Lonely Castles

by S. A. Tholin

  "They know they're dead," Hopewell said, "but they don't even know why."

  "They know why." Florey kicked loose the mossy tibia of a skeleton from a crevice in the cliffside.

  Good point.

  "All right. We–"

  A booming sound interrupted Cassimer. It came from above, long and hollow and rumbling. Far across the bay, a black streak coursed across the sky to impact in the ruined city. Fire erupted from the streets, rolling out over the water. High-rises turned to dust, blown out to sea by ember-flecked winds. Debris rained down, burning and blackened, the ground trembling under the onslaught.

  A shadow darkened the cliffside as the heat-shimmering belly of a shuttle flew overhead.

  66.

  JOY

  "Open the door, little sister."

  "Never." Joy pressed her back against the makeshift barricade. Her feet braced against the wall, but her legs were quivering, Skald's every attempt at the door a heavy blow.

  Another slam, and she was thrown forward, her chin hitting her knees. She grit her teeth and pushed back, inch by painful inch.

  "Open it for me, Joy." His voice had changed. Lighter now, feminine. "I know you remember me."

  Of course she did. The upper crust Kirkclair accent, the slightly nasal uptalk – how could she ever forget?

  "You didn't look for me on Cato. All you thought about was your brother. For a long while, I thought you didn't care. But then you asked Archer about me. A silly thing to do – you could have made him suspicious – but I suppose you wanted to connect. Nobody remembers Joy Somerset, but if people remember Miana, then that's like being remembered by association, isn't it? Though I doubt that when my parents grieved for me, they grieved for Finn too. They didn't like him. Didn't think he was good enough. They were wrong."

  "Yes," Joy whispered. "They were."

  "I loved your brother very much."

  "Miana loved my brother very much."

  "There's no difference."

  "There's all the difference in the world, and you know it. You spent time with Miana in the place of truth. I bet she didn't make it easy for you. I bet she made damn sure you knew how much she hated you."

  "As she made sure you knew?" Skald's voice was Wideawake's again, gently mocking. "She was born the centre of attention. An only child, doted on, spoiled rotten. From day one, everything and everyone in Miana's life was about Miana. And then she met Finn. He was like no one else. He was everything she'd never known she wanted. Yes, she loved him very much, and he loved her too – but your welfare always came first. His little sister. His first love and his first priority. A different kind of love, certainly, but to Miana, the difference seemed irrelevant. She saw you as her rival, and as far as Finn's time and attention was concerned, she was right. She hated that. She hated you, for a while."

  "But I never hated her."

  "No. And that's why she, eventually, came to tolerate your existence. Almost came to like you, in fact. Shall I tell you what her last thought was, as the cryo pod closed around her? She looked down at her belly and she thought Stella if it's a girl. And then, as Finn smiled at her through the viewport and her blood began to cool, she thought Stella Joy would be nice."

  "Shut up." Joy pushed her shoulder hard against the sofa, but even pain couldn't stop her tears. "Shut up, you lying–"

  "I don't lie. Miana did. She had to – a pregnancy would have automatically disqualified her from the Ever Onward colonist programme – and she used her position to avoid the final medical examination. She didn't tell her employers or her parents. She didn't even tell Finn. She wanted to wait until you were all safe on blue Gainsborough. It'll be a nice surprise, she thought."

  It would have been. Swaying sweetgrass and a brand new world, and Finn would have been so happy. He would have built them all a home and they'd have been safe, and together, and Stella Joy would have been nice, so very nice.

  "Oh, little sister. Are you weeping? Then you should know that Miana was part of my first wave. I woke that vessel from its sleep nearly thirty years ago. It still lives, and it carried its child to term."

  "You murdering–"

  "I didn't murder any of them. But yes, I understand that you define the word differently. Even so, a child's mind is an empty thing, a blank page of no interest to me. The vessel had it removed under sedation, and I never even laid eyes on it. I didn't know that it would one day be of importance. If I had, I would have kept track of it."

