Howling Dark

by Christopher Ruocchio

  If I could survive.

  “You wouldn’t be going alone, of course. You’d have a retinue. A staff. Guards. Servants . . .”

  “Servants?” I almost laughed. I had been an urchin not twenty of my years before!

  Smythe raised one eyebrow. “You are of the body palatine. One of the Peerage, I understand. Of course you would have servants. And a ship. I’d not send you toothless to them.”

  It was almost enough. Almost enough to forget the blind terror I’d begun to feel of the Cielcin. Call me a coward all you like, but having met them I felt little desire to live among them.

  I studied the brandy where I held it in my lap, studied the hands that held it. They were not the hands of the young man I had been. Those hands had been calloused, aye, but these were leathered and scarred. My left thumb was half scar where my lost family ring had frozen on in fugue, and similar burns stippled the back of that same hand—relic of my battle with Uvanari.

  “Can I refuse?” I asked, not knowing if I wanted to.

  Only having spoken did I look up, found Raine Smythe’s bland stone of a face staring sour at me: lips pressed, eyes narrow, brows contracted. “After all this?” she said, voice as tight as her face. “After all this . . . you ask that question?” She meant to shame me, and it worked. I could not hold her eyes, or onto my anger with her. Not in that moment. “Isn’t this what you fought for? Isn’t this why you came here? To be like . . . Kasia Soulier, was it?”

  I snorted. “I did say that, didn’t I?” Clear as the office I sat in, I saw myself standing before Balian Mataro in his throne room in Castle Borosevo, comparing my mission to that old Foundation War privateer. Remembering other stories I had told, I remarked, “More like Simeon the Red . . .” When Smythe did not smile at this, I said, “Who would you be sending with me?”

  “Varro, for one. You would need a scholiast to advise you, one who speaks their language—and Varro is already familiar with our situation and with Prince Aranata.”

  “Would I be able to keep the Red Company?” I asked, unsure if Otavia Corvo and the others would consent to such a mission. They were foederati, after all. Mercenaries. Guarding an Imperial apostol during his protracted sojourn among the Cielcin was hardly what they’d signed up for. No one could blame them for refusing.

  I caught Smythe’s lips twitch, either with this same thought or simple amusement, for she said, “The Red Company . . .” She took a sip of the brandy. To comfort herself, some might say. To hide a smile, said others. “If you can keep them, sure.”

  “And not Bassander Lin,” I said, with perhaps too much force, for the tribune’s face darkened.

  Her eyes would not find my face, were lost wandering the brass detailing on the heavy cabinet that stood to one side. She was quiet for so long that for a moment I imagined she had drifted off. “Ma’am?”

  Raine Smythe shook herself, massaged one eye with the heel of her free hand. “Bassander . . . no. No, I would not send him with you. Some other captain would be found, one whose hands you’ve not taken a sword to.”

  I felt myself flush, and it was my turn to look away. “I do regret that,” I said, “and your soldiers. I never meant for anyone to be hurt. Do you have their names? Their families? I should like to make amends if I can. When there’s time.”

  There was some change in the knight-tribune’s face. One of those emotions which is instantly recognizable but impossible to name played in the tired lines beneath her eyes and about her mouth. Was dignity an expression one could make? The respect for dignity? Or was it only approval? “I can have my adjutant get you the list.”

  “I would appreciate that,” I said, not knowing what I intended to do exactly. “Not a day’s gone by I don’t think about them, and about Captain Lin.”

  “He’s a good soldier. A good officer,” she said quickly. “He always was. But his distaste for you is a wild spot. In all the years he’s served under me, I’ve not seen him so . . . angry.”

  “I’m sure I’ve given him good reason to be.”

  “That you have.” Smythe set her glass down. “What do you think?”

  Against my better judgment, I took another sip of Smythe’s brandy and mulled over her words and her offer. The stuff tasted strongly of oranges, and I grimaced, watching the distorted Hadrian reflected in its sanguine surface. “Do you need an answer now?”

