The Bale Stars, turning black and rotten.
Fel shuts the heavy door behind them and the papers scudding on the floor settle. Raine stands in amongst them with her arms folded tight across her chest. He crosses over to her. In the years he has known her, and in all of their time spent fighting together and otherwise, Fel has never seen Raine look so thoroughly dismantled.
‘What is troubling you?’ he asks her.
Raine unfolds her arms and runs one hand over her hair. That is why it has come so loose.
‘Just an old injury,’ she says. ‘Tell me what you found.’
Fel knows she means more than she says, and not to press her on it. Her will is her own, as it always has been.
‘I found the Strixians,’ he says. ‘And those who made them.’
He connects the datakey to the portable slate he is carrying and passes it to her. Raine pages through the records, taking them in quickly with her keen eyes.
‘Do you recognise any of the names?’ he asks her.
Raine frowns. ‘No,’ she says. ‘Not one. Not from records or reports or even stories. Ghosts, in all the ways it can be true, looking at these records. Every one of them listed as killed in action.’
‘But they are ghosts accounted for by the same medicae,’ Fel says.
Raine nods. ‘Who is herself a ghost.’
Fel asks her for the tablet back and pulls up the medical records attributed to Isabella Luz. He hands it back to Raine.
‘This record is locked with a passcode on top of the alpha-grade authorisation,’ he says. ‘Look at the date.’
She does, and her frown deepens. Raine moves her fingers over the keys, and types a word into the slate. It whirs for a moment, and then a word blinks green on the projected screen.
AUTHORISED.
Fel stares at it.
‘What code did you use?’ he asks. ‘What is higher than alpha-grade?’
Raine takes a breath.
‘Manticore,’ she says.
The pict-feed opens to a wide shot of a medicae facility like any number of others that Raine has seen across the crusade front. A flakboard room, bare and clinical. Isabella Luz sits on a stool to speak into the capture device. She must have been in her late thirties when the capture was taken. Her skin is mid-brown, her hair shaved down to the bare scalp. Her eyes are keen and hazel coloured, but they sit in an exhausted face. There is a minor spatter of blood on the collar of her uniform that continues onto her throat.
‘Begin recording,’ Luz says. ‘Surgeon-Major Isabella Luz. After-action report for the battle of Steadfast.’
Luz goes on to list casualty numbers. Those who went missing. Those who were killed. The numbers are astronomical, even to Raine, who knows well the cost of war. Steadfast is to this day the largest undertaking in the crusade’s history. Their greatest triumph.
Or at least it has always appeared to be so.
‘This doesn’t bode well,’ Fel says, quietly.
Raine shakes her head. She knows they are standing at the edge of the shadow. She can feel it.
Luz finishes her lists and her recordings of numbers, and then she stops and rubs absently at that blood marking her throat.
‘The Lord-General Militant was wounded badly today facing down the traitor calling himself Dektar the Ascended. Such cuts would have killed a lesser man. The walk back even more so.’
Luz pauses and shakes her head.
‘Five miles,’ she says. ‘With one lung collapsed and lacerations to three major organs. He still tried to fight his Lions when they wanted to put him under and bring him in.’
Luz leans her elbows on the desk the capture device is mounted on. She wrings her hands as she speaks.
‘I was able to stabilise him,’ she says. ‘And to repair a good deal of the damage that Dektar did, though Serek will have scars and pain for the rest of his days.’
Her voice skips over those last few words, and she squeezes her eyes shut and hides her face in her hands for a moment.
‘I cannot do it,’ she says. ‘I swore to him that I would say nothing, but I cannot uphold that oath. Not even to one such as him.’
She checks over her shoulder, as if someone may be watching, then looks down at the desk as she continues, and not into the lens of the capture device.
‘The rest of the Lord-General Militant’s days will be few.’ Luz takes a breath. ‘In the course of saving him, I found the death sentence already written into his blood. His bones. Marrowblight, the worst I have ever seen.’
Raine realises her hand is shaking as she holds the slate. She hears Fel take a breath through his teeth. Neither of them have moved since the record started. Raine feels frozen, locked in place right down to her heart.
‘This cannot be a part of it,’ Raine says.
‘No,’ Fel says. ‘It can’t be.’
But she doesn’t feel sure, and she can tell from Fel’s voice that he doesn’t either.
‘The marrowblight is advanced,’ Luz continues. ‘Too advanced to do anything much about but offer comfort and care. If he were to cede command, he could perhaps hope for three months.’
She takes a ragged breath and a rueful smile flickers for an instant on her face.
‘He told me to get him four months without ceding a thing. That he will not back down because the odds are poor. I will do as he asks because that is my duty, but I cannot go without recording this matter. That, too, is my duty, no matter how much it pains me.’
Luz shakes her head as if to clear it and wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand. She reaches out to end the recording, and the capture skips for a moment before restarting again. The room is the same, but Luz is different. She looks even more exhausted than before. Her eyes are wide and wary.
‘Begin recording,’ she says, and her voice is hoarse. ‘As I feared, the Lord-General Militant’s condition is deteriorating. He is shedding weight and muscle. Cannot keep food down. His body is poisoning him.’
