The Nine

by Molles, DJ

  The halfbreed’s head continued to hang. “No one. Teran and Sagum and Stuber were there when I played the message, but I don’t suppose that matters now, does it?”

  It did not. But there was no purpose in saying so.

  “You did not whisper of this to anyone else? Any other human being?”

  “No.”

  “And what of these Outsiders that you were amongst. Were any of them aware of what the message said? Perhaps your Uncle Sergio?”

  The halfbreed shook his head. “No. No one else.” He lifted his head partially, his eyes not going up to Lux’s but insteady fixated on Lux’s hands, which were clasped at his waist. “Warden Abbas. I told him some of it.”

  “I am not concerned with Warden Abbas. He will be dealt with soon enough. Are you telling me the truth?”

  Percival remained transfixed by Lux’s hands. “Yes.”

  Lux turned his head and regarded his attending mech. The mech raised its placid face to him and nodded once. The readings were conclusive: Percival was telling the truth.

  “Very well,” Lux said, then turned towards the door.

  “You’re going to kill us,” the halfbreed murmured to his back.

  Lux stopped. Turned. Found Percival looking him straight in the eyes. His expression appeared blank. Unworried. A simple question, with a simple answer.

  “I will not, personally,” Lux answered. “But, yes.”

  “How will you do it?” Percival asked.

  Lux tilted his head. “How would you like to die?”

  Then the halfbreed did something very strange. He smiled. Leaned back against his restraints. Uttered a single, wheezing laugh. “Drunk, and quick.”

  Lux frowned at him, sensing that this was some sort of morbid humor to which he was not privy. “We are not monsters, despite what you may think. If that is how you’d like to die, I can accommodate that.”

  The smile remained fixed on Percival’s mouth, but his eyes did an odd flare. “A bottle for each of us, then. And a bullet to the brain.”

  Lux nodded, still frowning. “This can be arranged.”

  The halfbreed settled back into his restraints, bowing his head again, though still with that ghostly smile on his lips. He seemed to have nothing else to say, so Lux left, his attending mech following him out the door.

  When it slid closed behind him, Lux began walking down the long white hall towards the front of the House of Inquisitions, away from the holding cells. “I doubt anybody in The Clouds drinks that swill,” Lux remarked, knowing that his fellow demigods preferred other means of reaching altered states of consciousness. Alcohol was so very primitive. Perfect for peons with nothing better to do. “You’ll need to go to the Outer City to retrieve it. You can requisition four bottles from the praetorian’s quartermaster.”

  Lux stopped, looked at his mech thoughtfully. “What of the other mechanical man? The one that calls itself Whimsby?”

  The attending was not built for expressiveness, and so its face remained as it ever was. But it did tilt its head back, as though feigning fascination in its own rudimentary way. “A most intriguing anomaly. Over the course of its existence, the mech named Whimsby appears to have gained a form of individual intelligence. Its programming centers are not corrupted, and have had all their required updates, and yet it appears to be able to choose not to follow its directives. Your squire even attempted to give it direct commands. It followed some, when the request was ordinary, but denied others when they appeared to be against the interest of its human companions.”

  Lux stroked his chin. “That is intriguing. Could the humans have re-programmed it somehow to disrupt its original hierarchy of command?”

  “It showed no evidence of tampering, and it would be unlikely that any of the humans would know how to do such a thing.”

  “Well.” Lux looked down the hall, back towards the holding cells. “Clearly we will need to dismantle it, but I should like to speak to it first. Is it incapacitated?”

  “Of course, sir. It seemed to desire to kill us if given the chance, so we have kept it attached to a freeze collar.”

  “Very odd.” Lux continued down the hall, wondering about the imports of this, and whether or not some of the older mechs in The Clouds might need to be dismantled to prevent such an anomaly from occurring again.

  That was when the House of Inquisitions shook.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  THE HOUSE OF INQUISITIONS

  Mala gave the two paladins standing guard no chance.

