Howling Dark

by Christopher Ruocchio

  Smythe herself sat behind a desk, the door to her personal quarters behind her, her cane forgotten, propped against the wall at her side, her hands folded on the desk before her.

  “I just don’t understand, ma’am,” Bassander was saying, eyes fixed dutifully on a space on the wall above and to the right of Smythe’s head, as though he could not bear to look at her. I have often observed this indirectness amongst military persons, this tendency to look over the shoulder or above the head of the person one was speaking to, even as one spoke loudly and clearly. “Lord Marlowe’s actions were treason. He killed our own people—three of my men. He kidnapped our principal hostage and absconded with a staff of Norman foederati. He conspired with the Extrasolarians, consorted with a . . .” he stumbled, still not believing, “with a daimon of Mericanii, if such a thing is to be believed. Why is he not in chains?”

  The quiet rang a little when he was done, and only then did I realize he’d been nearly shouting. Smythe had realized all the while, of course, and Crossflane, whose bushy eyebrows wrinkled his forehead all the way to his neatly combed white hair.

  “Are you finished, Captain?” the Tribune asked. “I appreciate your candor and your fervor, but Lord Marlowe has his uses, as you see.” She spread her hands as if to take in the totality of the Demiurge beyond the walls of that room. Turning her attention on me, she continued, “The question of his fate will be reexamined after we have met with the Cielcin. Not before.”

  “But Justice—”

  “Justice,” Raine Smythe said, overriding her subordinate, “is mitigated by circumstance. Should his actions prove instrumental in delivering us an alliance with one of the Cielcin clans, I think I speak for Hauptmann and for His Radiance both when I say that the Empire might have cause to be grateful to Lord Marlowe above and beyond the price of those unfortunate men’s lives.” Bassander made ready to interrupt again, but Smythe held up a hand for silence. “And insofar as Lord Marlowe is useful as a translator and for the rapport he has with this . . . Tanaran, we need him now.”

  I could see the muscles working in Bassander’s jaw, imagined the sound of gears grinding, stripping themselves of their teeth. “You could have told me, ma’am.”

  “Captain!” First Officer Crossflane hissed.

  Bassander Lin stood somehow even straighter. “I’m sorry, sir, ma’am.” His face looked almost pained. “But if you had only ordered me to go in Marlowe’s place, I’d have gone and gladly.”

  Smythe rocked back in her chair, shook her head. “No, you wouldn’t have. You’d have gone straight to Leonid.” That was her legate, the commander of the 437th. “Or to Hauptmann.”

  Silence again. The captain did not argue, and the gears beneath the skin of his jaw were still. We all knew that what Raine said was true, and honest as he was Bassander could not contest it.

  “You have been remarkably quiet,” Crossflane said. It took me a moment to realize that he was speaking to me, so long had I sat forgotten to one side.

  I raised my eyes, asked, “What do you want from me?”

  “You understand your position, Lord Marlowe?” Smythe asked.

  “I’m to work as a translator, yes. The same as I did on Emesh with Uvanari.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Not like you did on Emesh, no. You’ll be assisting our translator.”

  I accepted this without complaint. They would bring another translator. That was only sensible. “A scholiast, is he?”

  “He is,” Raine Smythe replied. “Tor Varro.”

  “What order is he?” I asked, unable to quiet that piece of me that yet loved the scholiasts, the piece of me that wished I had been one.

  Smythe glanced up at Crossflane, whose brows contracted. The older man rubbed his jaw. “Cal something,” he said. “Chalcenterite, I think it was? He’s from somewhere out in Sagittarius. Nov Angren, maybe?”

  “I don’t know the order,” I said, crossing my arms. No surprises there. There were hundreds of scholiastic orders, each with a subtle difference in focus, in interpretation of the writings of Imore, in dress, in practice. Gibson had been a Zenoan, one of the oldest orders, focused on the study of the classic trivia—grammar, logic, and rhetoric—and upon literature. The Chalcenterites, though I did not then know it, were ascetics of the most extraordinary kind, emphasizing the practice of self-denial and self-reflection for which the scholiasts are so often stereotyped.