  I could almost hear Smythe purse her lips. “You needn’t give me an answer at all, but no. No, you’ve time to make what considerations you need. You would not be leaving directly from here in any case. As apostol to the Cielcin, you would be representing His Radiance. The chappies at Legion Intelligence will want to brief you, you can depend on it. And the Holy Office—possibly even His Radiance will want a word.”

  “The Emperor?” I sat up so straight and sharply one might have thought me electrocuted. “An audience with His Radiance? Truly?” A thrill went through me, one of awe and holy terror such as moved men when the Earth was young. An audience with the Emperor! Our Emperor. Our Basileus and Padishah! Our Maharaja and Huangdi! Our Mikado, our Augustus, our Czar and Blessed Son of Heaven. Our Caesar. Him whose blood was the blood of old Victoria, and of William of Avalon, in whom it was said the like of Arthur and Alexander walked again. It was like Smythe had said, like God himself had noticed me. Like a star had turned to face me. “You’re not serious.”

  “It’s not unlikely,” Smythe said. “The Emperor left Forum some years ago, I understand. He was at Nessus, last I heard, with Primarch Venantian. It could be he’s returned home, but the Schiavona could have you to Forum and back within a decade if that’s the case.”

  “The Emperor . . .” Still I did not relax. If the sovereign of a dozen billion suns deigns to notice you, you do not sit easily. I thought of my father, dark and miserable in his dark and miserable castle, and might have laughed but for the warning in my heart. As I say: when the sovereign of a dozen billion suns deigns to notice you, you do not sit easily.

  I looked up, found Smythe watching me intently. “Now you see why you must not refuse.”

  Swallowing, I said, “I do.” I could not refuse such a summons, should it come, nor the circumstances that led me to such a summons.

  “I mean to put the offer on the table tomorrow,” she said, and raised a hand to override the objection she sensed was coming. “I will not say that I mean to send you, only that we mean to send someone—to better gauge the Pale’s receptiveness to such diplomacy.” Her eyes fell, and she half-turned from me. “And to make sure they won’t mistreat you.” There was no confidence in her voice, nor in my breast. I cradled the half-drunk brandy in my hands, watching Smythe in her studious attempt not to look at me. Stirred by some compulsion, she turned and retrieved her cane, as if she derived some comfort by the touch of it. She slammed the butt of the cane against the floor. “Fucking barbarians!”

  Barbarians. Valka so often said the same of us, as if the blood in her veins was not just so human as mine.

  “They are what they are,” I said.

  “That may be,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean they’re not monsters. That poor girl . . . do you know why they do it?”

  I could only shake my head, for at the time I did not understand. Perhaps I still don’t. “You’re going to propose an exchange, yes? Me for one of them?”

  “Ah, yes.” She rested her cane against the edge of her desk again before continuing. “You don’t suppose the prince would part with his son?”

  “Nobuta?” I shook my head, responding more on instinct than any held position. “I’m not sure it would be a good idea to even ask. Tanaran would be a better choice, although if Tor Varro were here, he’d likely suggest we wait and see if the Aeta decides to offer a gift. I doubt he’d understand an exchange of hostages.”

  “Ambassadors.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  She snort
ed, and after a moment said, “I’m unclear on what exactly Tanaran is. I don’t want to make a bad trade for you.”

  I had to stifle an incredulous laugh. “The question of my value aside, Knight-Tribune, I’m not sure Nobuta Otiolo is our best choice. I think it’s only a child. An ephebe, maybe, but no diplomat. And in any case, I feel certain the Aeta would take it amiss if we were to start asking for its child.” I looked up at the ceiling, trying to gather myself. “Perhaps it would be best if we were to simply make the offer and see what happens. We may be surprised.”

  Raine Smythe propped her elbows on the edge of her desk, massaging her eyes with both hands. “Very well. Very well, Lord Marlowe. We will reconvene on the morrow before talks resume.”

