Bringer of Light (Hidden Empire)

by Jaine Fenn

  He picked the leftmost exit and went through it cautiously. The room looked like some sort of bedroom, with a person-sized platform against one wall and something that might be a table against another. There were no exits.

  He went back to the room with the two avatars in and took the only unexplored doorway through to a room with a huge holo-screen across one wall. Or maybe it was just art. It showed dozens of multicoloured traces and dots, some of them projecting out towards him, several of them moving. There was also another cubechair-thing. But no exits. Killing Device, getting Vy shot – it had all been for nothing, Taro thought; even though the internal doors were open, there was no way out of here!

  He was shaking; he could feel the fight draining from his body, taking his energy with it, but he wouldn’t expect the shakes to hit just yet. No, wait: he wasn’t shaking; the floor was. In fact, the whole fucking room was. A high, ear-itching hum started, coming from all around.

  Some of the lights on the wall began flashing more urgently. Taro stared at them, hoping the horrible suspicion he was starting to have was wrong. He was used to human tech, where you always knew where you were because of comforting hums and faint vibrations. Jarek had once told him that those little noises and movements weren’t really necessary; engineers only put them in ‘cos passengers demanded it—

  The hum ramped up a full-blown whine and the shaking became a violent shuddering. He almost fell over the chair, saving himself only by activating his flight implants.

  He wasn’t in a prison building, or on a station. He was on a ship. A fucking hi-tech incomprehensible spaceship. And he’d just killed the only person who could fly it.

  They were so screwed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ‘There were two of them. Two, Urien!’

  ‘I know; that was not the plan.’ The old Escori sounded peeved.

  Kerin was beyond peeved. She had expected Urien to come and berate her, but by the time he finally arrived, Damaru was already asleep and Kerin had been through anger to panic and back to anger. ‘Then how did it happen? Who was this Ifanna am Nantgwyn anyway?’

  ‘I believe there was – ahem – an administrative error.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘The other Escorai and I were unaware that another girl had been put forward until she arrived here, at which point we had no choice but to proceed with both penitents.’

  ‘How can that be? You always tell me the Tyr runs on respect and records.’

  ‘To be honest, Kerin, right now I have no idea.’ In an emotional shift typical of him, Urien went from annoyed to resigned. ‘May I sit?’ he added.

  Kerin wondered, a little spitefully, if such mood swerves were deliberate, to disconcert opponents. She nodded, and he picked up the wooden chair from her desk and brought it over to the console. Kerin looked across at Damaru, who was sleeping on, oblivious. She felt something uncurl, then tighten within her breast.

  Urien sat down and Kerin swivelled her own seat to face him. He sighed and said, ‘I suspect that I failed to spot the problem with the second girl because I am concentrating on the big picture, on keeping order as we implement the changes we need to bring our world into the light. But there being two witches should not have changed our arrangement. Do not forget what these women are, Kerin: effectively they are Sidhe, the very enemy we seek to defend against.’

  ‘No, they are not – trust me, Urien, I have met real Sidhe. These girls may have the ability to play upon men’s hearts, but their powers are nothing compared to the creatures I encountered.’

  ‘Nonetheless, they are dangerous; Hylwen’s record proves that.’

  ‘I know – and I know that by judging a penitent – even if she was found unworthy – I was helping fight the rumours that the Cariad would abolish the Putain Glan. But I will see an end to that vile practice one day, Urien, I swear it.’

  Urien sighed. ‘I suppose we should be grateful you did not decide to recruit them after all. Even some of the Putain Glan conditioned by Lillwen have proven problematic, and you do not have her witch talents.’

  ‘Indeed I do not.’ Kerin spared a thought for the skycursed woman who had worn the Cariad’s robes before Kerin took on the role; Lillwen had been a temporary puppet put in place by the old Escorai to await the ‘rebirth’ of the ‘true’ Cariad. ‘Actually, I did consider putting the girls to sleep on the carousel.’

  ‘I could not have stopped you doing that, of course,’ said Urien stiffly.

