Howling Dark (Sun Eater)

by Christopher Ruocchio

  I had no idea what he was talking about. Ossulum, I knew, was an ancient disease—alien in origin—that had wasted the Empire millennia ago. What AIDS-3 was I could not guess. “I meant no offense,” I said.

  “No!” Hrothgar cawed. “No!” I half-wondered if the beast was mocking me.

  “I have a ship leaving for Vorgossos within the month,” Brevon said, steepling his hands in front of him. “If you can deliver what you promise, I’ll see you aboard.”

  CHAPTER 22

  BLOOD AND WATER

  “YOU PROMISED THEM WHAT?” Valka asked.

  I’d known she would object, from the moment I made Brevon my offer. I’d known, and spent the entire return to the Mistral pondering what it is I would say. I would not argue, nor make excuses. Nor apologize, either. I braced myself for the tirade, pictured the way Gibson might sit placidly and weather my father’s storm.

  It never came.

  “A blood sample!” Valka exclaimed. “Truly?” And then she did the last thing I could have expected of her. She laughed. I felt every thought flee me then, my mind gone blanker than any scholiast dared dream. I had no idea what to say.

  Fortunately, Captain Corvo rapped the table with her knuckles. “I think you did well. You got us what we wanted and at no cost.”

  That brought me back to myself, and I looked round at the others: Corvo, Durand, Ilex, Valka, Switch, and Crim. “Not at no cost,” I said, soberly. “I shudder to think what those flesh peddlers might do with it, but didn’t see another way.” I did not mention that I had declined to sell my own blood instead, and Switch did not sing out. Valka and the others seemed not to be troubled as I was by what I had done, but I did not wish to give them more reason to think ill of me.

  We were seated in the same little conference chamber where I’d first asked Otavia to help me with Tanaran. The low ceiling curved overhead with the shape of the hull, and the round door was sealed.

  “What are you so gloomy about?” Valka asked.

  How could she not see? Not understand?

  “Do you not know what these people do?” I looked round at them, at their unfeeling faces. Even Crim’s usually jovial face was confused.

  “Blood is blood, Hadrian,” Valka said tartly. “It’s not a person.”

  I shook my head. “You don’t understand.” I was picturing Eva again, the shape of her and the foot-bound way she walked. More faintly, I heard my brother’s stupid laugh and the way he’d described a homunculus my mother had owned on Delos. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, but let it go. “In any case, I should speak with Tanaran myself. Let it know what we mean to do and why.”

  “Will it be a problem?” Otavia asked.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, “but I don’t know if the Cielcin have any taboos about drawing blood. Some of the old religions did.”

  Switch cleared his throat. “If it comes to it, we can knock out the creature out and take it.”

  “I would prefer it not come to that,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “Tanaran is our only ambassador at this point, and our only bargaining chip. We should do all we can not to compromise that.” Murmurous agreement flowed across the table like water. “In any case, this merchanter . . . this Antonius Brevon, says his ship won’t leave for Vorgossos until the end of the month. That gives us a little over a fortnight to prepare.”

  Commander Bastien Durand shuffled through a stack of notes in front of him—he was always printing hard copy for review—but before he could speak Ilex said, “This is an Exalted ship, yes?”

  “It is,” I said, toying with the cuff of one sleeve. “Brevon called it the Enigma of Hours.” I broke off, having never said the name out loud. Distantly, I thought I heard old Gibson chiding me about melodrama. “Are all Exalted ship names that pretentious?”

  Under her breath, Valka muttered, “They’re called the Exalted.”

  “Fair point,” I said. “But there’s no reason to dawdle with Tanaran. I’d prefer to have this sorted out well in advance of the . . . the Enigma’s arrival. Unless any of you objects, of course.” I did not expect to meet resistance, and found none. In the brief quiet that fell between us, the desire for a shower overcame me. I’d not washed since returning from our expedition to March Station, and I could feel the faintly oily sheen of the city on me. The smell of the algae-choked fishery still clung to my nose, and the rain—though it had not afflicted my clothes—had fouled my hair awfully.

