Howling Dark

by Christopher Ruocchio

  I pressed my words flat as dead flowers. “And you had the gall to accuse me of treason?” My brows rose on their own. “Was it worth it?”

  “Twenty thousand for the life of the Imperium?” Smythe said, not looking me in the eye. “For all those quadrillions? Yes. It was worth it. I thought you understood that.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, to scream, but the words of the Cielcin herald cut into my momentary silence.

  “Tanaran . . .” it said, and I crushed my rage back down again. “Raka Tanaran ti-saem gi ne?”

  Where is Tanaran?

  “With the humans,” Kharn’s human voice whispered, and his sound system replied, “Raka vaa ti-yukajjimn.”

  “I would speak with Tanaran,” the herald said. “Shala o-tajarin ti-koun.”

  Kharn’s face was expressionless. Beside him, Suzuha stirred, and Kharn’s steel and flesh-paper hand reached out to steady her. “Tanaran is in the humans’ power. I cannot bring it to you.”

  I translated this for Smythe, who said, “We will surrender our captive to the prince and no other!”

  Sagara raised a hand to silence her, and three of his eyes descended, floating in a smooth arc to more closely regard the three of us. “Peace,” he said, and with that turned to the Cielcin. “I will have your gift prepared for delivery at once. You may send security to me to prepare for your master’s arrival, if you will.” Sagara was being astonishingly conciliatory, though now I suspect such manipulative flattery was only a mask, a way to manipulate the Cielcin into cooperating.

  The coteliho hissed past its teeth, “Yumna raka dein ilokete ne, Sagara-se?”

  “No trick, Oalicomn,” Sagara replied. “It is only that your baetan is aboard the yukajjimn ship. I do not have it.” The herald only bared its fangs, snarl distorting the looping script inked on its face. “Tell your master I anticipate his arrival, and hope that he enjoys his gift.” Sagara’s Cielcin was perfect. He even used the so-called masculine to describe the Aeta—a subtlety most human speakers failed to notice. The Aeta were masters, and so were never the object of a sentence, always its subject.

  Kharn Sagara waved his flesh hand and banished the projection with neither pomp nor circumstance. Raine, I think, expected him to speak, but I knew better, and waiting watched the two dozen drone eyes in the room slowly orbit until they formed a perfect circle, gently processing in the air above our heads. The room lights swelled on, red as coals.

  “Tanaran is aboard,” Smythe said coolly. “He is on the Schiavona. We could have sent for him.”

  “There was no need,” Sagara’s false voice boomed. At an unseen sign, Yume appeared and shuffled the children away. Had they been brought only to decorate Kharn’s throne for that address? And why was I sent for? Only to translate for Smythe and Crossflane? “The Aeta does not like to be refused anything. He will consider any refusal a threat, so we must lie to placate him.” He paused, eyes shut. “He will send security to ensure there is no trap here. When they do so you will allow them a pre-inteview with your captives. The others are all out of their cages, I assume?”

  Smythe wrung her cane as though it were the neck of some seabird. “They are.” If it offended her that Sagara gave orders where he should offer suggestions, she did not show it. Smythe doubtless saw the utility in the Master’s suggestions, and so did not contest them. “What frequency did the Cielcin use?”

  “Frequency?” Sagara’s voice fell like slow rain from the roof above us, like slaver dripping from the roof of some iron mouth. “You think it is radio they communicate with?”

  Crossflane, ever the officious sort, replied, “What, then?”

  Not moving, not looking at us, Sagara pivoted. “The Cielcin will return and call again. They will insist that because I am human, they should be allowed to double the number of troops they bring in reserve. I will grant that request.” As he spoke, his face turned slowly to mine, and I blanched, for the weight of those black eyes was a terrible thing. What Kharn said, and what Smythe and her first officer said in answer, I cannot say, for I heard another voice within my mind—like Kharn’s voice, but brighter. You see what they are, these fine friends of yours.

  I found I could not work my jaw, and looked around, distressed. Neither Smythe nor Crossflane took notice, wrapped as they were in conversation with the Undying on his high seat.