  Crossflane made a grumbling noise. “Well, he’s been over the Emesh records with a microscope. He’s impressed.” I felt a momentary glow of satisfaction despite my dire circumstances to know that one of the orders had found my work satisfactory, and sat a little straighter. The first officer took a step forward, leaned over the corner of Smythe’s desk. “Said you had an . . . interesting interrogation style, if you take my meaning. The way you went off script.”

  I felt all eyes on me, and shut my own. It took every ounce of control in me to keep my hand from shading my shuttered eyes. I had of course manipulated the situation on Emesh, being the only one who could speak the Cielcin language. I had often only pretended to translate what the Chantry torturers had asked of me, preferring to try and build a relationship with the Cielcin captain. My tactic had failed in the end, and when Valka had cut the bastille’s power with her neural lace and Uvanari had freed itself, the beast had tried to kill me. Only Sir Felix’s training and my years as a myrmidon had saved me when language failed. I was glad at least that my most dangerous conversations—the last with Uvanari and with Tanaran before that—had been done during Valka’s carefully controlled brownouts of the city’s power grid.

  “Still,” Smythe said coolly, “we should not argue with your results, Marlowe.” She leaned back in her chair so far as it would go, and began rapping her knuckles against the desktop. I could feel the room drop a degree. Two. Three. Her muddy eyes never left me, and I struggled not to squirm. “I understand your Doctor Onderra can speak with the Pale now as well.”

  Valka. Did they know? Did they know the role she had played in the Emesh affair? Surely by now Bassander—who was no fool, whatever my opinion of him—must have guessed at the implants that crouched at the base of her skull. Hoping to deflect away the conversation away from Emesh and whatever role the doctor had had there, I said, “She spent a good deal of time out of fugue since Emesh, studying. She’s communicated a fair deal with Tanaran as well. Perhaps more than I have, truth be told.”

  Seeing my direction and eager to head me off at the pass, Bassander Lin put in, “Captain, I must protest. The witch ought not to be involved. She—”

  “Peace, captain,” Raine said, again waving her subordinate to silence. “Has Sagara restored the Cielcin prisoner to us?”

  “Tanaran?” I asked, not sure.

  Captain Lin clasped his hands behind his back and bowed his head. “Yes, ma’am. It’s in the brig now.”

  The knight-tribune stood, expelled a ragged, gusty breath. She crossed to a brass hook hanging on the wall and drew off her officer’s overcoat and hung it upon the peg. Turning, she tugged on the lip of her breastplate, adjusting it. “Good, I should like to speak to this creature before long. There’s no telling when the rest of its kind will arrive . . .” She massaged one of the ivory gauntlets she wore as though it pained her. Truly fine armor it was, not the dinted and carbon-scored plate of the common legionnaire, but printed ceramic, the sculpted body studded with relief images of the Imperial Sun between the Legions’ wings across the chest. A similar motif of wings detailed the edges of the vambraces and greaves, and I knew their substance would turn back even a shot from a plasma howitzer.

  “Would you like me to accompany you?” I asked, trying to gauge Bassander’s reaction, but the Mandari man was half-turned from me, and I could not tell if his face darkened.

  Raine pivoted, and for the first time I noted she wore a highmatter sword on her belt. She wore it slip-fashion, as I did
myself, that it might snap away from the belt and be activated in a smooth, single extension by the dominant hand. The left hand. That struck me, for there are no left-handed men or women among the palatine. Speaking—I thought—a shade too sharply, “No! I’ll have Varro accompany me.” After that her tone softened considerably, and she added, “Better I speak with it alone.”

  I accepted this with a nod, swallowing both my bile and the sense that I stood on rotting planks above a pit of fire.

  Smythe resumed her seat with an equally heavy sigh, as if she shouldered again the entire weight of her office as she seated herself. “It is our current predicament that more concerns me. I do not trust this demoniac we find ourselves in bed with.”