  The streets, Cento, Eva, Brevon, and now this vial of Pale blood . . . the whole thing sat badly with me. Made me feel dirty. I had done horrible things before. To Gilliam, to Uvanari, to Emil Bordelon and Admiral Whent. But this was different. On Emesh—in the Empire—and even on Pharos and the other Norman worlds I’d visited, I’d known where it was I stood. I’d understood the system of the world around me: what I was and what everyone around me was. But out there the true path was lost.

  Leopards, lions, and wolves . . .

  “What do you think, Hadrian?” Durand asked.

  “What?” The bookish First Officer had been rattling his way through something about the freeze schedule—putting all but essential personnel back under the ice as our fortnight drew to an end. “Oh, yes.” A thought occurred to me, and I added, “Captain Corvo, if it’s all the same, I should advise against granting shore leave while we’re here.” Even as I spoke, I wiped at the back of my hand. A thin layer of grime—greasy and invisible—came away. I rubbed it between my fingers, unsure if my unease were grounded or merely Imperial superstition. “I don’t like this place.”

  “And what exactly is your problem?” Valka asked, catching up to me as I left Doctor Okoyo in the ship’s medica. Her heels rang on the metal grating, and she had to catch herself on the white-padded wall to steady herself—she was not yet used to the centripetal force that passed for gravity on March Station. Here in the ship, beneath street level, the pull was heavier than it had been in the city above, and I felt dragged down by my own feet. I wondered how fast March Station had to spin to maintain such drag. I’m sure Durand could have told me, but I never knew.

  I stopped, clutching the ampule and syringe kit in one hand. “I’m sorry?”

  The xenologist seemed a bit breathless, as if she’d been running all over the ship to find me. There was a flush in cheeks and her red-black hair was askew from its customary bun. “You were strange through that entire meeting. Like you were somewhere else.”

  Unsure of what to say, I rubbed my eyes with my free hand. “It’s nothing. Just this business with the blood.” I held up the ampule and needle for her to see. “The whole thing has me unsettled.”

  “Why?” She pushed loose hair behind one ear and walked with me, heading aftward for the brig.

  Briefly, I told her about Brevon and his homunculus, about what I feared might be done with the blood we were selling him. “He says they do pharmaceutical research, but you didn’t see this . . . slave concubine of his.” I must have walked three paces before I realized Valka had stopped walking with me. “What?” There exists no word for the expression she wore. Puzzlement, perhaps? Or pity? Anger? It was all of these and none. The way she pressed her lips together, brows raised but drawn together. I could not read those golden eyes, nor guess what lay behind them. I never could. When she didn’t speak, I asked again, “What?”

  “You’re a strange man, Hadrian.” She put her hands on her hips, looked briefly down at my feet—as if she were unable to look me in the eye. “You’ve done worse things—owned slaves, even—and this is what gives you pause? This is nothing.” Valka made a gesture like she was throwing something away. “’Tis blood. Not a person.”

  Without thinking, I thrust a finger in her face. “I have never done anything like that. This man tried to sell me a woman by talking about how obedient she was and how much use he gets out of her. Think of me whatever you like, but I am not that kind of man.”
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br />   For once, Valka was speechless. She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. At last she said, “I’m sorry, I . . .”

  I cut her off. “And I never owned slaves, Valka. Never!”

  “Your family . . .”

  “Is not me. What could I have done? Ordered my father to change his ways? My grandmother? Please. I was a child. But this . . .” I let the hand holding the ampule drop. “Whatever comes of this will be on me. Whatever creatures these Extras . . . produce, they’ll be alive because of me. Suffering because of me.”

  Valka sighed. “You put a lot on yourself.”

  “I just don’t want to make a mistake,” I said, forcing a thin smile, “not again.”