  What Urien saw as a misguided act of charity on Kerin’s part had used up five of the sixty-four places on the great wheel of comaboxes that periodically transported the skyfools to ‘heaven’. She was not sure how long the now-ownerless slaves from the Sidhe ship above them would remain asleep on the carousel, but when the festival of Sul Esgyniad came around next year, people would expect at least a couple of ‘worthy’ boys to be chosen, and Kerin would have no choice other than to put them to sleep on the wheel as well.

  ‘Had I done so, I would only postpone the problem, not solve it,’ said Kerin. ‘You are quite correct in that.’ She still had no idea what to do with the skyfools now the Sidhe were – hopefully! – no longer going to collect them, so she could not afford to fill the carousel without good reason. She continued, ‘If it had just been the one girl we discussed, I would have had her cast into the chasm as we agreed; it could be argued that she deserved it. But to have to condemn two girls, when the other had committed only one crime – and for all we knew that could have been hearsay – I am sorry, Urien: I could not do it.’ She could still see the expression of terrified despair on the Fenland girl’s sallow face. ‘And if she was to be spared, then I saw no reason why the other girl should not be given a second chance too.’

  ‘Your mother was skycursed, was she not?’

  Kerin started. ‘Aye – how did you know that?’

  ‘I did not for sure, until you just confirmed it; my sources of information do not extend as far as mountain villages no one in the City of Light has ever heard of,’ he said wryly. ‘But a family that produces a boy with Damaru’s talents is likely also to produce women with talents; theirs as dangerous as his are valuable. I should have considered the possibility earlier. I assume your mother was killed?’

  ‘She was.’ Kerin would never forget watching from the reeds as her fellow villagers cast her mother into the mere.

  ‘I am sorry for that. But it does not change the fact that these two girls had to die – not just because of what they were, but because of what they knew. Lillwen could demonstrate some power, as they would expect the Cariad to do, but those girls would have sensed no such power from you, Kerin, which means they now know you are mortal, ordinary – not a goddess. And that is why they had to die, regardless of your public ruling.’

  ‘What have you done, Urien?’ asked Kerin uncertainly.

  ‘What you would not.’ Urien bowed his head for a moment, and the lamplight fell on the text from the Traditions that had been tattooed onto his head at his initiation. In the season since the Sidhe had tried to retake Serenein, Kerin had advanced in her studies enough to read the words: Knowledge makes foolish men arrogant and wise men humble. The Traditions had nothing to say on what knowledge did for women, presumably because they were not allowed it. He looked up again and said, ‘Do you really want to know the details?’

  ‘I – tell me the essence of it.’

  ‘It took a little time to arrange – hence my delay in coming to see you. I had to hire men who would have no compunction about shooting witches, and who had the skill to make sure they could kill the girls cleanly and safely from a distance. I also had to ensure that whichever priest accompanied the girls would not go out of his way to save them when my trap was sprung.’

  ‘That sounds . . . risky.’ Criticising Urien stopped her having to think about the dead girls.

  ‘The men I chose know their business; the girls would most likely never have realised the assassins were there before they met their end.’<
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  ‘That was not what I meant,’ Kerin said, adding, ‘well, not just what I meant, anyway.’

  Urien’s tone was mild. ‘I think you know me well enough to be sure that none of those involved in this incident will ever have the faintest idea who really initiated it.’ Urien often went abroad dressed as a priest of a different rank and order; people saw the robes, not the man.

  Kerin was pretty sure his other personas cultivated contacts of their own; she found herself envying him his many lives. ‘Then there is nothing else to say, is there?’ she sighed. ‘I am sure you have other business to attend to.’ Kerin had taken on the mantle of the Cariad determined to reveal the truth to her people, but so far most of her efforts had been bent towards ensuring that it remained hidden.

  ‘Always. Kerin—’ He paused, then changed his mind about whatever he had meant to say. ‘Nothing. Sleep well.’

  ‘Good night, Urien.’

