Howling Dark (Sun Eater)

by Christopher Ruocchio

  “The Royal Victorians . . .” I breathed. “I don’t deserve that.”

  “Evidently His Radiance thinks differently,” the First Strategos said. “Congratulations.”

  “I . . . thank you.”

  “For myself, I see the reason. You’re a great hero, the first to slay one of those War Princes in single combat, the man who located them in the first place.”

  I realized I was still kneeling and stood as steadily as I could, not aided in this by my half-lame left arm. “I didn’t do any of that alone. You destroyed their fleet, for one, and we would never have survived without Doctor Onderra, or Captain Lin for that matter. Or Knight-Tribune Smythe and Sir William.” And saying their names out loud reminded me of just what had happened to them and why, reminded me that this genteel old soldier had given the order that cost Smythe and Crossflane their lives.

  Hauptmann rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. “All the same, dear boy, you are of the blood palatine, and your own men say it was you who struck the killing blow. We’re reviewing suit camera footage, of course, but you are an Imperial kinsman, however distantly, and His Radiance clearly wishes to make a positive example of you. There’s some precedent, though as we’ve alluded to . . . your age . . . You may be the youngest Royal Victorian I’ve ever heard of, Imperial Princes not withstanding—and between you and me: nobody counts them.”

  Something Hauptmann had said had its hook in me, and I said, “My men. Your Excellency, am I allowed to take my people with me when I go to Forum? My Red Company has been with me for some time; it wouldn’t do to abandon them.”

  “Your armsmen, are they?”

  I shook my head. “Not formally, Your Excellency, no. I have no formal rank, my father disinherited me some years ago. They are only mercenaries, but they are my mercenaries.”

  The First Strategos mulled this over a moment, fingers slowly tracking through holograph forms embedded in his desk. Presently he found what he was looking for and—pausing to make a note—flashed a copy of it to my terminal. “I see no reason why not.” He inclined his head to the papers he’d just sent me. “Your marching orders. The Schiavona’s been repaired and refueled. I’ll have word sent that your people are to be taken aboard—in fugue if necessary.”

  I stood numbly still a moment, trying to figure out how to thank the man, but the gears that turned over in Titus Hauptmann’s conscientious mind had turned to a new task, and he waved me on saying, “Well, go on, then. You’ve orders to appear before the Emperor. Do not keep His Radiance waiting.”

  CHAPTER 79

  DEPARTURE

  “I DON’T BELIEVE ’TIS happening,” Valka said, taking me aside just outside the door to the umbilical that would take us out into the Schiavona where it hung in the great repair bay beneath the Sieglinde. I could see the ship through the portholes, the black adamant of her hull glowing darkly in the overhead lights of the bay where men in vacuum suits drifted about on wires in the throes of some final flight preparations. “The Emperor? The Sollan Emperor?”

  “I know!” I said, finding her hand with my strong one. “I know.”

  She bit her lip, eyes darting to the door, where a line of technicians and soldiers busied themselves carrying equipment and luggage from the old Mistral to the Schiavona. The Mistral was to be left behind, packed away in the Obdurate or in one of the fleet’s other massive carriers, abandoned to what fate I did not know. We needed speed, and the Legion interceptor was far faster than even her Uhran-made counterpart. Valka looked down, staring at some point on my chest. Before long she said, “I’m not sure I can go with you.”

  I felt my heart slide sideways in my chest, and I squeezed her hand. “Why not?”

  “To Forum?” she said, free hand going to the back of her neck. “You know.”

  Her neural lace. The computer matrix embedded throughout the tissues of her brain. Here on the fringes of Imperial society, even on Emesh, those implants might go unnoticed, but on Forum? In the shining heart of Imperial power and the Chantry’s authority?

  I set my forehead against hers, trying to turn her face up. “You’re Tavrosi; they’ll know what you are and none of them would dare trouble you for it.” Speaking then in her native Panthai to stymie any pricking ears, I said, “Let’s just keep the . . . witchcraft to a minimum, eh?”