  Kharn’s eyes had not left me. An image flashed in my head: the cargo ships I had seen when I had crossed the bridge into this very chamber. Then inside, row upon row of caskets, and beneath their frosted lids the slack faces of twenty thousand sleeping men. And women. And children. See what they will sell? What they are?

  I saw what Kharn was doing. He meant to drive the wedge between myself and the Imperium just a little deeper. What his aim was I cannot say, but it was transparent to me as glass. I did not answer him. I was not sure I could.

  The world is filled with monsters: dragons in the wilderness, serpents in the garden. We must become monsters to fight them. Anyone who thinks otherwise has never really had to fight for anything. I knew where I stood, on the wall between the wilderness and the garden. Whatever humanity was—whatever it is—it is mine, and worth defending. Given the choice between the Cielcin and human monsters, I’ll choose the human every time.

  CHAPTER 57

  THE PRINCE OF HELL

  THE MOUTH OF HELL opened before me, and beyond was only the blackness of space. The overhead lights of the hangar bay washed out all but the brightest stars, and the shimmer of the static field masked the rest so that all ahead was blackness. I stood amongst white-armored legionnaires, dressed in a suit of deepest black. High boots, red piping on the trousers, the hem of my black coat flowing about my ankles, the collar standing well past the level of my ears. My hair was newly trimmed, and my old coat was laundered and new-repaired. Still, I felt grubby beside the knight-tribune and her first officer in their suits of sculpted ivory, beside their scholiast Varro in flowing green.

  And how bright the host behind me! The Imperial standard hung from a pole beneath a golden sculpture of the Sun, and the image of His Radiance, Emperor William XXIII, shone from a holograph plate carried—like a small umbrella—atop a staff. The soldiers all carried energy lances, their barrels and bladed heads gleaming in the light. Red were their tabards, and red their plumes, and black the long cloaks of the officers, drinking the light.

  Kharn Sagara stood near at hand, swathed in gold, his golem faithful at his side. A full two dozen eyes floated about them both, shining with a blue and inhuman menace. Behind them both, faces slack and lifeless, stood a hundred SOMs in rank and file, their khaki uniforms uncared for. They carried no weapons, stood to no order or attention, and yet there was a weight to them and a palpable threat wholly unlike the threat of our soldiers, and it is a testament only to the training and the discipline of the Sollan Legions that not one of our people balked in the face of those monsters.

  The cornicen’s clear voice went up, crying, “Attention!” And behind me every one of Raine’s five hundred soldiers passed their lances from the crooks of their arms to the ready posture, so that they grasped them with both hands. The crystal clarion blew, clear notes and martial winding in that echoing cavern of a hall.

  Darkness. Chaos. The mother of demons.

  I watched that infinite Dark give birth, watched the black ship emerge from blackness deeper still. Like a piece of the night it was, its shape difficult to describe: like a broken circle, its surface warped and ruined with irregular designs, as though it were the organ of some awful giant. It was nearly so large as the Schiavona, larger than the Mistral, that it might hold a solid thousand Cielcin screamers comfortably aboard. And I felt—rather than heard—the breath go through the men at my back. The horror. Many of them, I realized, had never seen a Cielcin ship up close before. Most of the war was fought at distance, fought with fire, fought while these soldiers slept on ice in the Obdura
te’s massive holds. I was conscious then of the history in which I stood: that here, for the first time in more than twenty thousand years of human civilization, we stood and faced a power like ourselves but greater. Every war, every conquest, every treaty . . . every colony and colonization and the struggle against different peoples seemed to me practice for this, this great other.

  Unlike the Schiavona, the Cielcin craft had no landing gear—and why should it? Like they had for the Schiavona, docking clamps and umbilicals descended from the roof of the Demiurge’s great bay, wiring the ship into Kharn’s systems, connecting fuel lines and service passages. That Kharn had the equipment for such spoke volumes. Clearly, Vorgossos and its Master had been dealing with the Pale for a long, long time.

  “Forward!” the cornicen declared, and behind us every soldier took one thundering step closer. Our party did not move. Smythe, Crossflane, Lin, Tor Varro, and Jinan and myself held our ground beside the standard bearers and the guards who held the Cielcin prisoners in chains. Sagara made no sign. He did not need to.