  “Sagara?” Lin asked.

  “Sagara.” Raine Smythe turned her attention from Lin to me and back again with a ragged tiredness. In the harsh light of the room, a faint tracery of white scars stood out against the dun color of her neck, on the backs of her hands. They were the marks of the surgery that had made her a patrician. Complex operations and brutal, I always heard, so extensive that even the owner’s very genes were altered by tonics and the various essences distilled by the magi of the High College. It never occurred to me how the echoes of such a procedure might ache. I wondered how old Smythe was, and how weary. “I admit, Marlowe, you surprise me.”

  Not expecting this, I sat forward in my padded chair and folded my hands between my knees. “Surprise you?”

  “I asked you to find a planet no one believed exists, and you find not only that planet, but a character out of everyone’s childhood myths.” She turned away, and for a moment a strange smile played across her face as she looked toward Crossflane, who shrugged. “Kharn Sagara,” Raine Smythe said. “My brother used to play as him when we were children.” I said mine had as well, and Smythe continued, “The Mataros’ chancellor accused you of being a literary cliché, I recall. I’d say she owes you an apology.”

  I snorted. “Ogir? I’d forgotten that.”

  Smythe unfastened first one gauntlet then the other and set them both aside. “How many people were aboard your ship?”

  “The Mistral?” I asked, then thought back. “About three hundred?”

  “It’s a pity we can’t count on them if things go against us,” Smythe said, setting the gauntlets neatly to one side. “Sagara has the Mistral locked down, I don’t doubt.”

  Bassander shifted his posture, slackened and snapped back to attention. “We could . . . ask him to transfer the Mistral to the Obdurate.”

  “Possibly,” Smythe agreed.

  “Unless . . .” It was a moment before I realized I’d spoken aloud. Even Bassander was looking at me. “Unless they’re right where we want them?”

  Sir William Crossflane gave me a look like I’d just declared a fervent belief in goblins. “The devil are you on about?”

  I suppressed an urge to say precisely, said instead, “They could be of use. If things take a left turn. If we can get them out.”

  “If,” Crossflane repeated.

  “If,” I insisted. “In either event, Corvo has her crew on ice and they may as well sit under Kharn’s nose like a crate of fish fresh-frozen for market instead of a couple thousand miles that way!” I gestured in what I thought was the direction of the Demiurge’s outer hull, holding Crossflane’s eye all the while. “Where they’re no good to anyone.” I was suddenly aware that I was making what Valka had called “that face you make when you’ve had an idea that any normal human being would have discarded out of hand.” Those others must not have known me so well as Valka, for they only nodded, whereas I had thought I’d just been terribly clever, in no small part because I believed the odds of my escaping with the Mistral and her crew somewhat greater if she remained in Kharn’s power and not that of the Imperium.

  Smythe accepted this with a waved hand. “No matter.”

  “You do need to be very careful,” I said. “I’m not sure what Kharn is planning, but you’ve threatened his world. He won’t let that pass.”

  Crossflane snorted. “Won’t let that pass? Boy, the coordinates your man gave us are safely in the hands of the fleet and of Legion Intelligence. Even if he were to slag our ships and yours he knows his days are numbered.” I twitched at being called boy, but held my peace, telling myself it was only the reminder of how badly Switch had betrayed me that set me so on edge.

  “That’s just it!” I said, a venomous edge to me now. “I have no idea where Switch got those coordinates. Do you understand? Kharn’s daimon had locked out the Mistral’s controls from the moment we entered Vorgossos system. Shipboard systems were totally compromised. Corvo couldn’t get a read on her position. She couldn’t even unlock her doors after Kharn took Doctor Onderra and me prisoner.”

  “You’re saying you believe Sagara leaked the coordinates on purpose,” Crossflane said, hooking his thumbs through his belt. “Why?”