  She punched me in the ribs. I winced. I heard Valka suck in a breath. “’Twas your bad side, wasn’t it?” I flailed my half-useless arm in answer, jaw clenched. She drew closer. “I’m sorry.”

  I kissed her, good hand holding hers, and felt the pain bleed out of me, lost behind the blossoming warmth in my chest. I fancied I heard some of the Red Company holler from their place in the boarding line, but neither Valka nor I paid them any mind. When at last we broke apart, I said, “Come with me anyway.”

  It was an incredible thing to ask. A mad thing. Stupid and irresponsible, but I asked it all the same. I had told her everything. About the Quiet, about the howling Dark, and the rivers of light. About my visions and about just what had happened to me. In those early days, I cannot say if it was love for me or for her work that moved her—likely it was both—but she smiled. “All right,” she said, and taking me by the back of the neck she bent me once more to kiss her.

  “Well, look at you two! About time!” We broke apart, fingers coming apart only against their will. I looked on, embarrassed; Valka annoyed.

  Pallino came striding up the hall, the rest of my myrmidons in tow. He had his luggage—a common soldier’s rucksack over one shoulder, his gray hair newly cropped, his single eye smiling.

  “It’s not new, dear,” Elara said, matter-of-factly. “You just haven’t been paying attention.” She smiled at us both, more approving aunt or older sister than cautious mother, I thought, though she was younger than Valka, at least. “Still, good to see you out in the open about it.” She stood a little closer to Pallino then, positively beaming.

  Siran smiled at us, too. “What’s this about going to see the Emperor?” She shifted her own luggage from one shoulder to the other. “Didn’t think they invited mercenaries to the palace.”

  “Or homunculi.” Crim and Ilex had come up just behind, evidently bringing up the rear of the personnel train transferring over from the Mistral. Crim smoothed down his unruly dark hair. “Corvo and Durand aren’t far behind. She’s trying to wring a price for the ship out of the Legion financiers, God help them.”

  “She’ll get it,” Siran said, smirking. Was that the first time I’d seen her smile since Ghen’s death? I couldn’t be sure. “And I hear you’re some kind of knight now? Don’t go expecting me to bow or anything.”

  Pallino arched his eyebrows. “Not just any kind of knight, Siran. The lad’s been named to the Victorians. That means you will bow if he asks you to.”

  “He won’t ask,” I said, a shade too grimly. I forced a smile. “I’m still me. And if any of you start sir-ing me I’ll knock you flat.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it, sir,” Ilex said, grinning.

  My friends.

  I had meant what I told Titus Hauptmann, that I had not done what I had done alone. I did not deserve them, but then . . . perhaps none of us ever does. See them standing there! How bright that memory. Pallino, who was like a father to me, with his clear eye and easy bravura. Elara, so often in his shadow, but without whom I think old Pallino would have come undone. Siran, still bereft without her oldest friend, but iron to the very core of her. Crim, so quick to laugh as he was to cut a man, as the best Jaddians always are. Ilex, the dryad, the homunculus, forever lonely, her every smile just a little bit sad. And Valka, Valka most of all. Valka, whose every word might cut me as sure as Prince Aranata’s sword, yet was more precious to me than breathing. How far we had come together—and how much further there was to go.

  Captain Otavia Corvo appeared then, with the bespectacled and forever-beleaguered First Officer Dur
and at her side, fumbling with both his and his captain’s luggage. And behind them, unseen until they approached, came one more. The specter at the feast, overlooked and uninvited.

  “William,” I said, brushing past Valka to stand before the door to the umbilical. I used his right name once more to keep the cold distance hard between us.

  We were the last in line, the others having made their clambering way aboard. I could hear their voices behind, calling, laughing, joking; foederati and proper soldiers alike, the Legions and the Red Company.

  Switch would not look at me. I learned later that he had fought under Jinan in the Demiurge, and had been present when the Red Company came to relieve us in the battle for the bay. I had not seen him, not since I sent him away aboard the Mistral. He had been avoiding me, and for good reason. The black thread of anger that ran through Titus Hauptmann and Bassander Lin, ran through Raine Smythe and William Crossflane’s mutilated and half-eaten corpses and through the lives of all those brave soldiers started here. Ended here. With him. My friend.