  When sleep would not come, Kerin resorted to taking a herbal draught to bring oblivion. It was a crutch she found herself relying on all too often these days.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  ‘And this is caf?’ asked Ain, staring dubiously into the mug.

  ‘It is,’ said Jarek, ‘and you’re the first person I’ve had on board my ship who doesn’t like it.’

  ‘I am sorry. But that leaves more for you!’

  She smiled nervously and Jarek realised she was trying to make a joke. He wondered if she’d ever attempted anything as radical as humour before. Talking to the lingua by himself was making Jarek uncomfortable, not because Nual wasn’t there to check Ain wasn’t lying – it was obvious she’d been at least as fucked over as they had by the destruction of the hab; he was happy to consider her an ally, at least for the duration of the current crisis. He just wasn’t sure what to say to her, now the natural distance they’d been maintaining had broken down in the face of their common plight.

  There was one thing he was curious about which seemed harmless enough. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘your speech has changed a lot since you first commed me.’

  ‘Language modification is a fundamental ability for lingua. Many patrons use their own dialects or languages. If a lingua works with a given patron for a long period she is expected to modify her speech accordingly. Learning a new language takes a little longer, but when I spend a while with anyone who speaks a variation of Arc, I automatically mimic their accent, tonality and lexicon. To talk like them, as you’d say.’

  ‘Right. And what’s “Arc”?’

  ‘Apologies: I should have explained that. “Arc” is short for “Archaic”, which is the diplomatic and trade language of Aleph, based on the common tongue of human-space at the time of the Exodus.’

  That explained why Ain’s original speech had reminded him a little of the way people spoke on Serenein, though the lack of change there was because the Cariads had kept the place hermetically sealed and in a state of arrested development. ‘Good job human language hasn’t evolved too much then.’

  ‘Indeed it is. I imagine that’s due to your own need to keep a common language for your— your beamed virtuals, isn’t it? Your communications network.’

  ‘That’s right. We call it beevee. Do the patrons communicate much with human-space?’

  ‘Most have no interest, but I believe periodic updates are exchanged with those males who remain there.’

  ‘Any idea how many old males there are in human-space?’ He only knew of Khesh and his brother City-minds in the Tri-Confed system, but he’d bet there were more out there somewhere.

  ‘Apologies: that isn’t data the patrons feel the need to share.’

  ‘Shame. They don’t keep you very well informed, do they?’

  ‘Lingua do not expect them to, beyond what is required to fulfil our function. Though we don’t worship the patrons, we do acknowledge their superiority. They tell us what we need to know, and we accept that. Although I suspect I might have been chosen as your liaison because I’ve been out-system for so long, and so I know very little of any recent developments at the Consensus. An ignorant mind cannot give away secrets . . .’

  ‘. . . and they knew Nual would read you.’ Another thought struck Jarek. ‘Ain, do you know which male boarded my ship to remove Aleph’s coordinates from the comp?’

  ‘It would have been an avatar of the Gatekeeper; he considers himself the unofficial custodian of the shiftspace beacon, and the main authority on human-space. He has taken a very active part in your visit.’

  ‘I assume he’s not one of these Silent Agers?’

  ‘No, he is aligned with Shining Iron Face, one of the septs actively in favour of contact with human-space.’

  ‘And do you trust him?’

  ‘I both trust and distrust all patrons; this paradox defines the lingua. However . . . it appears likely that the Gatekeeper may have deceived you.’

  ‘Well, somebody certainly tampered with my ship’s com system to ensure it was offline during last night’s little fuck-up, and he’s the one male who’s definitely had an avatar on my ship.’

  ‘This is true. Also, it appears that the nanite plague did not arrive via an external delivery system but was on a timed release, and that implies that the patron who designed the hab must have known about the attack, even if he didn’t actually initiate it himself. That would be the Gatekeeper again. The final log entry before things went wrong was an encrypted coms burst, which the hab’s comp automatically accepted: I suspect that was the trigger. It also shut down the coms, though perhaps that was more of a side-effect. While the surveillance feed remained down, the Silent Agers took advantage to launch their own improvised attack.’

