Lonely Castles

by S. A. Tholin

  "Or else what?" Kivik smirked, glancing at Cassimer. "Case in point. This one's barely more than a boy, and not even the kind of boy I imagine we were at his age. This one's soft and coddled. Probably from a nice family in some cosy system just remote enough for a teenage brain to think that joining the resistance sounds like an adventure. That's how Memory likes to recruit. She and her corpse-picker girls find boys just like him, online or in the flesh, and promise them all sorts of thrills. And once she's sunk her claws into you, it's not so easy to change your mind and go back home again, is it? That brand-new phoenix tattoo you keep scratching has made sure of that."

  "You just... you shut your face, or I'll... I'll call Captain Black down here!" The guard flushed deep red, his hand dropping from the tattoo on his neck. Halfway back to his station, he called over his shoulder: "RebEarth will be better off without traitors like you, Kivik."

  "Rebirth." The other guard looked up from his tablet. "It's pronounced Rebirth. It's a play on words, right, to match the phoenix imagery."

  "What? No. It's Reb-Earth. As in rebels plus Earth."

  "Pretty sure it's Rebirth."

  "Pretty sure you're a god-damned idiot." The blushing guard sat down to sulk, one hand on his gun, the other scratching his poorly-rendered phoenix tattoo.

  "See what I mean?" Kivik laughed. "We can't even agree on how to pronounce the name of our movement. If RebEarth ever did achieve our stated goal of retaking Earth and crushing the Primaterre, chaos would inevitably follow."

  "Then what is the point?"

  "Flux. Motion. The spark that brings the universe to life. The antithesis to the Primaterre, who happily impose your idea of order on the galaxy because you have this notion that order is in itself a goal. But that is a falsehood. I heard you and the Primo woman talk about history before, so you must know about the empires that preceded yours. Eternal Rome, long since dust. Glorious Balticum, dead and gone. You're trying to preserve something that's doomed to die, and in doing so, you smother what could be. You, Markham, Scarsdale... all of you so busy trying to ensure forever, and meanwhile, I have now." The RebEarth captain shrugged. "I'm not interested in the fall of the Primaterre. I am interested in keeping you on your toes. I'm interested in prying open your iron grip on the galactic market, and in reminding stagnant giants that they are not invulnerable. That's what RebEarth should be about, not building faux-kingdoms like Hereward where we can sit still and wait for the inevitable jackboot to stomp down on us."

  "So you are an impermanent nothing."

  "When I'm dead, perhaps. But while I'm alive, I live, Primo, like you can't even imagine: free."

  "You're wrong. I can imagine that." He had, many times, and always came to the same conclusion. "Freedom is ruin. A man's worth is in the chains he chooses."

  "In the interest of understanding, I'm going to ignore everything you just said, but for the word chooses. At least freedom of choice is something we can agree on, and that freedom is why I'm here. I fought you on Velloa because I believed we were going to use the primers to create select strike teams. RebEarthers true to the cause, masquerading as Primos to raid stations, or hell, bomb Kirkclair. Beautiful disruption. But the Bright-Winged One wants to put the primers inside us all, and Markham was only too happy to go along with it. When everyone's Primaterre, nobody's Primaterre, the idiot said. Yeah, well, I don't want to be Primaterre. Markham, he looks at your cities and tech and seven-foot perfect specimens like you, and he's filled with envy. Me? I couldn't give a shit. I'd rather be imperfect and human like Earth intended, than whatever the hell you are. Mother Spirit will welcome me home one day, but she'll spit your bones right back out."

  And there it was. Not just an anarchist profiteer after all, but a believer too. A mind so steeped in impurity couldn't be reasoned with. Whatever Kivik wanted out of this conversation, Cassimer couldn't give, and so he shrugged and turned from the captain.

  "Right. Great." Kivik sounded agitated, on the verge of desperate. "You took nothing from all of this? Then let me put it to you in terms so simple even a Primo will understand: We have a common enemy. Truce?"

  * * *

  Though Cassimer agreed to nothing, Kivik told him what he wanted to know about the Host Fetter, a former military vessel that now trawled trading lanes for easy marks, and its captain.

