“Offense?” I repeated, half-rising from the cushions. But I thought about Tanaran, about Valka and Switch and the others. They ought to be on the hightower, descending. “No,” I said at last, unable to curb all the sarcasm from my voice, “no offense.”
Yume clasped its delicate hands before itself. “The Master was worried when you did not leave your chambers.”
“So he sent you?” I asked. “Surely he knows where I am.” I raised a hand, described a circle with one finger to indicate the cameras I felt sure were everywhere. “The King with Ten Thousand Eyes and all.”
“If you mean to imply that you are under surveillance, I can assure you there is no monitoring equipment in the diplomatic suite.”
I confess I snorted. “You expect me to believe that?”
“Belief is not required.”
“Is that so?” I said, struggling to my feet. “You’ll forgive me if I’m not convinced.”
The golem said, “I cannot lie.”
“I’m supposed to believe that, too?”
“Belief—”
“Is not required, yes.” I turned my sword over in my hands, recalling how Kharn had done that very thing on our first meeting. It had a pleasant weight, and the wine-dark leather grip was sweet to the touch, her silvered fittings only somewhat tarnished by time and hard use.
“The Master considers it unwise to provide me with counterfactual data. It introduces error.” Something all liars should take into account, and something each of us forgets. Yume was not finished speaking. “In any case, indulging mistruth violates the laws which govern what you think of as my persona.”
I stared at the creature. “You mean to say that you do not truly think.”
“I am only what the Master made me. A high-order virtual intelligence and personal assistant. Genuine cognition is not required. Pursuant to which, I was asked to attend to any desires his lordship might have.”
The couch loomed beside me, and it was all I could do not to turn my eyes in that direction, for I knew all too well just what Kharn Sagara had in mind where the matter of desire was concerned. Instead I asked, “Where are my friends? Are they on their way back down?”
“They are still aboard your ship at the marina. We expect they will be underway shortly, provided we do not occupy the nine-percent-probability space where they leave without you.”
“Nine percent,” I repeated, not impressed. “And what data are you working off, precisely?”
“Only what is available.”
“Hmm.” If it were really true, if Kharn did not monitor my rooms, what a statement of power it was to permit his guests their privacy. All the same, I knew well that the single eye in Yume’s face was one of Kharn’s Ten Thousand, just as Naia’s two had been. For all I knew, the Undying lurked even then behind his servant’s face. And watched. And listened.
Tanaran’s arrival could not come soon enough.
CHAPTER 37
TANARAN
TWO MEALS PASSED AND the better part of a day, and in all that time no word from Yume as to my companions’ whereabouts. On its twin appearances, the golem only said what it had said before.
The door opened a third time, hours before I expected the golem to return.
“Still here?”
Valka stood in the doorway, Yume behind her with a towering figure in a hooded black abolla. It seems strange to say that after so short a time apart seeing a familiar face was like seeing the sun after weeks underground, but it was. I rose from the table at speed, glad not to be alone in that awful place.
“Where else would I be?” I said, and turning to the hooded figure added, “Asvato o-renimn ti-okarin yelnuri mnu shi.”
In its native tongue, the tall xenobite replied, “You are most welcome.”
Looking round, I asked, “Where are the others?” Valka and the Cielcin priest were alone. Pallino, Crim, Ilex, and Switch were nowhere to be seen. It was Switch’s absence that seemed the strangest to me—as indeed it was—and his absence I felt most sharply.
“I suggested they stay behind,” Valka said. “’Tis no danger here.” Despite this she was still wearing her sidearm strapped to one thigh.
Switching to Valka’s native Panthai, I asked, “You came alone? With it?” I suppressed an urge to glance at Tanaran, who stood impassive, but must have guessed we spoke about it.
“’Tis perfectly safe,” she replied in the same language. “I told Otavia I could handle it. You know, I think if you’d come back as well she’d have done all she could to leave this place.”
