Howling Dark

by Christopher Ruocchio

  I felt sick.

  Crim still spoke on my behalf. “We’ve been given to understand M. Brevon is in contact with the Exalted. That he trades with them.”

  The woman smiled, revealing pearlescent teeth. “And you are seeking . . . ?”

  “Transport,” I said, stepping forward. “Passage.”

  The homunculi’s smile did not falter—nor did it reach her eyes. She gave me a long, appraising look. “Is that so? I shall see if—” She broke off abruptly, those large eyes glassed over, focused on something only she could see. Her lips moved, mouthing silent words, and she nodded. I caught the brief pulse of light in one of the earrings she wore, and guessed someone was communicating with her. “This way, please.”

  With a discreet gesture, I ordered that Crim and Siran remain behind. The woman clasped her hands before her in a gesture clearly designed to accentuate her artificial charms and led her mincing way through another round door and along a hall, clothing groaning with each small step. I looked dutifully at the floor, at the patterned Jaddian carpet too rich by far for that close, low-lighted space. There were rust stains on the walls, and old ductwork clustered along the ceiling above, here dull, here bright-painted with warnings and access instructions. Several doors we passed, many of them open on dull offices whose dull occupants paid us no more than cursory attention.

  The doors at the end of the hall irised open onto the strangest office I had ever seen. The far wall was an arc of alumglass that opened onto the vast fishery outside. Somewhere in the warehouse tower, we had descended beneath the level of the waves, so that fish swam past the glass and green-tinted light streamed in, casting sick and turbulent shadows on the chamber floor. Books stood piled—not on shelves, but stacked like a child’s building blocks, like the stones of a cairn—about the walls of the chamber. There were no tables, no desks. Only a single, high-backed armchair near the far wall, giving the place more the air of a throne room than an office. The room’s only other furnishing was a large perch right beside the chair, a gilded piece of scrolling baroque woodwork on which squatted a raven of enormous size.

  “Welcome, welcome!” said a jovial voice from that single chair. “Come forward! It is so rare to have a visitor from the Imperium, and a palatine no less! Which of you is Marlowe?”

  “I am he,” I said, pressing past Switch.

  The man in the chair rose, smiling. I was not sure what I expected, but it was not the affable grandfather before me. His white hair flew in untidy waves above a face somehow somber despite the smiling expression, a sobriety made more so by the dark glasses he wore over his eyes, hiding whatever warmth they might have contributed to his smile. His clothes ill fit him, at once too baggy and too tight, cutting into him at the shoulder. He looked like nothing so much as a boy still dressed in his father’s clothes: a gray suit cut Sollan fashion, with a black toga fastened at the left shoulder.

  He extended a gloved hand. “Antonius Brevon.”

  Smiling, I clasped his hand. It felt wrong through the glove, did not give like the flesh of other hands. It felt . . . solid. A construct as of horn and leather. Plastic and steel. It was like shaking a skeleton’s hand. I felt the blood drain from my face even as Brevon’s grandfatherly smile widened, not reaching his eyes behind those dark glasses. “Hadrian Marlowe,” I said at last, remembering myself.

  “What can I do for you, M. Marlowe?” He released my hand, clasped both before him. “You told Eva here you seek passage? Passage where?”

  Behind him on its perch, the raven ruffled its feathers and muttered something that sounded like, “No.”

  I glanced sidelong at the homunculus in her tight suit, thinking of the skeletal fingers beneath those black silk gloves. Brevon’s smile did not falter—his expression did not change. He was . . . impossible to read, a smiling, somber cipher in mourning black and gray. “I’m told you know the way to Vorgossos. Or know those who know.”

  “No! No!” the raven said. Sidling back and forth.

  “Vorgossos . . .” Brevon repeated, turning his back. He returned to his chair, to the raven hunched on its perch. The bird cocked its head as he approached, croaking softly. “May I ask who referred you?”

  “A Lothrian bonecutter.”

  “Yevgeni Cento, was it?” Brevon laughed. “And how is the little cyclops?”

  Not wishing to answer that, I took a step forward. “He said you have dealings with the Exalted, that you charter freight and passengers on their ships. He said you have ships that make the journey to Vorgossos.”