Luz doesn’t try not to cry this time. Raine feels a tear slide down her own cheek too.
‘He forgets,’ she says. ‘That is the worst thing. Forgets to take his medication, or things he has done. He forgets where his scars come from, and I have to tell him his own legend. Tell him the hero that he is. He fights the sickness as he fights everything, with conviction and with a powerful will, but this sickness cannot be beaten by either of those things.’
Luz pauses and her hand goes to the aquila on the chain around her neck.
‘Only faith can aid him now,’ she says. ‘He prays. I pray. That is all either of us can do. As of this recording, I am still the only one to know his true condition, but I will not be for long. We will not be able to hide it anymore, or he will die, and then everyone will know.’
Luz shakes her head.
‘And then we truly will be lost,’ she says.
Then she reaches out and cuts the recording again. When it restarts, Isabella Luz is completely still and staring. Her eyes are not keen.
‘Begin recording,’ she says, and her voice is cold and flat. ‘On this day, I commit to record the death of Lord-General Militant Alar Serek. Our greatest hero. Our brightest light, gone out. Gone to the Emperor’s side.’
Luz is so still it looks as though the recording has stopped, but then gets to her feet and lashes out, knocking the pict-feed capture device to the floor of the medicae facility, where it lies with the lens cracked. The vox pick-up still catches the sound of a pained, wordless yell from Luz before the record ends.
‘This isn’t…’ Fel says, and then he pauses. ‘It’s a lie.’
His voice is just a raw whisper, and he is shaking as he stands there. He looks hollow. Broken. Raine knows this, because she feels just the same.
‘There is one more recording,’ Raine says.
The final record
of Surgeon-Major Isabella Luz spins up and flickers to a start. She sits in a different medicae facility now, between a different set of flakboard walls. The recording starts with Luz looking back over her shoulder. When she turns to face the lens, Raine sees that same hollow look in Luz’s eyes too.
‘On this day, I retract from the record the death of Lord-General Militant Alar Serek,’ she says. ‘Because he has returned to us. He lives.’
Raine knew Luz’s words were coming, but they are still hard to hear, because she can guess what is coming next.
‘Not just lives,’ Luz says. ‘He thrives. The marrowblight still endures in his blood and his body, but he is stronger now than he was before he fought Dektar the Ascended. He remembers everything.’
Luz pauses. She closes her eyes in that same way she did on the first recording and takes a deep breath.
‘I should be rejoicing,’ she says. ‘I should be celebrating the miracle that restored our greatest hero, but I cannot, because this is not a miracle.’
Luz leans right into the lens.
‘He is different,’ she murmurs. ‘Changed. It is his eyes. They are so blue now. And then there is the matter of the mark.’
She puts the flat of her hand to her chest, above her heart.
‘Here,’ she says. ‘There is a scar that is not a scar.’
‘No,’ Raine says, despite herself.
‘It is a fate-mark,’ says Isabella Luz.
The recording ends abruptly. Raine’s knuckles are pale as she grips the data-slate.
‘Serek.’ She has to say it aloud to make it real. ‘The Lord-General Militant. He is the manticore. The shadow at the heart of the crusade.’
Raine’s hands are scarred, like the rest of her body. Scars earned fighting for the Bale Stars. For Serek.
‘He has betrayed us all,’ she says.
Raine can’t find the strength to keep standing, so she goes to her knees and puts the slate down amongst the scattered histories of the Bale Stars. Years of blood spent and war made and souls lost.
‘All for a lie,’ Raine says. ‘He was a lie.’
She thinks of a dozen moments in her own history. Amongst them, the conversation she had with Serek on Hyxx, at the Temple of Unlight. Lucia’s graduation day on Gloam. The forges, when he spoke of her mother. Gholl, in Caulder’s Reach. The day she saw Lucia, at the holding cell. A visit that the Lord-General Militant allowed to happen.
Serek. It was all Serek.
Raine doesn’t intend the agonised sound she makes. It just happens.
Fel drops to his knees beside her and puts his arms around her. Raine lets him. She leans into the embrace and returns it in kind, just for a moment. It feels as though if she lets go, she might become untethered altogether.
Lost.
‘What will we do now?’ he asks, and he sounds lost too.
Raine has spent her entire life knowing the answer to that question, no matter who asks it, and why. She knows the answer just as clearly now too. It’s just the saying it. She lets go and pulls away from Fel, then gets to her feet and gives him a hand up to his.
‘We drag it out into the light,’ she says. ‘All of it. The Strixians. The Kavrone. Serek himself and any who have fallen with him. Every one of them must face judgement.’
Raine looks Fel in his storm-grey eyes.
‘This is your last chance,’ she says. ‘To walk away from this. This path will be bloody, and there is no turning back.’
‘Not a chance,’ he says. ‘I swore it, remember? Until the end.’
Raine nods. The words feel final.
‘Until the end,’ she says.
Steadfast, before
The guard with the porcelain-white eye closes the door behind Severina and bolts it. The sound echoes again. It reminds Severina of a gunshot and makes her think of the handful that will end Lucia’s life. She puts her own hand to her chest. It is hurting so badly that she is surprised the hand doesn’t come away bloodied.