That did not sit right with me. Captain Corvo must have been greatly unsettled to have allowed such a thing. If that were so, I could understand her wanting to keep Crim and Ilex aboard the Mistral. They were her people, after all. That Switch or Pallino had not come either filled me with a deep foreboding, and the blank loneliness I felt before Valka’s reappearance asserted itself again.
“What’s it like on the ship?”
Valka’s eyes turned toward the watchful Yume. The golem stood impassive, waiting to be acknowledged. She brushed hair from her eyes as she returned her attentions to me. “Unsettled.” She raised a hand to touch my arm, but seemed to think better of it. “They still can’t access the ship’s communications or navigational readouts. They’re locked out. It has Otavia and Durand nervous. I’m sure it’s just the Vorgossene protecting their privacy. She’s sent people around the landing platform up there. All the ships are locked down the same way.”
“I’m sure this place hasn’t kept its secrets for so long without being careful,” I said, looking away.
“What’s wrong?” She did touch my arm then, for only a moment.
“Nothing,” I said, too shortly. “It’s nothing.”
“This place . . .” Tanaran’s Galstani was still halting, still thick on its alien tongue, but it spoke clearly. “It is like the ships of my people.” I noticed then that the Cielcin was not squinting. Beneath the shadow of its hood the black eyes—large as fists—were wide and staring.
Valka turned to the silent golem, thrust out her chin. “Will your master see us now?”
“He will,” Yume said, gesturing. “This way.”
I had expected Kharn to delay, to let us fester for weeks again as I had the first time. But the Undying seemed to have found for himself some scrap of urgency, and his pet golem led us down to the dark tramway about that lightless ocean. Ahead, the white shape of Kharn’s inverse pyramid shone like the face of some blank specter by night.
“There are buildings,” Tanaran said. “Far below.”
“There!” Valka pointed back the way we had come, down and down.
I could see nothing in the darkness. What Tanaran’s alien eyes saw I could not say, and I had to remind myself that these deep caverns must have been like daylight to the xenobite. It seemed at once incredible to me that Evolution should have given the Cielcin eyes at all. Ought it not to have fashioned some blind beast, some creature that saw through sound or else sensed the vibrations of the ground beneath it? I wondered again what sort of homeworld the Cielcin called their own. There I had a baetan of the itani, and I did not think to ask.
“The old city,” Yume said, and said no more.
The faint sound of a horn playing filled the air of the entrance hall when we arrived. The smell of the distant sea followed us into the pyramid, faded as we descended the long stair toward the throne room. The wooden doors at the end of the hall swung inward silently, and the faint music faded to silence, as though we had interrupted the Lord Sagara at his music. Valka halted on the threshold, plagued—I think—by that same fear which accosted me the last time I’d stood in that place.
Kharn Sagara had not moved since last I saw him. Still he sat, saturnine and stone-faced amid the darkness and all that pale stone. An ancient analog musical device sat on the dais beside him, its tw
isted horn directed toward the king-in-yellow. How we had heard the thing from the pyramid antechamber above I couldn’t guess. Some acoustic trick or technological devilry, perhaps.
As before, he did not speak. He did not seem to notice us at all. His eyes were very far away, wandering with his other eyes in places unknown to me. I had seen Kharn’s wandering eyes from time to time, floating down corridors and galleries, admiring his great collection more than they kept watch.
Beside me, Valka shifted uncomfortably on her feet. Taking this as my cue, I took a step forward and, not bowing, said, “Thank you, Lord Sagara, for seeing us again on such short notice.” Unable to help myself, I added, “I know how valuable is your time.”
Was it my imagination? Or did the faintest trace of a smile crease that ancient and ageless face? Faint and far above, the blue-white gleam of the Undying’s camera eyes winked on. They descended soundlessly, little one-eyed fish-shapes swimming on the airs. The human face did not turn to me, in this way recalling the blind beggars I had seen so often mutilated on the Chantry steps.
After another pause of perhaps half a minute, I gestured to Tanaran and said, “I have brought the Cielcin emissary, as I promised.” On cue, Tanaran removed its hood—no easy task with its horned crown. In that open space, the Cielcin was at last able to stand to its full height. Tanaran was short for a Cielcin, and yet young. Despite this, it towered nearly eight feet high. Thin as a reed it was, and the great cloak it wore fit it badly, being at once too broad and too short.