  “No!” the raven cried, thrusting its head forward.

  “Quiet, Hrothgar!” Brevon said, waving a hand at the animal. “I do, yes!” Still not looking at me, he drew a small bag out of a pocket and—opening it—offered it to the raven. Stooping, the bird dipped its beak in, withdrew it with some morsel clasped there. “But before we go any further, M. Marlowe, let us be clear. You Imperials come out here often enough. And often enough it’s with tales of Vorgossos. It’s the best, you hear. The darkest corner of the firmament. You think that’s where you need to go, because you don’t realize that what you’re seeking—no matter how illegal it is where you come from . . . where there are laws—is commonplace here. You’ve met Cento. You know what he’s capable of. And yet here you are.”

  “And yet here I am.”

  “No!” the raven said. “No!”

  “Hush, Hrothgar. Hush.” Only then did Brevon turn, restoring his pouch to its pocket somewhere beneath the black toga. Idly, he reached up and scratched the bird on the white spot under its chin. “I don’t want to waste your time. I’m happy to arrange passage to the City, but if what you seek might be more easily attained here or elsewhere, I would recommend it. Passage does not come cheap.”

  Picturing my father, the way he would stand unmoved like the image of some Hellenic pharaoh lost in desert sands, I said nothing. He expected me to brush off the matter of payment as a trifle, as any pampered lord of the Imperium might do. I was not about to give him the pleasure of predictability. Brevon was not a talker, it seemed, and at length he turned his eyes from me to his raven.

  “Vorgossos, then?” he said at last. “You’re certain?”

  “I am.”

  “Immortality, is it?” He lowered his hand from the bird’s neck. It hopped a little closer to its master, deprived. “You know that’s only a dream? The way you’re picturing it?” He took a step closer, and even through those heavy lenses I could sense the weight of the gaze on me. “You don’t even look old. You palatines are hard to age, but if you’re a day over fifty I’d eat Hrothgar here.” He jerked a thumb at the raven. “Not that I’d do that to the old boy.” He resumed his seat. “Not immortality, then? Body servants? Homunculi? You can have those here. You could have those back home, as I understand it. Your Empire is backwards but you allow biofacture.” At this his vision tracked toward where the woman, Eva, stood demurely by the door. “Do you like her? I designed her myself.”

  “No!” Hrothgar croaked, speaking for me. Brevon smiled. The homunculi’s eyes were far away.

  I clenched my teeth, thinking of Ilex and the razor-thin line that separated her—a woman free and free-willed—from this shuffling puppet bred to servility and submission. “She’s lovely.”

  “I’d be willing to sell the genome, if you’re buying,” Brevon said. “I know a natalist uptown who could have you one grown in a couple of weeks. The model is very obedient, I get a lot of use out of her.”

  “No. Thank you.” My stomach turned.

  “Pity!” Brevon’s smile lingered a moment too long. “Eva! Tea!” He clapped three times—the snap of it unlike the sound of hands. The homunculus bowed and shuffled from the room. With a gesture, a chair descended from the ceiling, floating a good two feet above the Jaddian carpet, suspended by a metal arm from the dark above. I took my seat without comment while Switch took up a positio
n beside me, thumbs hooked in his belt.

  The merchanter curled his hands on the arms of his chair. “Truth be told, I don’t much care why you want to go to Vorgossos. I am a businessman. If you want passage to the City, it’s in my interest to provide it. But there is the matter of price.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem,” I said. “How much?”

  “For a place on one of my ships?” Brevon adjusted his glasses. “One hundred.”

  “One hundred thousand marks?” I repeated, aghast. “I could practically buy my own ship for that.”

  Brevon leaned as far back as his chair would allow. “I would love to see the ship you could buy with a hundred thousand marks. Be serious.”

  “I have my own ship already,” I said. “I need only coordinates.”

  The tea chose that moment to appear. Eva returned, following a table balanced on a spherical wheel. This rolled to Brevon’s side and stopped there. Eva poured judiciously, in silence, leaning over as she did so, one porcelain hand on the porcelain teapot.