  “Hadrian,” he said, and screwed his eyes shut. “I heard what happened. I . . . I should have been there.” I could feel all those eyes on me, wondering what I would do.

  “No,” I said, “none of us should have been there.”

  “I’m sorry!” he said, taking a step forward. “Is that what you wanted me to say?”

  “No,” I said again. “I didn’t want you to say anything.” I turned to go, to be the first through the umbilical to the ship. Whatever else had happened, however strange my world had become, still I felt his betrayal more sharply than the edge of my own sword.

  Footsteps behind. “Don’t turn your back on me again!” A hand on my shoulder. My bad shoulder. Wincing, I turned, stepping in such a way as to torque my hips and drive my good fist hard up under the other man’s ribs. If I’d wanted to. I never raised my hand. The speed alone startled Switch and sent him leaping back.

  The others were all watching. Just like in the Mistral’s gym, their eyes wide, hands half-ready at their sides—though ready for what not a one of them knew. I did not raise my hands, I did not even raise my voice. “Could we have some privacy, please?” I asked, not turning my eyes to the others. “I’ll be along presently.” The others were a minute complying, eyes flicking from one to the other where they stood in a loose knot around the two of us.

  “Let’s let them talk,” Pallino said, perhaps more sensitive to the sort of anger I felt than any of the others. Taking Elara by the arm, he said, “Come on, then.” Crim flashed me a worried look, and clapped me on the shoulder as he passed, followed by Ilex, Corvo, and the rest. Valka lingered in the doorway—I could see her shadow on the black decking.

  Then the final retreat of feet.

  I looked at Switch properly for the first time, my jaw set. He seemed somehow more like the scared boy I’d first known than the man he’d later become. Before, I had pitied that fear, and tried to make him strong, but now I only reviled him for it. That is no easy thing, to admit your own friends repulse you, and yet he did.

  “I want to come with you,” Switch said.

  “No,” I said for a third time.

  He took a considered step forward, hand outstretched. “Had, please.”

  “You got them killed,” I said, and there was not a drop of warmth in my voice. “Crossflane, Smythe, Greenlaw—Earth knows how many others.” I saw my own body toppling as my eyes went dark, as I struggled to breathe with lungs that weren’t even there anymore.

  Switch’s mouth worked open and closed like a fish, and after a while he managed, “That . . . that isn’t fair.” Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe nothing was fair. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to be. “I thought you were going to die down on Vorgossos.”

  “So you sold me out to Bassander Lin?” I sneered. “I died, Switch!” The words escaped me at full force, unbidden, unprepared for, spoken loud and clear where I felt certain ship’s security would pick it up. For the moment, it didn’t matter.

  The other man’s eyes were wide as dinner plates, as an officer’s phalera medals. “You . . .”

  “Died!” I said, but did not stop to explain. Switch had not been there. Switch had not seen. “And the Cielcin all died, too! Died because Bassander Lin was only following orders. We almost had them!” I waved my right hand. “We almost had peace! Or something like it! And we didn’t get it because of you. Because you betrayed me! You summoned Lin here! And Hauptmann! All to save your skin! Not mine! Not anyone else’s! Yours!” Without realizing it, I was shouting. Suddenly self-conscious, knowing that Valka at least had not gone too far, I quieted down. “You were supposed to be my friend.”

  “I am your friend.”

  “No,” I said. Four times now. “You’re not. Not anymore.” I raised my good hand. “Get out of here.”

  The first tears began to fall, but I cannot say if they were his or mine. My hand shook, but did not fall. After a moment’s silence, Switch took a long, rattling breath. “Where should I go?”

  “Wherever you like,” I said, and let my hand fall at last. I turned quickly, stepping over the threshold into the boarding umbilical.

  “Hadrian, wait! I—” But I had already punched the airlock door behind me, and the door sealed with a hiss and a metallic bang. Hidden from the world for a moment by two doors of solid steel, I slid to my knees and wept. For Switch, for our friendship. I wept for Smythe, for Crossflane, for Aranata, for Nobuta, and Tanaran. I wept for the soldiers we lost, for the futures that might have been.