  Smythe and Crossflane exchanged significant glances, and I wondered for a moment if maybe whatever payment Kharn had extracted from them had been that reason. But no . . . Surely there were things in the Imperial treasury worth the weregild of a planet, but I did not imagine that either Kharn would be much interested in them or the Empire willing to pay. “Personally, I don’t think it was Kharn at all. I think his daimon did it.”

  “Betray its master?” Smythe asked. “Why?”

  A darkness flowered behind my eyes, and from it rose hands like stalks of wheat, the swollen flesh sprouting new growth—new arms—like cancers. I heard the sounds of splashing and the rumble of many throats wetly breathing. Shaking myself, I said, “I don’t like to guess. But I do think Kharn was blindsided by Bassander’s appearance. Would you say?” I directed this last to Bassander himself, who in all that time had moved nary a micron.

  The young officer did not deign to look at me. “I don’t think Sagara knew we were coming.”

  “What was it like?” Smythe asked. “This daimon of yours?” I shut my eyes. Held my breath. “Marlowe?”

  “The tribune asked you a question, boy.” Crossflane’s tone had hardened.

  Something in me prickled, and I snapped, “That’s Lord, First Officer, not boy.” It was not my father’s voice that answered him, but my own. Taking a deep a breath and the space to quiet my flare of anger, I ignored the old officer’s bristling and focused instead on the knight-tribune. “It wasn’t a machine at all, or if it was its machine parts were buried where I could not see.” I clasped my hands, and after a moment found I was squeezing them together so that the knuckles stood out. “You’ve heard that the Mericanii stole men’s bodies and souls to ensure that there was no difference between people?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s true,” I said, and told her. I said nothing of my vision, and little of what was said between the Brethren and myself, but spoke instead of the grasping hands, the staring eyes, and ragged throats. The sick and bloated texture of its hide. “I think it was many men, once. That what they were was dissolved or . . . subordinated to the daimon, that it wears them, uses them as we might a vehicle.”

  The silence that followed, while brief, was total. Smythe made the sign of the sun disc and—staring at a spot on the table—said, “It’s clear, then. Vorgossos must be destroyed.”

  “Kharn will know you intend that,” I said. “I tell you, he is planning something.”

  “Planning something?” Bassander sneered. “What will he do? Fight the Legions single-handed? This ship of his is mighty, Marlowe, but no vessel is mighty as that.”

  I squeezed the arms of my chair tightly. “You’re making a grave mistake underestimating Sagara, Lin. You don’t understand . . .”

  “I don’t understand?” Bassander repeated, riding over me as he turned to face me. “Marlowe, I have been a soldier of His Radiance all my life. My parents were soldiers, and you presume to tell me what I do and do not underst
and?”

  Smythe’s cane whistled through the air between us and clanged as it bounced off the far wall of the chamber. The knight-tribune did not shout, only stood there, eyes tracking smoothly between the junior officer and myself. “Gentlemen,” she said at last in a voice of deathly calm, “I have had enough of this bickering between you both. Whatever your differences—” She raised a hand to silence Bassander’s interjection. “Whatever your differences and however legitimate your grievances, we are on the same side. The Cielcin are coming, gentlemen, and I need the both of you. I do not ask you to be friends, but you will set aside this feud!” I remained seated, and Bassander stood immobile as stone.

  Always it is thus: that the threat from outside drives wedges between those who should stand together. Who must. I could no more turn from my course than Bassander could shift his position. Yet in one way I had the advantage: I could lie, or rather I could say what it was Raine expected of me and neither lose face nor break faith with myself. I could bend, where Bassander could only break. And so I stood, and offered my hand to the other man. I did not speak a word, for I was certain that saying any word would be a mistake.

  What happened then disturbed me beyond my ability to adequately explain at the time. Bassander looked at my hand as though it were a serpent, and his lip curled. As I did not speak, he did not take my hand—knowing that to do so would bind him to a promise he did not wish to make. It did not compromise me to offer my hand. It would compromise Bassander to take it. So he turned instead, and saluted his tribune, saying, “I will do as you say, ma’am.”