  “Listen to me,” she said, and there was an edge to her words I’d not heard in a long time. “You’ve made mistakes before, but this?” I could feel her eyes on me, but it was my turn to look away. “’Tis not one of them. Have you forgotten why ’tis we’re doing this?”

  I hadn’t.

  Valka was smiling.

  “Stop that,” I said, half-turning away.

  “Stop what?”

  “You’re making me uncomfortable.” I started walking again, eager to have this final task over and done with. “Come on then, we’ve got work to do.” Valka hurried after me. Unseen by Valka, a small but genuine smile forced itself onto my face, without irony or bitterness. Almost I did not notice it was there. Almost.

  The brig was dark as ever, what light there was keyed far into the red to protect the xenobite’s delicate eyes. Tanaran crouched curled on its bed, the sheets rumpled, the ruins of a meal beside it. It raised its eyes as we entered, bared its teeth in that threatening gesture that passed among its kind for a smile. “Hadrian-do.”

  “Tanaran,” I said, and nodding at the plate asked, “They’re feeding you well?” I knew full well the meal was only a kind of protein paste, slightly altered to accommodate the Cielcin’s alien biology. It would serve the carnivore, but it was no feast.

  “It is enough,” the creature said, speaking in stilted, painfully lucid Galstani. With patient slowness it stretched its legs before it until its feet touched the ground. It was too large for that cramped, human living space. It’s prehensile toes flexed against the metal floor, and it cocked its head to one side. Switching to its native language, it asked, “Have you news of my people?”

  Sighing, I placed the ampule and the needle in the pocket of my coat—no need to start in just yet. “We’re working on it. I think I’ve found someone who can get us to Vorgossos, this planet Uvanari spoke of.” At the sound of its dead captain’s name, the xenobite’s face twisted into some emotion I could not recognize.

  “Tutai,” Tanaran said at length, twitching its head in the affirmative. After a space, it said, still speaking in its native tongue, “And you think these yukajjimn, these other . . .” It broke off, spoke in Galstani. “These other humans. Do you think they can help me?”

  “Your captain thought so,” said Valka, speaking the xenobite’s language. “Uvanari said it had had dealings with these people before.”

  Tanaran opened its mouth, ran a hand over the short horns growing from its crest. “Belutoyu o-tajarin’ta,” it said. I do not know them. “I have never been to this place. I do not know what good I can do you.”

  “You won’t have to do anything,” I said. “Not until we reach your people. Except . . .” I drew out the ampule and the needle, cradled them in my hands. “Tanaran, I do need one thing from you.” I held the device up for it to see. “The men who have agreed to ferry us to Vorgossos asked for payment.”

  The Cielcin cocked its head again—toward the other shoulder, making me wonder if there was some coded subtlety of body language lost to me. “Biudate?”

  “Payment,” I repeated. “They asked for a vial of your blood.” I did not look at Valka, though I felt her standing there. I wondered if she knew the effort that statement had taken from me.

  The Cielcin sat there a moment, uncomprehending. “Tussun . . . ti-koun ne?” it asked. My blood? “Why?”

  How to explain? I bit my lip.

  Valka spared me the trial. Speaking in her now nearly flawless Cielcin, she said, “There are some of us who make a study of blood, of . . .” She cast about, searching for a way to translate the concept of genetics. Did the Cielcin even have such a science? It seemed incredible that they might not, but it was irresponsible to make assumptions. “Of heredity.” Valka seated herself in the room’s only chair, scooting as near to Tanaran as she was able. “They are men of learning. Men who want to understand your kind as we understand ourselves. How you are built.” She pressed a hand to her chest. “On the inside.”

  Tanaran seemed to mull this over, its mouth open to reveal its glass-shard teeth. “They mean to study us? To make weapons?”