‘Severina.’
She looks up at the sound of her name. The man who spoke it stands in the corridor, flanked by two guards in black carapace and furs. He is tall and strong, dressed in ceremonial white, with that red sash she remembers slung across his chest.
‘Lord-General Militant,’ she says, dropping into a bow.
‘Enough,’ he says. ‘At ease.’
Severina stands up straight, but she is not at ease. She cannot be. Not in this place, with him present. With him knowing full well why she is here. Serek waves his guards away. The one with the porcelain-white eye goes too, leaving them alone in the corridor.
‘Did you speak with your sister?’ Serek asks.
‘Yes, lord,’ Severina says.
‘And what did she say?’
Severina thinks for a moment about that tear tracing its way down Lucia’s face.
‘It does not matter, lord,’ she says. ‘Because my sister is a traitor, and a traitor’s words are worth less than nothing.’
Serek nods. His ice-blue eyes are thoughtful.
‘I am glad to hear you say so,’ he says. ‘Your mother was an Imperial hero. A fierce and honourable soul. If you are to survive, then you must be the same.’
Severina feels the weight of that expectation then. Of her mother’s legacy. Every medal. Every moment, down to the grand ceremony of her state remembrance service.
A hero, even in death.
‘I will give everything,’ Severina says. ‘Heart and soul, as she did.’
‘As we all must,’ Serek says. ‘When you join the crusade, both your enemies and your allies will test you. Every choice will matter. Every choice will change you, so you must never forget the lessons you learned at the scholam and before it.’
Severina nods.
‘Duty, honour and faith, lord,’ she says.
It is Serek’s turn to nod. ‘In time, you will come to consider your sister’s failure another lesson,’ he says. ‘One about loyalty. You know what awaits Lucia Raine at dawn tomorrow.’
‘Death,’ Severina says, making an effort to sound strong as she does so. ‘The fate of all traitors.’
‘Never forget that. Never turn your back on the Bale Stars, or the crusade. On your allies, or on me, or the same fate will await you.’ Serek tilts his head. ‘And I think the memory of Thema Raine deserves better, don’t you?’
Severina thinks of her mother and how she would feel if she knew of Lucia’s fate. It makes her heart ache all over again.
‘Yes, lord,’ she says.
‘Good,’ Serek says. ‘Then we understand one another.’
‘Of course,’ Severina says.
‘Then I bid you goodbye, Severina Raine,’ Serek says.
He makes the sign of the aquila.
‘For the Bale Stars,’ he says.
Raine makes her own aquila in turn.
‘For the Emperor,’ she replies.
And then Serek turns and walks away, his polished boots echoing on the flagstones.
And that sound, too, could as well be gunshots.
Sixteen
Lighting fires
Andren Fel walks back towards the Duskhounds’ assigned quarters without really seeing. Without hearing, either. His mind is noisy with the truth.
Serek. It was always Serek.
Fel has spent his life serving the crusade. Before he served it, he trained to serve it. Save for his faith, it’s the only constant he has ever known.
He stops walking and just stands there for a moment. It feels like the floor is tilting beneath his feet. His ears ring like a charge has gone off. It takes Fel a moment to recognise the sensation, because he feels it so rarely.
Panic. He is panicking.
It takes all of Fel’s concentration just to find his balance again, which is why he doesn’t notice
Cassia Tyl until she is right beside him.
‘Captain,’ she says.
She is out of breath, and every one that she does take sounds like agony. Fel frowns.
‘Cass,’ he says.
It is the first time he has seen her since getting back. Since the Sanctum. Tyl is without her carapace or her mask. Her fatigues are bloodstained, and her face is bruised and cut. It’s her eyes that are the worst part, though. Fel sees agony there too and gets another bad feeling to go alongside all of the others.
‘What happened?’ he asks her.
Tyl glances down at her hands as if she is hesitant to speak, and that is when Fel notices the blackening of her fingertips from ashes. His balance goes again.
‘Who?’ Fel asks.
‘Myre,’ she says, softly.
Fel has lost many over his years of service. He has learned how to deal with death. To take the hurt and stay standing. In that moment, though, he finds he can’t. Myre is gone, and he wasn’t there.
They lit the fire, and he wasn’t there.
‘You said the words without me!’ He doesn’t intend to shout at her. It just happens.
‘I didn’t know where you were!’ Tyl raises her own voice in return. ‘When you would return, or if you would at all. I couldn’t leave Myre waiting for her name.’
Fel shakes his head. It’s not a good enough reason. ‘We are kin, Cassia. We do it together, always.’
‘We are kin?’ Tyl snaps. It’s a tone she has never used with him. ‘You left us. Followed your heart and not your head.’
‘That’s enough,’ Fel says, warningly. ‘You don’t know what you are talking about.’
‘I saw you,’ Tyl says. ‘Just now, with the commissar, leaving that place you go to. She asked it of you, didn’t she? Gave you another duty to do, and you picked her over us.’
Honourbound - Rachel Harrison Page 32