  "Her corpse-pickers locate interesting targets. Research stations, luxury cruise liners, even military installations. They're young, the corpse-pickers, and girls, for most part. They scout out their target and then they transmit an emergency broadcast, or turn up at their doorsteps. Sad little kittens, looking for a new home or a helping hand. Once inside, they contact Memory. While she attacks from the outside, they kill and sabotage from within. It is a very effective tactic, but I don't mind sharing this secret with you, Primo. Your kind are immune to the charms of little lost non-citizens."

  "You'd be surprised."

  "What?"

  "Nothing." Everything. "Tell me more about the ship. Do you know its destination?"

  "Destination? We've been stationary for the past day or so. Can't you feel it?" Kivik patted the wall of his cell, and Cassimer wasn't sure whether he was full of it, or if the Shipwrecker was so attuned to flight that he could sense the minute difference in engine vibrations. "You've got some sort of super-human eyesight, right? Tell me what's in those cans the guards are eating."

  Olive-green cans with bold white print. Military, no doubt, though VIT-SUPPLEMENTED GREENS sounded like no ration Cassimer was familiar with, nor did the sludge the guards were scooping out with spoons look anything like Primaterre food. He relayed the information to Kivik, who nodded.

  "Yeah. I made the mistake of jacking a Heptarchy army supply ship a few years ago. We were hoping for ammunition, but they only carried canned rations. Factory-grown vegetable substitutes, mainly. I ended up dumping them on an old observation platform that I've converted into a fuelling station. If they're eating Vits, that's where we are. Memory must be looting my supplies before the final push of her coup."

  "You think so little of this Memory, and yet she managed to usurp your fleet."

  "Memory may claim to control the Victual Brothers, but in fact, most remain loyal to me. I expect that once she's finished here, she means to take me to them – not too far from Velloa – and use me as leverage. The Bright-Winged One wants me to fall in line." Kivik shrugged. "Good luck with that. I think it'll find me nearly as stubborn as a Primo."

  Velloa. No Primaterre activity in that system, but the Kalevala were ostensibly allies at this point. Perhaps–

  The door opened for Memory. Too soon. His countdown hadn't yet hit 1016, and he willed the hours, minutes, seconds to hurry, because he wanted to see 1016, he wanted to be another day closer to Joy – but this time, Memory was coming for him.

  They used electricity first, and when that wasn't enough, nightsticks and riot shields, boots and gauntleted fists. When he fell and couldn't get back up, Memory leaned down to inject him with the familiar sweetness of a sedative.

  "It'll keep him manageable," she said, and it did. They dragged him from the cell, and he didn't struggle. They dragged him down corridors, and he could barely even stay awake to take in the surroundings. They dragged him into an elevator, and he didn't care anymore, didn't care about anything other than the white veil blanketing his senses.

  And then they dragged him to a cryo pod, and the white veil drowned in a dark swell of panic. He broke the arm of one guard, slammed another into a wall, but there were too many of them, so many. Restraints locked around his limbs and the cryo pod sealed, trapping him in a cold coffin mottled red with lichen.

  43.

  CASSIMER

  Turquoise water lapped his waist, warm and glittering with darting fish. Beyond the mouth of the cave, a sun-dappled ocean stretched to the horizon. He had either just arrived or he'd been there all along. The water welcomed him, the waves singing to him that he was where he belonged.

  Except... He took a st
ep backwards. Sand stirred under his feet, blurring the clear water. He bent and scooped some into his fist. Cool sand, speckled with seashell fragments, ran between his fingers. It was the sort of sand he'd expect to find on a beach. A nice one, like the beaches on

  on

  "it's got a little garden, right, and a balcony overlooking the sea, so barbecue season is going to be amazing"

  on Kepler, and he wasn't sure why it had taken him so long to remember. Was something wrong with him? There were things wrong with him, sometimes, he remembered that. He saw things that weren't there, and heard them too. But never a sea. Was this a hallucination? Had he taken too many

  too many

  "there may come a day when she needs your help. When she does, she'll need you at your best – and whoever that is, it certainly isn't the dead-eyed stim zombie I see before me"

  too many stims? No, that couldn't be it, because if he were at a beach, real or imaginary, he wouldn't be alone. He would be with

  "it feels like water, Constant, but it's all him"

  with Joy.