  Grimacing, knowing it would be rude to do otherwise and no longer desiring to be so, I drained my brandy and placed the empty glass on the edge of the desk before I stood. “As you say, Knight-Tribune.” Were I a soldier, I might have saluted then, turning briskly to stride from the room. But I was not a soldier, and only gathered the tails of my long coat about me as I turned.

  I was halfway to the door when Smythe added, “You will take that posting, when it comes to it.”

  “As you say, Knight-Tribune.”

  If she had been right—if I’d ever taken that posting—much evil might have been avoided.

  CHAPTER 64

  A DEVIL’S BARGAIN

  “I SAY AGAIN, PRINCE Aranata,” said Knight-Tribune Smythe, “all we seek here is an end to the attacks against our people and colonies. No more.” She sat in a chair at the very center of our long table, directly opposite the Cielcin Aeta, hands steepled before her as she leaned forward. “Pursuant to that, we have a proposition.” She paused a moment, allowing the blank-staring slave to bark her translation, words ragged in the pristine air.

  A false wind blew through the meadow, making the distant trees sway softly, lending an odd normality to the scene—as though hundreds of Sollan legionnaires and Cielcin scahari were not standing at attention to either side of that shallow hill. I felt almost that we might have been two armies meeting on any field of antiquity. As though it were Richard and Saladin there, or Bonaparte and Wellington, Scipio and Hannibal. Almost. Were it not that the xenobite opposite us was more Behemoth than Bonaparte. His crown of horn nearly scraped the canopy above our heads, and when he moved the chair creaked, and his sparse attendants quailed.

  “Speak!” he said, black eyes utterly unreadable.

  Unhappy with being so ordered about, Smythe glanced bemusedly at Crossflane a moment before clearing her throat. I knew what she was about to say, and so composed myself, seated where I was between Varro and Bassander. “We wish to send an emissary among you. To send some of our people to live among you. To learn from you. To teach.”

  I listened to the slave translate: “Qulleti asvatiri o-cotelie ti-okarin.” We wish to give you an emissary. Give.

  Varro was ahead of me, leaning toward the tribune to whisper in her ear. Smythe—nodding—placed a hand on the scholiast’s arm. “The emissary is to be yours only for a time. A term of some years. And then he should be returned to us.” She paused a moment, trying to gauge the xenobite chieftain’s face for a reaction, but was stymied in her understanding by the differing structure of the muscles in that alien face. No discernible expression was forthcoming, no understanding obvious, and so Smythe added, “Unspoiled.”

  “Ondathanyu,” the slave finished translating. Untouched. I shivered, for I understood enough to guess at the connotations of that word.

  Aranata glanced sidelong at his counselors before speaking, and almost I wondered if they could communicate by some medium other than speech, so intense was that exchange. “Tukanyi anwajjayan vonnari suh!” he exclaimed at last. You are strange creatures indeed! He emitted a high, croaking sound—such as I have heard from certain frogs and species of ape in the gardens of many a palatine lord—and I realized he was laughing at us. “You offer us a gift and put conditions upon it. You threaten us but do not bite! Are you sulan or huratimn?”

  Varro turned to me and said, “Do you know what that is?”

  I could only shake my head and frown. “I’m not sure.” After a moment, I recalled, “Didn’t Tanaran say something about sulan?”

  The Chalcenterite scholiast turned his eyes down, thinking. “Some sort of predator?”

  “Mmm.” I agreed, and with a flash of insight, said, “Are we wolves or sheep?”

  Tigers and lambs.

  Tor Varro delivered this translation to Smythe in a whisper. The tribune leaned back a ways in her chair, sitting as tall as ever I had seen her do, and she answered, “We are men.”

  The majesty of that moment suffered in translation. “Ekanyi yukajjimn,” the slave-girl said. Yukajjimn. Vermin.

  The Aeta bared his fangs in a wicked and fish-like smile, glassy teeth shining in black gums. His retinue—even the child, Nobuta—smiled with him as he said, “That you are.”