  "The child Wideawake was trying to find..." Joy glanced up at the window in the door, seeking Skald's gaze. "Miana's?"

  "And Finn's. Apart from you, all that remains of your brother's flesh."

  "Did you find her?"

  "Him, little sister." He smiled. "Open the door, and I will tell you."

  She wanted to close her eyes and imagine what Gainsborough would have been like, that dream that had almost come true, but she knew Finn would want her to imagine the Gainsborough that might yet be. There could still be sweetgrass and a blue horizon, and a home built by loving hands. The dream was not yet lost, her heart far from empty.

  "Open the door." His voice had a sharp edge. "Open it, and perhaps I'll spare the child's life."

  "If you even know where he is. If there even is a child. So many ifs, Skald, and here's another one for you." She tensed, bracing. "If there truly is any of Finn inside of you, you know what he would say: go fuck yourself."

  * * *

  Furniture scraped across the floor as the barricade was inexorably pushed backwards. Joy jammed her shoulder against the chair, but Skald was halfway through the door. There was a flash of metal as he raised his gun, angling it inwards. She had just enough time to think he won't shoot me before the first bullet exploded through the barricade, showering her with plastic shrapnel.

  He fired again and again, and she scrambled to her feet, stumbling away from the door. Bullets whined past her, one ricochet melting against her reactive plates, its impact still like a punch to her spine. She fell, gasping for a breath. Glass shards rained down on her as gunfire struck the windows at the back of the control room. One window shattered completely, its frame gaping and empty, and she pushed herself to her feet and ran for it.

  She climbed onto the window sill, glass crunching underneath her boots, cutting her gauntlets. The channel was some twenty metres below, slightly to her left. Miss it, and she'd hit concrete. Make the jump, and she might still lose consciousness and drown.

  All she had to do was let go. On the count of three, but one two three and she hadn't jumped, holding onto the window frame with a panicked grip.

  On four, she heard Skald's footsteps behind her.

  On five, she let go.

  On six, her camail was yanked backwards and she tumbled back into the room. She clung onto the window frame, a shard of glass digging into her fingers. Skald tugged her away so violently that the glass cut through her lightweave gauntlet, nearly severing her ring finger at its base.

  He threw her to the floor. Her left wrist bent behind her back; her injured ring finger breaking with a snap, the sound and the pain so bad that she almost lost consciousness. Skald straddled her, holding her down, but this was the real world and here he wasn't the sea; here he was just a man, and she kicked and fought and struggled. He calmly pressed a hand over her mouth and nose, and let his body weight do the rest. She didn't fall unconscious, not quite, but into some dark state where she hovered between awake and asleep, where all she could see was the pounding red pattern of her retina.

  Skald hauled her back out to the lab, and she came to as he dragged her through Elsinore's pooling blood. It smeared on her face and her cuirass, dripping from strands of copper hair.

  "Now then, little sister." Skald heaved her into a sitting position by the Prime Mover's tank and leaned in close, his breath against her ear. "Tell me what you did to the Prime Mover. Tell me why it won't speak to me."

  "I didn't do anything," she said, spitting blood. "I told it to draw its own conclusi
ons."

  "Undo it." He gripped her chin in his hand, turning her face brusquely towards him.

  "No."

  "Undo it, and I'll spare your soldier."

  "If you knew how to send the trigger signal, you would've done it already. Guess you shouldn't have killed Elsinore."

  "With or without the trigger signal, it is too late for your soldier and his men. They won't live past sunset. That alarm you hear? That is the sound of their doom. That is the station's air space intrusion alert. We're about to have company, little sister."

  "That's not possible. Earth is off-limits."

  "Indeed. Only the mad would risk the Primaterre defences – unless, of course, they knew there was no risk. A dozen RebEarth ships have hidden in Sol, awaiting my call. Now they have come to reclaim the home that was stolen from them, and to secure my future."

  "There's a Primaterre fleet protecting Earth. They'll never get past them."