  “Thank you, Eva,” I said, accepting my tea. No expression from her, no tea for Switch.

  “Coordinates?” Brevon repeated. “That isn’t how this works. Vorgossos’s location is secret, as are many of our places. All the better to keep them safe. No one comes to Vorgossos except by our way. You’ve never seen an Exalt Sojourner before, have you?” When I didn’t answer—I didn’t know what he meant—he said, “I thought not. You Imperials . . . your dreadnoughts are something, but . . . a Sojourner is something else. It’ll tuck your ship in one little corner and no one will even care you’re there. That’s why the price is so high—it’s for your ship, not for you, in which case the price is quite low.” His smile was starting to turn to something septic. “Unless you’d like to make another deal.”

  “Excuse me?” I asked, holding the tea. I did not drink. The steam wafted over my face, carrying with it a fresh and grassy scent. Green tea, such as the Nipponese prized most highly.

  Placing his tea back on its saucer, Brevon passed the drink to Eva, who held it without comment. “Blood is the ultimate currency. You are a palatine of the Imperium. Whatever else they may be, your High College has tricks even our bonecutters have not thought of.”

  Blood again.

  Again I imagined my eyes in other faces, my genome—the language of me—spoken in new sentences, writ in new blood. Parts of myself or the whole sold and itemized. I looked at Eva, her distant expression and the ecstatic shape of her, in the smoky pigment about her eyes and the luster of her hair. There was a horror in the fact of her design. That it should be done to anyone sickened me; that it might be done to parts of me turned my stomach. And yet . . . I did not have a hundred thousand marks to spare.

  “I am not for sale,” I said, my spirit speaking and not my mind. “Nor any part of me.”

  Antonius Brevon leaned forward, hands folded between his knees, and appraised me as a jeweler might a diamond. After a moment, he reached up and removed his glasses. I started.

  Once when I was very young, Gibson had showed me a film about the funeral rites among the adorators who yet live in the highlands above Meidua. Those pagans with their one god placed coins—kaspums stamped with an imprint of the Imperial sun—on the eyes of the deceased. Brevon’s eyes were little different. Blank curves of dead metal the precise color of those old coins. They were not the eyes of a man. What they saw I cannot say, nor dared imagine.

  “Everyone is for sale, M. Marlowe,” Brevon said acidly. “It is only a matter of price.”

  “I’ve been sold before,” I said, thinking of Anaïs Mataro. Of my father. “I won’t be sold again.” And to be sold to Brevon was worse than being sold to the Mataros. In selling my genes I would be complicit in the creation of lives bred into slavery like the woman beside us. I would be complicit in their suffering, and for what? Money? Convenience? A little time? And that they would be in part myself made it seem a kind of prostitution. That made me think of Switch and all he had endured as a boy, and so I set my jaw and resolve with it.

  Brevon sniffed, sat back in his chair. “Pity.” He took his tea from the homunculus, drank it down. Those dead metal eyes narrowed. “Your College is always finding new ways to stretch the human lifespan. I’m sure we might have made some use of you . . . And I’d have liked to wear your eyes. What a color!” I was glad I’d not had any of the tea. I wished I’d had the sense to refuse.

  “I don’t suppose you could make the journey for seventy-five?”

  “I am not a fishwife, Marlowe,” Brevon said coldly, and at his words twin points of light like cold stars flared in those dull orbs he called eyes. “And this is not a bazaar. I have told the price. You may pay it or you may leave my office.” Startled by the sudden edge in his voice, the raven jumped, agitated, and fluttered to the back of its master’s chair. Brevon paid it no mind, but handed the teacup to Eva, who placed it on the little table service.

  Switch took a half step forward, and I had to put a hand on his arm to stay his advance. “One hundred is too high.”

  “Then book crèches for yourself and your fine friend here.”

  “And leave my ship?” I snorted.

  The merchanter polished his glasses on his toga and—blessedly—replaced them on the end of his long nose. “I thought you Imperials trusted your own people? Are they not loyal to you?”

  The raven croaked, but no words were forthcoming.

  “That isn’t the problem,” I said coldly. “It’s a question of cargo.”

  “You intend to take something away from Vorgossos?”