  The first managed to say, “No admittance without prior—” before she thrust the blade of her longstaff through his chest and blew him apart with a single bolt, painting the white stone behind him with what was left.

  The second activated his shield and fell into a fighting stance, but received a flurry of bolts from the eleven paladins that stood behind Mala on the steps of the House of Inquisitions. His shield fell somewhere in there, and the last few bolts reduced him to a mess of bones and gristle.

  Mala squared herself to the door, her boots slipping in the mire of blood. She attempted to connect to the door mechanism with Confluence and push it aside, but it was closed to her, as she suspected.

  “Stand back,” she ordered as Rixo and his ten compatriots crowded around her. They drew back as she took two steps down and leveled her longstaff at the door. She fired three bolts in rapid succession that battered the door and sent it crashing in, leaving a smoldering ruin of charred and molten rock.

  Mala strode through the haze of smoke, her shield activating on instinct. She called over her shoulder as she swept into the vast atrium: “Only kill who you must. Find the halfbreed. Leave the others.”

  The atrium was a towering room, the ceiling a full fifty feet above their heads, in order to accommodate the massive statue of Rennok, molded of cold steel, one hand upraised to the heavens, the other holding a huge scale, the plates of which you could land a skiff on.

  Two halls diverged on the atrium, and two staircases spiraled up behind the statue to the second level. Rixo pointed with his longstaff to the right hallway. “The holding cells will be on the main floor. You four take the right passage. You four, hold the atrium and don’t let anyone come down those steps or in through that door. The rest of you come with me and Mala.”

  The paladins, trained and hungry for a battle outside the contraints of the dueling arenas, fanned out as they were told, taking to the right passage with their shields activated and longstaffs at the ready, while the others took positions at the giant feet of Rennok’s statue.

  Mala strode for the left passage. “I’ll be surprised if they resist at all,” she remarked, eyeing the second floor and spying the black robes of one of the squires running full tilt back into the depths of the building. “They are the house of peace, after all.”

  “Not a bad first target,” Rixo commented airily. “Certainly unexpected.”

  A figure erupted from the passage ahead of Mala, and she came to a halt, her legs splayed out wide for balance, her longstaff leveled at the black-robed paladin.

  “Mala!” Lux skidded to a stop, his face a mess of confusion and indignation. “What is the meaning of this?”

  “The meaning of this is pragmatism and survival,” Mala said, sidestepping as Rixo’s paladins spread out to surround Lux. “I believe I told you that they take precedent over ideas. Including your own.”

  Lux’s eyes jagged from one to the other, and then back to Mala. His hands were held up, as though beseeching peace—how very typical of House Rennok—but he seemed to realize that he wouldn’t get it, and then the air shimmered around him, and his shield struck itself into a protective dome.

  “No longstaff, Lux?” Mala queried, circling wide around him. “You’re ill prepared for the changes that are crashing down on your head.”

  Lux pivoted inside his shield, aware that many longstaffs were trained on him. “Rennok is a house of peace. I never thought I would need a longstaff here.” His eyes caught Ma
la’s. “You are making a terrible mistake, Mala. This will create war. Here. In The Clouds. Houses set against each other.”

  “War is what we need,” she bit back. “Now surrender yourself. You won’t be harmed. But if you make my paladins destroy your shield, they won’t stop until you’re dead.”

  Lux must have known he had no other option, but still he hesitated. Five longstaffs trained on him. It would only take a few bolts from each to bring down his shield. Just a few seconds of life left to him, if he pushed their hand.

  He straightened. The shield around his dissipated.

  Mala took two steps towards him, her longstaff still aimed at his chest. “Your personal. Take it out. Throw it over to me.”

  Lux looked at her, his eyes narrowed and severe. He reached into an inner pocket of his robes and drew out a small, rectangle of metal. He grimaced as he held it in his hands, and then tossed it into the air.

  Mala caught it with one hand, and pushed on it with Confluence. She sensed the functions inside, like empty alcoves where a mind should be able to go, but she could not enter them. It was tuned only to Lux. This was his shield.