Speaking as it had to Captain Corvo, it said, “I am Casantora Tanaran Iakato, Baetan of Itani Otiolo, of Aeta Aranata.”
Two of Kharn’s drones swerved so that—like a pair of living eyes—they regarded Tanaran face to face. After another interminable silence, Kharn said, “A Cielcin that speaks the tongues of Man. Here is a thing I have not seen in fifteen thousand years. Welcome, Tanaran of Otiolo. Eka Kharn Sagara.” I am Kharn Sagara. That was all he said. No title. No pomp. He needed neither. Leaning forward but not lowering his eyes to us, Kharn spoke in perfect Cielcin: “This human tells me you are his prisoner.”
This human. Kharn used the word the Pale use of us, yukajjimn, vermin. I glanced at Valka. She’d caught the term as well, eyebrows raised. Tanaran bobbed its head, hands clasped before its chest. “I am, lord. We were taken prisoner on pilgrimage.”
“Zadituri ne?” Kharn repeated the last word. “Which world was this?”
“Emesh!” Valka said, drawing the attention of another of Sagara’s eyes.
“You did not know the humans had settled there?” The Undying’s voice seemed to pace around us, circling like wolves, flowing with the steady orbit of the watchful eyes.
Tanaran glanced down at me, a curious expression on its flat and bloodless face. No human made such an expression, the way its upper lip twisted, curling back from translucent teeth. I recalled Valka’s words to me then, I’d not be so sure you can read Tanaran. Perhaps she was right. Still, I think the xenobite had nearly so much difficulty with me, for it watched my face all the while it spoke, saying, “We did not. We recovered the coordinates from Akterumu.” I stood impassive, not sure what to make of this. I’d no notion what Akterumu was—whether it was a person or a place.
Valka and I exchanged significant glances. The word pilgrimage had religious overtones, even in the alien tongue. It was easy to imagine that dim throne room a part of the dark beneath Calagah, and easy to hear again the words of Tanaran’s captain: They are not here. They. The Quiet. Tanaran and its people had come to Emesh seeking after the ruins there, after the ancient xenobites that had built so many hallowed sites across known space, hundreds of thousands of years before mankind stood upon her own two feet and learned to walk.
“And you arrived to find the world in human hands,” Kharn said. His lips did not move. The artificial voice that filled the hall was not the voice of his body, but a thing deeper, darker, the amplified tones of a god in some bad Eudoran play. Such melodrama has its critics—though I am not one.
Quickly then, Tanaran recounted what it could of its capture on Emesh. How their ship had been shot down by Raine Smythe and the 437th Centaurine Legion. How they had fled into the tunnels beneath Calagah—to die, they thought. To make one last heroic stand amidst the ruins of their gods. It told how I had come, and won Uvanari’s surrender, how a scant dozen survivors were taken by the Empire.
Here I intervened, telling how the Chantry had taken Uvanari for interrogation. They’d wanted the location of the Cielcin fleet, and tortured the captain for it, despite my assurances that neither it nor its people would be harmed. A genuine smile twisted Kharn’s lip at that. “You should not have spoken for the Empire,” he said.
I brushed this off, explained that I had agreed to kill the Cielcin captain to deliver it from the Chantry cathars, and in exchange it had given me a name: Aranata Otiolo, a prince of the Cielcin, master of one of their strange clan fleets. And it had told me to seek Vorgossos.
“It said you’d dealt with the Itani Otiolo before—and you alluded to the same,” I said, moving to stand beside Tanaran.
The King of Vorgossos sat a long time unresponding. It seemed no force could wake him from his place. He might have been one of the statues. Even our Cielcin compatriot seemed disquieted. For a moment, I considered saying that I had fled the Empire, uncertain if my act of rebellion would endear me to that lord of the Extrasolarians, or undermine my credibility as an apostol. So I erred on the side of caution, and held my peace.