  At last the preparation was ended, and the time come at last.

  The black ship opened.

  If I expected a ramp to descend, I was surprised. Instead, a hatch opened in the bottom of the vessel and a sort of lift descended, a platform upon whose broad surface stood an assemblage of the Pale. There must have been sixty of them. Seventy. Not one of them was shorter than eight feet, and each carried a white sword tall as a man, the blades—held in their right hands—resting against their left shoulders. They dressed in black, with cloaks of deepest azure trimmed in silver. Bleak masks strangely painted hid their faces, and their horns rose tall and curving as crowns of chalk.

  These advanced, not in ranks, but fanned out in a semicircle, so that rapidly they commanded a great breadth of the space beneath and before their vessel. One of them—taller than the rest and with a white cloak instead of blue—raised its blade and shouted, the voice amplified by some praxis in its mask. I could not make out the words, but I knew a war cry when I heard one, though I had never heard one before. My bones remembered.

  “Hold!” Smythe said to her men. “Steady on!”

  When the Cielcin was done, a knot of the creatures still standing on the platform parted, and the herald I had seen projected on the Demiurge’s bridge appeared. Oalicomn. The creature carried the same staff forward, chimes ringing. Its massive eyes narrowed in its tattooed face as it surveyed our host and Kharn’s.

  “Yukajjimn!” it said, voice rough and high, like the cry of some bird. “You stand before the Lord of the Seventeenth Branching, who is Aeta! Prince and Chieftain of the Otiolo! Who is Viudihom, the Self-Made! He who fashioned our world, who brought forth life from dead stone! He who brought us out of the Chains of Utaiharo! Who Sees the Watchers! Who knows the Mind of the Makers! Who leads us through the emptiness and the light!” It rattled its staff as it spoke and slammed the butt against the floor. I had heard most of it before, and held my silence as Tor Varro translated for the others. I wished Valka could have been there, but she was trapped on the Mistral with Corvo and the rest of what once had been my Red Company. “You stand before the Great One! Our Master, Our Lord, Our Keeper! Who is Father and Mother to us all! Utsebimn Aranata Otiolo!”

  At this it swooned, or else threw itself forcefully to the ground. Facing outward, all of the Cielcin guards knelt in perfect synchrony, swords still flat against their opposite shoulders, their long braids nearly touching the floor. I felt again a species of rotten terror, knowing that now, surely, I would look upon the face from my vision. The face of the beast who killed me.

  Prince Aranata appeared.

  And again, I relaxed.

  It was not the face I had seen.

  Eyes I had not met in dream swept over us from a face huge as a man’s chest. The prince was a giant, nine feet high and broad almost as two men. Black armor glittered like wet glass, and the rings of silver and of platinum that banded Aranata’s horns gleamed like stars. His great cape spread out behind him like wings, and his mighty braid wrapped twice about its shoulders. At the sight of the prince, Tanaran and all our prisoners fell upon their faces and lay shivering, and no action of our soldiers could so much as make them lift their eyes.

  Behind Aranata, similarly adorned and attired, came a slender Cielcin, more delicate of feature. It kept its eyes down, its mouth firmly closed. This second creature held in its hands a silvered chain, thick as a child’s arm. The chain ran back, fastened to a silver collar. And in the collar . . .

  Bassander swore.

  I had seen the creature in the collar before, and the sight of her was more terrible than I’d dreamed. Unprompted, Crossflane rounded on Sagara. “What is the meaning of this?” The Undying did not reply, and the old officer turned on me, demanding, “What is this, Marlowe?”

  “It’s a woman,” I said, voice dead of feeling.

  It was a woman, or what was left of one. She was not quite like the one in my dream, I saw. That one had looked more like my mother, but this was younger. Slighter. Pale as milk, as the creature that dragged her forward. She wore nothing, unless it was strips of blue silk and the jeweled anklets that—chained—hobbled her gait. Great scars mottled her flesh, angry and red. These ran along her arms, her legs, the insides of her thighs, and at the corners of her mouth. And her hands . . . her hands! These had been slit by some vicious surgeon, the flesh between the fingers pared away so that each digit remained a useless ornament, unable to grasp . . . anything. A cleft between her largest toe and the rest of each foot gave a similar impression. She could hardly walk, and it was suffering to stand.