  Satisfied, she pocketed the personal and strode towards Lux, stopping just out of reach of him. She might be far better than him in the dueling arena, but she wasn’t stupid. And he was a desperate man, prone, in these moments, to do desperate things.

  “I mean to take the halfbreed,” Mala said. “Where is he?”

  Luc searched her face as though wondering if there was a way to talk her out of this. He must have realized there wasn’t. He jerked his head. “Down that hall. The first cell on your left.”

  Mala twitched her longstaff at Lux. “I can’t open the doors, Lux. Only an inquisitor can. You’re coming with us.” She projected her voice over her shoulder. “Rixo, if Inquisitor Lux makes any hostile movements, blow him apart.” Then back to Lux, she smiled hurmorlessly. “Lead the way.”

  ***

  Perry heard the blast, though he didn’t know what it was.

  His mind was so detached, so absent from what he normally was, that he barely reacted to it at all when the building trembled. He raised his head, frowning.

  It didn’t matter now, did it?

  He’d felt this before. When he’d been in prison for bashing Tiller’s brains in. The pontiff in his chest plate, with his prideful demeanor, had offered Perry conscription into The Light, and Perry had declined. He had resigned himself to hanging from a rope. A fast drop. A short shock. And then nothing.

  The After?

  Did it even exist? Did any of it even exist?

  There were gods, and demigods. But none of them were supreme. None of them were real gods, were they? They were just people. People with abilities far beyond humans, and so they became deities, because there was nothing you could do to stop them, and if you were powerless over something, then it was a god to you.

  He thought of Stuber’s prayer that he murmured over the fallen legionnaires and peons, before giving them mercy, and putting them out of their misery.

  Be at peace. Accept this mercy, and go to The After.

  But what was on the other side of a bullet to the brain?

  Where do we come from? And where do we go?

  Perry feared that it was nothing. He feared that it would only be the absence of self that he had felt when Inquisitor Lux had attached the Immobilizer to the back of his head. Except that, in that dark void, he’d known that he was in it.

  After the bullet, he wouldn’t even know. He wouldn’t think.

  That was what lay ahead of Perry. Incomprehensible nothingness.

  It was in the middle of this malaise that Perry heard the cell door open. He didn’t bother looking up. He saw the black shape out of the corner of his vision, and that told him all he needed to know.

  “You got a bottle of whiskey so soon?” Perry murmured at his feet. “Well, if you’re ready, then I’m ready.”

  Boots approached. Stood there beside him. They were scuffed and mud-smeared.

  Perry frowned at them.

  “Well, I didn’t bring whiskey,” a stern female voice proclaimed. “But I am ready.”

  Perry’s gaze shot up. “Mala,” he grated out. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m breaking you out.” She gave him an inquiring glance. “That is, if you’re not in the mood to simply lay down and die.”

  Perry stared into her face, his mind whirling now, a dizzying convolution of thoughts. “What do you want from me?”

  “Nothing has changed,” she said. “I want the same thing from you that I already said.”

  “I won’t work with you. I don’t trust you.”

  “Stubborn ass.” She loomed over him, bending at the waist so her face was close to his. A strand of her dark hair tickled his cheek. “You’d rather die? You’d rather give up any chance of making a change in the way this world works? You’d rather waste away all the time and grief and effort that you’ve put in, simply to spite me? But it has no effect on me, Percival. You only hurt yourself, and your cause, and your people. Is that what you want? More of the same? More of the status quo? You want to lay down and do nothing with yourself, rather than trust a paladin?”

  Do nothing?

  No. Perry had promised to do something with himself. He’d made that promise to his father, to his friends…

  Stuber, Teran, Sagum.

  Fixed on Mala’s fierce gaze, Perry forced himself back from the brink on which he’d been standing since he’d accepted his fate. Now he rejected it. This might not be the way out he’d wanted, but it was a way out.

  “Unlock me,” Perry said.

  Mala turned to the door. “Rixo! Bring Lux in here!”