How delicate was that moment! How fragile! I had not told Valka—there had been no time—how badly that first meeting had gone, or about Naia. Never before had I felt so much the fly caught in the spider’s web. Not even in Borosevo as Count Mataro’s captive stud had I felt so robbed of agency. I was for a moment only a character in Tanaran’s story, in Kharn’s ongoing myth.
“Tell me, baetan!” And Kharn’s voice was like the roll of distant thunder. “What do you want?” Almost heard beneath the rumble of that vast voice, I heard words from Kharn’s own lips murmured, “Sibylla ti theleis?” I did not then recognize the language or the source, nor had I time to dwell upon it.
The towering alien looked down at me a moment, wringing impossibly long-fingered hands. Valka was right, I could read nothing in those black wells it called eyes. I might as well have tried to hold discourse with a shark. It hesitated, then turned to Kharn and in its high, cold voice said, “I want to return to my master.”
“And peace?” Kharn asked. “Do you wish that?”
Tanaran drew itself up to its full height, and repeated itself. “I wish to return to my master.” Wish, it had said, qulle. A stronger word than want.
“And your master will pay handsomely for the return of his property.” His. Unlike every other noun in the Cielcin language—unlike every other Cielcin—the princes were always he. To those familiar with the language, it had an ominous quality. One could almost hear the drumbeats just offstage. With glacial slowness, Kharn Sagara turned his face down to regard the three of us standing there. “I might reach out to your master, priest.” He raised a finger, tracing an arc from Valka’s face to mine. “But not for them.”
I took a step forward, hands closing into fists. Seeing this, Valka caught me by the elbow and squeezed. The orbiting swarm of eyes pulled back, their lazy motions seeming to lock into something coherent, watchful, their glowing lenses shifting from blue to livid white.
The man himself seemed untroubled by my sudden motion. His eyes were like spots of ink on old vellum, and he frowned down at me. “The Sollan Empire can offer me nothing with this peace of theirs, but your master!” The voice in the air around us cracked like a lightning flash as five eyes floated toward Tanaran. “Your master may indeed be pleased to have you returned. Him I will deal with.”
Valka’s hand yet tightened on my arm, nails biting even through my coat and sleeve. My mind was re
eling. I could feel the light of his glowing eyes on me, on Valka, the malice and the threat in them like laser points. We were alone, and far from help, and the laws that governed diplomacy and the treatment of guests and emissaries meant nothing on Vorgossos. If Sagara wished to take our prisoner, he could, and I could not stop him.
But Tanaran spoke again, saying, “Raka tutaihete.” That is generous. My heart sank. “But the yukajjimn have ten of my clansmen, my master’s property. Aeta Aranata would want them as well.”
“Then we shall have them removed from this Marlowe’s custody.”
“He does not have them,” Tanaran replied. “They remained with his fleet when we fled here.” Realizing what it implied by those words, Tanaran stopped speaking, darting its eyes to me.
If the Undying caught the reference to our highly illegal flight from the Balmung, he gave no sign. “You know the humans mean to kill your master and your clansmen,” Kharn said, voice dripping from the dark above. “The humans will claim they aim for peace and kill you at table. As is their way.” He spoke with the weight of authority, of long knowledge. Yet there was no condemnation in his tone, only the weary acceptance of old age. “As they have done before.”
“What do you mean?” Valka demanded. Ironic that she—who had held me to silence—should break hers. “What do you mean ‘as we have done before’?”
“I meant what I said, Sagara!” I said, extricating myself from Valka’s talons.
But Tanaran said, “I must return to my master, and return all I can to him. If that means dealing with the yukajjimn, so be it.” It placed one massive hand on its chest. “And if we can put a stop to the fighting that has claimed too many of the People’s lives, then so be that, too.”
A bark of laughter escaped Kharn, though his mouth remained closed. “Interesting.” Then, “Your companions’ lives mean little to me, baetan. But you . . . you are valuable. Your master will not want to lose the history of his clan in you. He will come for you, and you will remain here until he does.”
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