  “That is a possibility,” I said, thinking of the Chantry. Of the biological weapons the Inquisition held as club over the heads of disobedient lords. So exact were they, so terrible, that they might decimate a local population—precisely decimate it—to punish such a rebellious lord. Indeed, I recalled that I had heard such whispers on Emesh, when the Gray Rot was thick on the streets. There had been those who said the illness was not chance-brought from offworld, but the Chantry’s punishment for some crime on the part of House Mataro. What crime that was none had said, but rumor dies a slow death, and is born—as mice were once believed to be—of the very earth itself.

  It blew air through its four slitted nostrils. Derision? Surrender? “Most would deny such possibilities.”

  “I will not lie to you,” I lied, though this at least was true. “It may be that they will do exactly that. For what it’s worth, I don’t like it either.” And here I did glance at Valka, wishing she did not understand the xenobites’ tongue. I did not mention how I had refused to offer my own blood. By some miracle I had come through this episode in Valka’s good graces, and with all the rest of my experience piled upon me like a yoke, I was in no hurry to add to my burden. “But it will get us where we want to go, and it may get you home.”

  Tanaran jerked its head toward its left shoulder. No. “Rajithatayu,” it said, then in Galstani, “I will not sell myself to your people.” It wrapped long arms about itself. “They will have a piece of me, and it will be theirs. And I will be theirs.”

  Some part of me wanted to turn to Valka, to spread my hands and say, See! It understands! But I did not gloat. Too dire were the circumstances, and I would only weaken my position.

  “We could take it from you,” I suggested, “by force.” I tried to soften the threat with a smile, forgetting that the expression meant almost nothing to the xenobite. “So that you will not have been dishonored.”

  Tanaran blew air through its nostrils once again. “Dishonored,” it said. Dishonored. Literally to lose one’s place. “Veih. No.”

  Valka cleared her throat. “’Tis only a little blood. You let us draw it to put you in fugue.”

  “That was different,” Tanaran insisted. “I am in your power already. Your prisoner. Yours. This . . .” It tugged its head down to the left shoulder once more. “You would sell me to new masters.”

  “We would have you return to your old one,” I said.

  “We would have you go home,” Valka corrected, softening my words.

  The xenobite puts its hand on its head, on the place behind its saurian crest where the white hair sprang thick as a dog’s fur. So like human hands they were. Like—and yet unlike. Those too-long fingers, tipped with black talons in place of nails, kneading the flesh beneath. The moment those fingers moved, the illusion of their humanity was broken, and they were transformed to something more akin to the twitching legs of spiders. The lines of muscle beneath that milky flesh tied themselves to bone in ways strange to any human anatomist.

  “Tanaran,” I said into the stretching silence, unable to take my eyes a
way from those awful, twitching hands. “There’s no other choice. I’m sorry.”

  I am told that the hunter who enjoys his time alone in the wilderness does so because in his solitude—an animal among animals—he is not a man but Man. The face he wears then is that of our species, his actions our actions, his hand our hand. I had felt a glimmering of that feeling once before, when I’d been left alone with Uvanari in the cell beneath the Borosevo bastille. I wondered if the xenobite before me had a sense of that same feeling. That in that cell it was not Tanaran at all but Cielcin, and that the Cielcin would fight to the last. I had to remind myself that this was no warrior, no officer like Uvanari had been.

  If only it had still been frozen. If only we’d had the other Cielcin to spare. We might have avoided all this unpleasantness and taken the blood directly from the medica. Tanaran would never have had to know. But our departure from the Balmung had left no time for such planning, even if I could have foreseen such an eventuality.

  “Promise me something,” the alien said. “When we find my people, do not tell them of this.”

  I pretended to mull this over a moment. I could think of no reason why this would matter to Tanaran’s superiors, but I couldn’t think of a reason not to do as it asked, either. After a moment, I said, “As you wish.”

  Valka stirred in the low seat. “Why? What does it matter?”

  “I am baetan,” the creature said. “I belong to my master. To my people. And to no other. I am theirs, and keeper of their sacred past.”