  Perry stared as Lux entered the room first, his hands up in surrender, prodded along by a tall paladin with a cocksure manner about him. And then came three more paladins, one entering behind the cocky one, the other two remaining in the hall, stationing themselves on either side of the door.

  “Gods,” Perry breathed, eyes cutting to Mala. “There’s a lot of paladins all of the sudden. Who are they?”

  “They’re the people risking everything to free you,” Mala shot back. “Inquisitor Lux, undo the halfbreed’s restraints.”

  Lux looked as though he’d just been forced to swallow some bitter swill. But he bent down and touched the restraints on Perry’s ankle. The electrified beam that held his feet to the floor disappeared and the manicles fell away with a clatter of steel on stone. Lux fixed his eyes on Perry for a brief moment, his finger poised over the manicles on Perry’s wrists.

  “You will never be anything,” he whispered. “You’re destined to fail. You haven’t changed your fate, Percival. Only prolonged it.”

  Perry leaned towards him, feeling that old familiar flame inside of him, the glow of it, the redness of The Calm, his defiance against a world set against him. “Maybe I’ll prolong it long enough to bring all this down on you.”

  Lux sniffed, then touched the manicles, causing them to unlatch.

  Perry didn’t wait. He lurched from the column of stone to which he’d been affixed, ignoring the ache in his back and shoulders from being hunched in one position for so long. He took a step back from the gathered paladins, not knowing who to address first.

  “My clasp,” Perry said. “My clasp and my longstaff. I want them. Now.”

  Mala’s eyes narrowed, perhaps recalling the last time he’d had both tools in his possession, and what a pain he’d made of himself because of it.

  “You want me to trust you?” Perry demanded. “Well, that’s a two-way street. I’m not fucking moving from this room until I get my clasp and my longstaff.”

  Mala hissed through clenched teeth. Turned to Lux. “Where’s the halfbreed’s clasp and longstaff?”

  Lux pointed to his robes, but didn’t go into them. “The clasp I have in my pocket. The longstaff is currently being held as evidence.”

  Mala jerked her own longstaff. “Give him his clasp bac
k.”

  Lux reached into his pocket with exaggerated slowness, and drew out the clasp. Perry snatched it out of his hand, felt the pull of it, and connected to it. Relief flooded him, like a part of himself had been reattached. Strange how quickly he had grown accustomed to having it.

  “And my longstaff?”

  Mala shook her head. “The longstaff we don’t have time for. Not sure if you heard the explosion, but me and my fellow paladins have just assaulted the House of Inquisition. It would be best if we didn’t waste time.”

  Perry activated his shield, crossing his arms belligerently over his chest. A sidelong glance at his formerly-wounded shoulder showed nothing more than a pale pucker of scar tissue. For a moment, he frowned at himself, wondering how on earth it had healed so rapidly.

  Figure it out later.

  He faced the paladins again. Jutted out his chin.

  The paladin named Rixo uttered a laugh. “Mala, does the halfbreed realize that it would take us about two seconds to down his shield?”

  “Down it then,” Perry said. “And blow me apart in the process. And turn your whole operation into a senseless waste. Your choice.”

  Rixo chuckled, but kept his longstaff addressed at Lux. “I’m of half a mind to do it. Mala, is this really the one you want?”

  “It’s the one we’ve got,” Mala said. She looked across Rixo to the other paladin in the room. “Callidus, give him your longstaff.”

  The one called Callidus jerked his head up. “You must be joking.”

  “There’s no time for jokes,” she answered, looking at Perry. “The halfbreed is of uncommon willfulness, and I would like to leave the premises before finding out how far his willfulness goes. Give it to him.”

  Callidus sneered, then threw the longstaff at Perry.

  Perry had just enough time to lower his shield and snatch the longstaff out of the air. He immediately connected to it and the blade glowed the second it touched his fingers.

  Callidus shrugged. “At least his reflexes aren’t terrible. Maybe we can do something with him after all.”