  “I intend to take something to Vorgossos. I . . .” At this I held my tea out, untouched. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid it’s not to my taste.”

  Eva advanced smoothly and took the drink from me. “May I fetch his lordship something else? Water? Wine?”

  I shook my head. “No, thank you. My apologies.”

  Through the thick glass of Brevon’s spectacles, two points of blue-white light flared. “Your cargo?”

  “I’m sorry?” I asked, feigning ignorance. “Only passengers.”

  “But you said . . .”

  “One of our number cannot travel by standard fugue crèche . . .” I trailed off, struck by a sudden idea. “I cannot make the journey, not for one hundred thousand.” Most of the Red Company’s funds had been with Bassander’s payroll officer. We’d come away with only the Mistral’s small treasury—and my own small accounts. The price Brevon asked for transport to Vorgossos would drain our treasury, leave us with almost nothing left for food or fuel, and in any case the money was not truly mine to spend. Bribing Cento had been a small thing, a paltry thing. But a hundred thousand marks? What right had I to strip Otavia and her people what little money was left them? Poor payment that would be for their loyalty.

  The merchanter drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “Then you have wasted enough of my time for today, M. Marlowe.” He raised a hand to dismiss me.

  I held up one finger, and—consciously parroting the other man’s word choice and tone from earlier, said, “Unless you’d like to make another deal.”

  The blue points flared again through the heavy glasses, and Hrothgar the raven croaked from its place at the top of the chair. “Go on.”

  “Blood is the ultimate currency, you say?” I said. “I have in my possession a sample of Cielcin blood, belonging to one of their upper caste.”

  The merchanter’s lifeless eyes observed me over the rim of his spectacles. “You mean you have one of the Cielcin upper caste in your power. This is your passenger, then? The one who can’t be accommodated by standard fugue crèches?”

  I gave Brevon my crookedest smile.

  I am not proud of what I did. I knew what it meant—what it might mean. I had, after all, been in fear of just such an outcome for myself and my own genes. But it is always easier to spe
nd what is not yours to give. I told myself that Tanaran was not human, that this lessened my trespass. I told myself the Extras might not know what to do with blood that was not human . . . that this lessened my trespass. I decided—as youth so often decides—that the ends justified the means . . . that my path was righteous because the place it led was righteous. That calculus has led to darker places than Brevon’s office in human history, and for worse reasons. To Gibbeah, to Bannatia and Rustam and every world sterilized in our wars, by our weapons or the Cielcin’s. To mass graves on asteroids without name. To the billions dead on Atlanta and the other old Mericanii worlds, victims of their machines’ utopian vision, and of the avenging fire of man. To Earth. To quiet fields in forgotten Poland or buried beneath Siberian snows. To Beijing. Nanjing. Hiroshima. To the ruins of Constantinople and of Rome before it.

  To Emesh, and to Gododdin yet to come.

  But I had to make a choice. Go forward or go back. Tanaran’s blood or mine. Call me a coward, call me a villain, but I could not put my blood in the hands of that Extrasolarian merchant, knowing how it might be used. With Tanaran’s at least, I hoped it might be otherwise.

  I made my choice.

  “Would you be interested in it?”

  “Research into Cielcin genetics is . . . rather new.” Brevon frowned. “It may be I could find a buyer. Some pharmaceutical company, perhaps. One never knows what sort of compounds extraterranic life might produce.”

  This caught me by surprise. “You wouldn’t just sell it to the natalists?”

  Brevon’s lip curled in disgust. “Is that what you think I am? What we are?” He shook his head. “The market provides for people’s appetites, and I do not stop it. But it provides opportunity. Invention. For all I know there’s some protein in Pale blood that can cure diseases, regenerate tissue. Maybe it will be compatible with humans, maybe not. We do not only deal in flesh for flesh’s sake, Marlowe. Half the terranic species still in circulation are only alive because businessmen like myself elected to save them during the first waves of colonization, because we saw a market for them. The ossulum vaccine was produced out here. We sponsored the eradication of AIDS-3, not your government. They just quarantined affected worlds and let their people die. They were peasants, after all. So don’t moralize at me because I profit by my work.”