  "Not all of them, no. But some will. Even one will do. Because, little sister, what do you think the Primaterre fleet will do?"

  Rampart had its own ideas and traditions, but in this, it was no different from Bastion. The fleet would never let RebEarth troops land on Earth. They would.. oh...

  "They'll pursue."

  "Yes." He laughed. "Right across the Luna belt."

  * * *

  He opened his belt pouch and showed her what he carried. All the tools a towerman might need, from needles to knives, and worst of all, things whose purpose she couldn't even imagine. As he plucked them from his pouch and placed them on the desk, one by one, her imagination tried harder and succeeded. That strange little box contained subdermal worms, this oblong object would...

  No. She stopped struggling against the cable and forced a deep breath. This was not the time for thinking. She had to shut down. She had to go someplace else. Wherever it was that Constant went when his job required him to do or endure the unthinkable.

  "RebEarth can't hope to hold Earth, but they don't need to. As long as I get what I want, and they get a day of glory in the heart of the Primaterre Protectorate, everybody's happy. You are mine, little sister, but the soldier – they'll want to kill him. It would be difficult for me to stop them. But..." He tapped a finger against the tip of her nose. "Not impossible. Go back into the Prime Mover. Speak to it. Undo what you did."

  "Never."

  "Are you certain, little sister?" He placed a thin blade on the desk.

  She didn't respond.

  "A shame. Memory was right, you see. Your body is disposable, and Tower has taught me so many things. Let me show you what I learned in Vadgelmir's darkness."

  * * *

  He started with the familiar, hauling her over to the emergency shower. His fingers found their way into her hair and pulled her head backwards. Cold water spilled over her face. When she cried out, he pressed the showerhead to her mouth, forcing the jet down her throat. He continued until she coughed water with every breath, until she felt like she was drowning, and all the while he murmured in her ear that he loved her.

  The water was purified and fresh, but to her it tasted like the sea. It tasted like him. Her heart beat so hard she thought she might die, that this was it, that this was what it felt like, and she wondered how the final beat would feel. She cried, but when he stopped and cradled her and asked if she would give him what he wanted, she shook her head.

  Because there was nothing he could do to her that he hadn't already done to Finn, who had died alone and in vain. Nothing could undo that. Nothing could make it better. But she could refuse his murderer. She could make her suffering meaningful and her brother proud.

  "You always were stubborn, Joycie," Skald said in Finn's voice, and she spat in his face. He smiled, just like Finn had, and unsheathed his combat knife. The blade's dull glow soon became white-hot, and he held it close to the base of her little finger, just like Finn never would have. "So then. This little piggy went to the market..."

  But the blade never touched her. Skald frowned, looking down at his own hand as though it was no longer obeying orders. He tightened his grip on her and undid the seal on her gauntlet. When he pulled it free, her injured ring finger went with it.

  She did fall unconscious then, and woke to the sound of singing. Foreign, strange – sweet like a lullaby. Skald held her gently, and when he saw her eyes open, he kissed her forehead. "Little sister," he said, his voice choked with emotion. "Little sister, I am so sorry. Your hand – and your armour. Did I hit you? I didn't mean to. I wasn't aiming for you. I would never hurt you."

  He had bandaged her hand. Clumsily, and the bandage was already soaked through, but he had tried. The incandescent combat knife had been discarded on the floor. The Tower instruments of torture lay forgotten on the desk. Her pain had frightened the monster.

  "Skald..." she whispered, hoping to find words that might reach him, wondering if he might be made to listen.

  He touched his finger to her bandage, wetting it with her blood. He painted circles on her cheeks and along her jawbone, across her forehead and at her temples.

  Her own blood on her face, a monster's stolen nail scraping her skin. She turned her head and retched, throwing up until there was only water left. He began to unseal and remove her armour. Pauldrons first, then cuirass, and his cooling blade trailed down the centre of her thin jumpsuit.