  ‘And they want us dead. What do you think the Gatekeeper wants?’

  ‘I’m afraid I have no idea.’

  ‘I did wonder if someone here might try to steal my ship, given they don’t have the means to get back to human-space. They don’t, do they?’

  Ain said, ‘I do not believe so – but even if they did, they would be able only to send representatives. An avatar out of contact with its patron becomes unstable.’

  Just like Vy had. Jarek also suspected the males might not approve of human shiftships, given the nature of the transit-kernels that powered them. ‘So they’re happy to carry on living out here, while humanity’s still being secretly fucked over by the females.’

  ‘They have no choice.’

  ‘I guess not. To be honest, given how many of them there are, I was a bit surprised they just upped sticks and ran. What little info we have from that far back suggests the males were killed off slowly, over many generations.’ He didn’t feel the need to add that Nual had been told the same thing by her people, before she rebelled.

  ‘What to do you mean?’ asked Ain.

  ‘Twenty thousand males – more originally, before some of them died getting to Aleph – would have been a force to be reckoned with, so why didn’t they stay and fight?’

  ‘Do you not know about the A-S Plague?’

  ‘The A-S—? No, I don’t. What is it?’

  ‘It isn’t something the patrons talk about much, but it’s the reason they came here in the first place. The females created a viral agent that targeted Sidhe males.’

  ‘Aha. And what did this virus do?’ Jarek knew all about the Sidhe’s tailored pathogens; he’d nearly died from one on Serenein.

  ‘The A-S Plague was double-tasked. Firstly, it damaged the males’ ability to freeshift – until then, the free males had expanded beyond the systems held by the females and returned to launch attacks on the females’ territory. Once infected, they could no longer strike out for new star-systems; they could only use previously established transit-paths. Encoded males were more resilient to the virus than those who remained in the flesh, but it still eroded – and in some cases completely destroyed – their ability to transit.’

  Jarek suspected that the Three Cities had succumbed to this virus; it would explain why they’d stayed behind. He wondered h
ow it felt for natural starfarers like that to be stuck in one place. ‘And the second effect?’

  ‘The second part of the virus affected only non-encoded males, but it infected all of them, and it spread very quickly. It reduced the intellect of any infected male to that of a self-absorbed child.’

  Or as they called them on Serenein, skyfools, thought Jarek.

  Her expression dark, Ain concluded, ‘And that’s why they called it the Anti-Sentience Plague.’

  ‘So the males ran away to avoid getting infected, and now they can’t go back?’

  ‘Even if they could, they wouldn’t want to. The A-S virus is harmless to humans or female Sidhe, but they can carry it, and it is likely the pathogen is still live and endemic in human-space.’

  Hence the extra-thorough decon they’d been through on arrival. ‘Nasty,’ Jarek muttered. And typical of the Sidhe.

  ‘Do you mind if I rest now? I think the last few hours are beginning to catch up with me.’

  Jarek realised she looked exhausted, and said quickly, ‘Of course. You can have my cabin.’

  ‘If you are sure this will not inconvenience you?’

  ‘Not at all,’ he told her with a smile. ‘I’m quite used to sleeping on the bridge. Give me a few minutes to tidy things up in there and the room’s all yours.’

  No one tried to com them while Jarek napped on his control couch, though he suspected plenty of locals were watching his ship pull away from the densely populated disc. He dreamt about Serenein again: this time he was arguing with Kerin, who was trying to persuade him to give her people Angel implants so they could fly to Heaven and find out the truth for themselves. His months on her world remained startlingly vivid, often flooding up from his subconscious when he relaxed, while his life before was veiled by a strange haziness. Serenein was where he’d got his stolen memory back, and he suspected the place would always haunt him.

  He had combined Ain’s info with his own to plot the best course. They needed to come back down into the main planetary disc at a steep angle, but not so precipitous that they couldn’t make adjustments once they’d located the Egg. The ship was just about to start its programmed descent when Nual came up onto the bridge.