  His sunrise, his starlight, the song in his blood, and for a moment he had forgotten her. For a moment, she had been wrenched from his being. But she was with him again, and he could breathe once more, and when the demon rose from the sea, he grabbed its golden neck and smashed its head against tawny rocks.

  Before its body even stopped twitching, he felt it behind him. A thick slither around his legs, a creep of droplets up his back, and two long-nailed hands on his chest. It pressed close, and though it had the sinewy shape of a man, it swelled over him like water.

  He couldn't think, couldn't feel, existed only in a state of hot panic, but the more he resisted, the harder the demon's grip became. It forced him to his knees and pushed his head under the water that was

  all him

  Joy had said this to him one night, just before Scathach's artificial dawn, at that hour that seemed to exist between dream and waking, when it was easier to talk about the things that hurt. They had been in bed together, face to face, nothing but his own fears separating them. How stupid he had been, and how much he regretted wasting time on fear.

  "It feels like water, Constant, but it's all him. He made me choke on him."

  And though he drowned in that water now, drowning was better than the knowledge that this had been done to Joy, this and far worse. He stopped struggling, because this wasn't a test of the body, and when his lungs screamed for air, he let them. Because this wasn't really water, and this wasn't really his body, and he didn't need air when he had Joy.

  It didn't take long – or it took an eternity – for the demon to get bored. It pulled him upwards, one scaled hand around his neck.

  "You're thinking of her." It smiled. The sky was copper with a rising sun, and the water had turned a deep honey colour. "The little sister. I can feel her in your mind."

  Cassimer said nothing, instead doing what he'd always done: raising shields, withdrawing into the ashes. Sharing nothing, allowing no one a single glimpse of who he was.

  "You are a fool, soldier." The demon's faces was in flux, but its smile quirked to the left and when it spoke again, it mimicked Finn Somerset's voice. "I told you on Cato that she'd be better off without you. You should've listened. You could have continued your killing and hurting and hunting alone, but you wouldn't let her go. With every step of the way, you have made things worse for her. But don't worry, soldier. I will fix your mistakes. I will give her everything she wants."

  "She wants nothing from you!" His anger refused to be contained, welling up from deep beneath the ash.

  "She will. Once I have you, body and mind. Once I am both brother and lover, she will give herself to me."

  "You're delusional if you think–"

  "No, soldier. I am patient." The demon let go of his throat. It watched as he waded for the rocky shore, smirking when he placed his hand on stone. "It takes approximately five decades to complete the transfer. You are going to be difficult, I can tell, so perhaps a few more years. And while I become you, the little sister will sleep away another century in another pod. When I am ready, I will take her to... to some place just like Cato, I think. She will wake alone, and I will watch her as I did before. I will watch her freeze and starve and talk to shadows. I will watch her weep and waste away. When she is at the cusp of death or madness, I will come to her wearing your skin. And soldier, I think I will lie to her. I will tell her that I am you, and I think that she will know – but she'll choose to accept the lie."

  It slithered towards him, as languid as a rolling wave, as unstoppable as a tsunami.

  "She will love me. Once she does, I will take her as I am taking you, and that love will be made eternal."

  "That will never happen." Cassimer's hand closed around a rock, a small and jagged thing. He squeezed it hard, until droplets of not-real blood spattered the sand.

  "But soldier." The demon stopped, tilting its serpentine head. "You have been in here for a second or a century. For all you know, it could already be happening. For all you know, the Primaterre is a distant memory. Phoenix banners could be flying from Kirkclair towers as the Bright-Winged One rules from Earth, and his little sister dreamlessly sleeps."

  It wasn't true. It couldn't be. It was part of the demon's game, a trick to make him ask the questions it so desperately wanted to answer. It wasn't real, but he could see it all too clearly. Earth lost. The Primaterre fallen. Everyone he'd ever known, gone. Joy had once woken up to such a world, so why not him?