  "Blood writing never fades, little sister. I mark you as mine. If you understood... if you knew the ways of my people, you would know it for a gift. You would be honoured."

  "People? You have no people."

  "I am alone, it's true, but it wasn't always so."

  "How do you know? You say that you are my brother, but you just stole his memories."

  "His essence."

  "His memories," she persisted. "You think of yourself as a person, but what if Skald was simply the first to be taken? You might not really exist. You might be a fungus that imagines it was human, the drive to survive and to procreate your only genuine feeling – everything else a falsehood. What if you are a lie that believes in itself? An unthinking murderer who wears the personality of its first victim?"

  "I know who I am." He drew faint red circles on her sternum, his hand as sure as his tone, but she had seen the flicker of alarm in his eyes.

  "You should hate what you have done. If you were a person once, you know that what you are now is an abomination." She coughed blood and water, and looked him straight in the eye. "You should want to end yourself."

  "But you are mistaken, little sister. I didn't do this to myself. Another made me what I am; another tried to end me a long time ago. That will never happen again."

  "It will. You've made sure of that."

  "The Primaterre Protectorate is my only enemy. Soon, they will be my army."

  "The Primaterre were never a threat. They're too afraid of you, Skald, conditioned from birth to believe in demons. You've used that fear to your advantage more than once."

  "Yes." He smiled. "It's been quite amusing."

  "But you forget one thing."

  "What's that, little sister?"

  "I never believed in demons."

  His smile became a laugh. "You're going to end me?"

  "I am."

  "Then I should just kill you now, shouldn't I?" He poised the knife's point at the base of her throat.

  "You should," she said, "but you won't. You can't."

  And she knew she was right, because her words made him angry. Her words made him want to hurt her again, worse than before, but when he lashed out, his knife barely grazed her face. He had died for her on the Host Fetter because that's what Finn would have done. From his perspective, they were brother and sister, and though the bond was stolen, it chained him nonetheless. He couldn't hurt her. He couldn't kill her. He loved her.

  "Undo what you did, little sister," he hissed against her cheek, "and we can have forever."

  Again she refused, and again he brought the knife to her face. But she wasn't afraid., and she
wasn't hurting anymore, not even where her left ring finger had once been. In fact, she felt pretty good. No, better than good – absolutely fantastic, happy enough to laugh when she realised why.

  The stairwell door burst inwards in a cloud of smoke and dust. Skald stood, swearing, and reached for his gun. It wasn't even halfway out of his holster before Rhys had stormed across the room. The medic smashed his rifle butt-first into Skald's face, once, twice – and after glancing at Joy – a third and final time.

  Skald crumpled to the floor in a bloody pile. Rhys kicked him over, cuffed his hands behind his back, and confiscated his weapons. Necessary precautions, Joy knew that, but he seemed to take forever.

  Finally he came to kneel beside her, and she cried with relief. He held her for just a moment, his gauntlets sparking against her wet hair. Then he opened his visor and his med-kit and he was all business.

  "Head back. Hold still. This might hurt."

  She obeyed his every instruction. Skald had wanted to take her apart, but Rhys put her back together again. His hands, though gauntleted and bloody, were a healer's. Better yet, a friend's.

  "How did you figure out that Wideawake is Skald?"

  He gave her a look of utter shock. "What?"

  "You didn't know?" She glanced over at the prone vessel. His face was barely recognisable as Wideawake's anymore, but his eyes were open, watching her. "Then why...?"

  "You're all the reason I need," he said curtly, wrapping reconstructive strips around her hand. "Juneau came running to me, scared out of her wits, rambling on about how Commander Cassimer's team were attacked by a Tower strike team on Hereward – 36B's strike team. I wasn't there, so what the hell do I know? Only that you wouldn't have been part of such a betrayal. So I figured I'd better make sure everything was okay. Halfway across the channel bridge, my comms kicked in long enough to see your vitals."

  "You administered anaesthetics remotely," she said. "It really helped. Mostly because it meant I wasn't alone. Because it meant you were coming."