  There was nothing in her eyes but tears.

  Her soul was dead.

  Raine Smythe placed a hand on Crossflane’s arm to quiet him. “Welcome, Prince Aranata,” she said, “I am Dame Raine Smythe, Knight and Tribune of the 437th Centaurine Legion, Third Cohort under Sir Leonid Bartosz. I have the command here.”

  Tor Varro—a tall, black-haired man with a stern, vaguely paternal face—stepped forward to assist in translation.

  “Eka Dame Raine Smythe, scahayu uje Tribune ba-scandatan Centaurine bi thumum sava, ba-cohort bidim ti-Leonid Bartosz relu. Siaje o-utorie ti-saem gi,” the broken girl said instead, voice high and brittle and hard as flint. She had repeated the tribune’s words precisely, translating without editorial.

  “She’s translating,” I said to Raine.

  “Citharathun mnu,” the girl echoed. I felt my stomach turn, and had to look away. Even Sagara looked disgusted, and I was glad—not for the first time, and certainly not for the last—that the Cielcin could not interpret our facial expressions at all well.

  Prince Aranata Otiolo looked down at Smythe, who seemed hardly half his size, and said, “Yelbe odein ba-kousun shi.”

  Tor Varro turned and repeated the words in Galstani, saying, “He says he has come for his property.” I took it as a sign of the man’s quality that he used the masculine pronoun for the Aeta, not the neutral one which would ordinarily be the more appropriate in our less fluid tongue.

  Smythe pursed her lips, raised her chin so that she looked up, unafraid, into the eyes of the giant before her. “And he shall have it, when he has treated with us. They are being kept safely and well—as you see.” She waved a hand, encompassing by its arc the prostrate forms of our eleven captives. There was Tanaran, and the vicious Svatarom beside it. None raised their eyes.

  The xenobite rested a hand on the hilt of its sword and took a step forward, making to brush past us and approach its people. At a shout from the centurion guarding the prisoners, our soldiers closed ranks, angling lances forward so that barrels and ceramic bayonets aimed at the Lord of the Seventeenth Branching. The kneeling Cielcin soldiers hissed, and as a unity pivoted on their knees, threatening to rise.

  “Hold!” Bassander Lin shouted, throwing out a hand. “Everyone hold!” I may have dislike
d the man, but to his credit, I have seen Bassander Lin in several crises, and never once seen his composure crack. He kept one hand on his shield catch, but the other was open and flat, calling for peace.

  “Tanaran-kih!” the prince demanded. “On your feet, slave!” Without lifting its face, Tanaran got its feet under it and stood—still bowing. “Look at me!” Tanaran turned its face up, eyes narrowed as if it faced some bright light. “Speak!”

  The baetan’s voice was barely more than a whisper. “The Watchers were not on Tamnikano, Ya Aeta-doro,” it said, “or if they were, we could not find them. Ichakta Uvanari is dead, and all but these.” It had not stopped bowing, and waved a hand over its shoulder at its comrades. “We have failed you, and beg your mercy or your mercy.” The words it used for mercy, ndaktu and daktaru, meant different things. The first, as I have told you, was judgment, justice. The second clemency. Almost I expected Aranata to strike off its servant’s head then and there, and devil take the Empire.

  But Kharn Sagara stepped forward. “My lord,” he said, speaking with his own voice. “Welcome back. I trust my gift was to your liking?” He spoke as a servant does to his master, and I wondered at that, for the Undying served no power in the cosmos but himself.

  The reminder that Raine and Crossflane had dealt with Sagara and with the Cielcin in human blood and bodies twisted sick in me, and I glared at my boots, and so heard the beast’s reply, “They will serve beautifully. Nobuta!” It took me a moment to realize that this was the name of the Cielcin holding the silver chain, though Varro caught it easily enough. It yanked the chain, dragging the mutilated wreck of a woman forward. She did not cry out as her butchered feet splayed painfully on the floor, stumbling toward her inhuman masters. I looked up in time to see the Aeta bare his glassy fangs. “We will do good work with them. These yukajjimn have . . . so much potential.”