  The demon's fingers trickled up his calf, and though the sharp-edged rock in his hand begged to be used, he couldn't bring himself to fight. If everything was lost, he might as well drift away like a dandelion seed.

  "Is she..." He shouldn't ask questions, but this one had haunted him since Hereward, and this answer he had to have. "Is Joy still alive?"

  Its fingers stopped. One twitched slightly against his knee. Choppy waves beat against the mouth of the cave.

  "Yes," it finally said, and with the answer came a slight tug at Cassimer's mind as the demon worked its way inside. "And thank you, soldier, for the reminder of how fragile your kind are. I will keep a closer eye on her from now on. I will–"

  It screamed as he slashed the rock across its face. It made a strange bubbling sound as he crushed its throat in his fist, and it was satisfying, it was beautiful

  and then it was behind him, on top of him, all around him. A swelling, raging sea, and he couldn't fight the sea.

  But he could try.

  * * *

  Hours or days or decades later, it dragged him onto the rocks and flayed the skin from his body. It took him apart, whispering that it had learnt these things in Vadgelmir, these things and many more, and he would taste them all. It smashed his fingers with chunks of coral and gouged his eyes. It forced its way inside of him and down his throat, settled in his belly and sang songs of deep water and moonbeam roots.

  But it wasn't real, and when the demon broke his legs, Cassimer laughed. His real bones had been broken so many times that he could tell the difference. He had felt true pain and suffering, and he had felt the weight of violation in full.

  "If you are laughing to trick me into asking why, let me tell you what I told the little sister: you cannot win that game."

  "I'm not." Cassimer flexed his broken fingers in a way that real broken fingers would never move and watched quite-convincing blood run down his wrist. "In fact, I have a question for you."

  "Go on." Needle-sharp teeth gleamed.

  A deep breath first. Inhalation and exhalation, air stirring ashes left untouched far too long. He thought her name, and summoned her from the deep.

  She roiled and churned her way upwards, a worm digging free.

  As she burst through the ashes, he asked his question:

  "What's the Host Fetter prison's passcode?"

  Skald laughed, droplets flying from its long black hair as it shook his head. "I will enjoy teaching you the meaning of
'surrender', soldier. The code is 35224."

  35224. It had to be true, because only true answers were rewarded in this game, and once more Cassimer could feel Skald tugging at his mind. This time, he didn't resist. This time, he dropped his shields and let ash-drizzling Hecate through.

  The lights come on and he wakes to the sound of screaming. He turns over and sees the staff sergeant, already soaked with blood, pulling another cadet from their bunk. His heart freezes and he looks towards the exit, but cadets are waking now, darkness pouring from their eyes and their mouths and, Earth have mercy, he knows what this is.

  Only purity can keep him safe, but he crawls under his bed instead. He is fifteen and he should know better than hiding like a child, but in this moment, he is a child, and he wants to go home to the lavender fields of Kalix, and when the demons come for him, this is what he screams. But home is far away and he will never see it again, and the demons who wear the faces of friends laugh and howl. The staff sergeant comes to once, realises what he's doing, and he turns Constant to face him and he says I'm sorry I'm sorry and then he laughs and he isn't sorry at all–

  "What is this?" Skald stumbled backwards through darkening water. The waves lashed high, foam spattering the sea caves walls.

  "A thing that happened to me. For a long while, I thought it was me."

  So long spent in the belief that a single event defined him. So long, afraid of shadows and echoes of the past. It had crippled him, trapped him, and he hadn't known how to ever leave the Hecate. It had taken more than a decade to even consider the possibility. Doctors and psychiatrists had tried to help, they had – but in the end, he had to see it himself. There had been no single moment, no great epiphany, but a slow realisation that if there was no obvious road to recovery, he would have to forge his own path. Little steps at first. Tasting food instead of eating it, categorising ration bars into good and bad. Reading books and watching movies, allowing himself to step into other worlds and lives.

  Then the bigger steps. Transferring from the cataphracts to the banneretcy. Allowing himself to imagine. Occasionally, letting himself dream. With time, the Hecate had faded to give way to other dreams. Few of them good, but anything was better.