn’t stop. They shoved the prisoners along the corridor and into the holding chamber. There was a gask among them; an old white-bearded man who fairly deserved the label of tramp, and a pilot in the uniform of the Rodalian Skyguard. Had the Rodalian flown them here? It wasn’t possible, was it? Too great a distance lay between the empire and Weyland. It should have taken decades for them to reach the capital, even if they rarely touched down to refuel.

  ‘How does that tinker know you?’ said Paetro.

  ‘He’s from home,’ said Duncan, trying to rediscover his voice. ‘From… Weyland…’

  ‘Too old to have been taken as slave for the sky mines, I reckon,’ said Paetro. ‘Have the skels been raiding for the other houses? Selling our wastage on the sly?’

  ‘I really don’t know.’

  ‘Do you think he came looking for you?’

  ‘Let’s find out,’ said Duncan.

  They went back into the cell block. Old man Carnehan was being pushed into a cage next to Hesia, the other prisoners already tossed inside. Duncan could hardly believe the pastor was here. It had been an age since he’d had a reminder of home, by something as concrete as this, a new face. A reminder that Duncan had once possessed a life far removed from slave and citizen of the imperium. He no longer felt homesick for Northhaven. He could barely even remember it now.

  Paetro strode up to the patrol’s sergeant. ‘Any clues how this lot got here?’

  The sergeant pointed to the men’s personal possessions, travel bags and a walking staff and gun belts hanging from hooks on the wall. ‘Travellers with a merchant caravan, maybe? They were carrying basic revolving chamber pistols, barbarian trading currency and everything you’d need for a life on the road… fire-starters, bed rolls, snares and fishing hooks. That prickly-looking twisted fellow has a hand-held computer which is unusually advanced. Thought it might be an artillery fire control, but it only has mathematical functions as far as I can see.’