  And for myself. Myself most of all.

  CHAPTER 80

  HALFMORTAL

  “ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?” Valka asked when I came in through the umbilical alone. She could tell I’d been crying, but did not press, did not ask where Switch had gone. She knew. They all knew.

  Without speaking, I wrapped my good arm around her and pulled her close, screwing my eyes shut, as if I might crush out all light by doing so. We stood there a long moment, neither of us moving, entirely alone. When at last I’d pulled myself back together, I drew back and asked, “Where are the others?”

  The lights in the vestibule were low, the walls bare stainless steel. Through the door behind, the hall stretched black and golden, strangely warm for a military ship. When Valka spoke, her voice was soft, as concerned as ever I had heard it. “I sent them on. Told them you needed a moment.”

  “What did I do to deserve you?”

  “Aren’t we presumptuous?” she said, echoing that time on Vorgossos. She smiled, broke into brief but rippling laughter. “You don’t deserve me, anyway.”

  Very serious, I said, “I know that.”

  She kissed me again. “Good.” Her eyes shone in the dimness, sparkling up at me, yellow as a cat’s. “I still can’t believe you’re alive. I saw you . . .” Her voice trailed away to naught, and I held her more tightly.

  “I know,” I said softly, “I know.”

  “You really think it was the Quiet?”

  “Do you doubt it?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t have any other explanation, but ’tis . . .’tis mad. They’re supposed to be extinct, Hadrian. A dead race. I’m an archaeologist. I’m not . . .”

  “A witch?”

  She made a face, and for a moment I thought she might swat me again, but she restrained herself. Valka drew away, examining me up and down, as though she suspected something. “’Tis really you, not some clone of Sagara’s?”

  I froze. That thought had not occurred to me. “No,” I decided, “it’s me. Kharn Sagara would not have wasted time interrogating me if I were his creature.” I could see the fever in the reborn Kharn’s eyes.

  If I die, what happens to me?

  “Besides,” I said, “there’s this.” I drew out the shell fragment and held it up for Valka to see. “I left it in my coat in the hangar after . . . after we lost Smythe. When
I . . . came back, when I returned . . . I had it with me.” Valka did not state the obvious, which was that I had received it from Brethren, who was Kharn’s creature. But I knew, the city I had seen in my vision—that crumbling landscape and the sound of the infant wailing. I had seen much the same thing in Calagah on Emesh.

  Valka took the bit of shell from my palm.

  “I still don’t know what this is,” she said.

  “I bet if you studied it, you’d find it looks exactly like the stones in Calagah,” I said, not knowing where the words came from, but almost certain I was right.

  “Just black . . .” Valka quoted, referring to the stones of the Quiet ruins, which had no molecular structure to speak of, were only a single piece of solid black.

  “A kind of highmatter?”

  “Maybe,” she said, eyes shining again with that mania only her love of ancient things could kindle. “I’ll have to take a look at it.” She smiled up at me. “I’ll let you know if you’re right!”

  “What’s that?” A new voice slashed across our conversation, shattering our moment alone.

  Valka closed her hand over the shard, smiling at Bassander Lin, who stood framed in the door to the vestibule, his face in shadow. She spoke before I could. “Jewelry,” she said, stepping forward in such a way that half put her between Bassander and myself. “A trifle.”

  The Mandari captain stepped out of the hall light, face coming into focus as his brows rose. “Ah.” His black eyes searched for something in my face. What that something was, and if he found it there, was anybody’s guess. The man stepped forward, chin thrust out, shoulders squared and back. I thought he might strike me—thought I might strike him. But he stopped a few paces from me, taking in the racked vacuum suits where they hung in their wall niches, the rubberized floor, the white, joyless lighting. “Every time I see you standing there, I see you cut down,” he said, and blessed himself, touching fingers to forehead, lips, and chest. “By Earth, in all my years, I never thought . . .” His words ran down to nothing, jaw gone slack. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”