  “Cielcin,” I said. People.

  “No, you’re not!” Nobuta said, speaking out of turn for the first time. “Don’t you say that!” There was almost a recognizable petulance in its tone, a thing which called attention to itself by its simple familiarity. Varro translated this for Smythe, but I was left wondering once more as to the creature’s age. Very tall it was, and strong, but I had no notion of the creatures’ growth and maturation—I am not sure anyone did in those days—and so it might have been anywhere between a young adult and a very small child. Petulance was no indicator, for so often in the children of power—at least in the sons of Earth—is the petulance of childhood extended into maturity for want of struggle.

  Aranata threw a hand across his child, moving Nobuta gently but firmly back into its seat with a snort that flared his four nostrils. “Iukatta, Nobuta-kih!” Enough! He made a humming sound low in his chest, calming the younger xenobite before turning back to us. “My uvattaya is right. You are not Cielcin, not people.” I looked at the smaller Cielcin, with its wide eyes and smaller, curling horns. There was something wrong with it, an angry quavering in its lips, a blueness in the skin around the eyes. Was that a sign of youth, perhaps? Or something else? I wondered if the child was infirm, if there might be some lever there for us to use.

  But I shunted this aside a moment. Uvattaya, I thought. It was not the Cielcin word for child that I knew—or thought I’d known. I recognized the pieces of the term. Uvan and vatate, fruit and body. The pieces of a puzzle suddenly fitted together in my head, and I almost gasped. In the Cielcin language—at least in the one of their languages with which human scholars have had any contact—nouns have two modes. The akaranta, the masculine, and the ietumna, the feminine.

  Or so we had believed.

  Suddenly it seemed that in our haste to understand or to impute familiarity on the strange that we had looked into the face of that stranger and seen only ourselves. We had imagined they were like us, or perhaps could only imagine it was so. In the Cielcin tongue, nouns in the akaranta—masculine nouns—perform their verbs. They are active. The ietumna passive, feminine, or so we’d assumed. But this Aeta—who must always be spoken of in the akaranta way—had carried a child. Behind that pall of masculine seeming, behind the iron fist of competition, of authority, of competence and command . . . was the feminine.

  But the akaranta and ietumna were not our masculine and feminine—even if they can perhaps be understood as each and admixture of our two—were rather things standing at right angles to our understanding, for though Aranata had stood at the head of war parties and doubtless conquered foes with tooth and claw, he had carried his child within himself, and birthed it, leaving the rearing and gentle care to his slaves.

  “A gift,” Aranata mused, returning to the subject of Smythe’s offer. “You will give us this one.” He—she?—raised a hand glittering with jewels, the middle three fingers of her pale hand pointed to me. “T
he dark one who delivered my Ichakta from its torment. I want him.” I felt the blood drain from my face as the hammer fell. That indeed had been our plan, but to have the Aeta demand me was something else entirely. None of the others responded, and Prince Aranata continued, “Tanaran says he is one of your lords. That would be a worthy gift.”

  He was not asking.

  Unable to keep the edge from my voice and glad that our emotions were as lost on the prince as hers were on us, I said, “And you would give us Tanaran?”

  The Aeta ducked her head and hissed, “Asvato ni o-Tanaran ti-tukanyi nesuh?”

  “Yes,” I said, turning to look at the smaller baetan, “give us Tanaran. It already knows our tongue—and something of our ways.”

  Aranata’s massive eyes narrowed to mere points. “You should not make demands, yukajji.”

  “It’s not a demand. It’s an opportunity,” I said, and stood, pushing Tor Varro’s hand away as he grabbed at me. “One for the other, Prince. What say you?” Dimly I sensed two of Kharn’s floating eyes turn toward me, pulled from their classic orbit above our collected heads. I spared the old immortal a glance where he sat beneath the boughs of his tree. He might have slumbered, and those hopeless children beside him, so restful were his face and closed eyes.