Dark Age

by Pierce Brown

  Glirastes stalks out of the Spirit and heads for his makeshift office on the floor of the hangar. “You’re all bloody saints,” I say to the welders.

  “Aww, sir!” one croons.

  “Can I have a kiss?” asks another.

  “Back to work!” Harnassus shouts. “We’re not payin’ by the hour.”

  We find Glirastes sighing as he slumps into his Thinking Chair, a queer perch made from a single flowing branch of a sunblossom tree.

  “I know it is beneath you,” Harnassus says as Glirastes’s servant pours his master a glass of port. “But would you mind explaining the device to the infantry, Master Maker? It would do them some comfort to know they’re not trusting their lives to magic.”

  Glirastes surveys the commanders I brought with me.

  “No. That sounds tiresome.”

  He puts his feet on a silk stool and sighs as his servant removes his purple slippers and massages his heels with rose oil. Harnassus looks six seconds away from clouting Glirastes on the ears. He has little patience for snobs. I’ve more experience with the breed.

  “It’s just an EMP. What’s so complicated about scaling it up?” I say, and wait for the explosion.

  “Just an EMP?” Glirastes repeats as if reading his own obituary aloud. “Am I just an ambulating mammal?” His eyes scour me. “Did you not retain anything of your curriculum from the Academy aside from astral belligerency?”

  “I retained enough, apparently.”

  The infantry commanders chuckle.

  Glirastes sighs in annoyance and regards Thraxa and my infantry commanders with distaste, offended by the sunburnt visages and thick chests of hardier mammals than he, and retreats to intellectual bullying. I track what he says, because I’m married to a woman who’d be insulted if I couldn’t.

  “Weaponized transient electromagnetic disturbances have tenaciously sharp leading wave edges, escalating precipitously to their maximum level before decaying slowly. Imagine a double exponential curve. Problematically, the shielding made by the Venusian Dockyards is designed to recognize this sort of blunt belligerency”—he fixes me with a glare—“and provide countermeasures for Atalantia’s fleet. Consequently, I have decided to use a benign damped sine wave to create a coupling between the source and the victim equipment. Usually this is a by-product of a weaponized EMP, but the genius here is that instead of diminishing within the double exponential envelope, the sine wave wavelengths will increase. However, considering the distance required, the energy demand will be staggering. Creating a more efficient and staggered energy ignition is profoundly difficult absent a nuclear explosion, and if I do not perfect it you will all die in the sky.” He eyes me again. “Now that I have satisfied the curiosity of your apes, the zoo is closed.” He closes his eyes. “Begone lest you have an advanced degree or care to replace Exeter in massaging my feet.”

  “I’ll take his spot if you like, Master Maker,” Thraxa says with a smile. She holds up her hands. “I know they look like elephant feet, but they’re tender to the right sort.”

  Glirastes makes a face of distaste. “Such a bloodline, squandered on martial absurdity. You’ve genius in your line, woman. Your brother was the mind of a generation, and your father…” He sighs. “You waste your time playing soldier.”

  “So that’s a pass?”

  “Pfah.” He shoots Harnassus a look. “Don’t forget my breakfast tomorrow. I can’t work without sardines; tomorrow is a Tuesday, after all.”

  As my infantry commanders file out muttering their concerns to one another, Harnassus follows me and Thraxa out of the Star’s hangar. “What do you think?” I ask him.

  “He’s pigheaded, cruel, eccentric, fickle, and ten times as demanding as my first wife. But he’s a genius.”

  “Was,” Thraxa says. “Riches made him slow.” She glares back at the man. “Little more than a lapdog to whoever holds Mercury.”

  “You thinking he’ll betray us?” I ask.

  “I’m thinking we should endeavor to remind him Atalantia is scared of us.”

  “What do you have against him?” I ask.

  “First off, his designs are rubbish. Robbing the Egyptians blind. And the bastard cozied up to the slavers, then to us. He’s a bloodfly. Invertebrate. Permission to pop him when we evac.”

  “Denied, psycho,” Harnassus says.

  “Wasn’t asking you.”

  “He’s my second-in-command, Thraxa. When I don’t speak, he speaks for me,” I remind her.

  “Uh-huh. But you’re speaking.”

  “You’re not killing the Master Maker.”

  She shrugs. “Sure.”

  “Where were we?” I ask Harnassus. “Can we even tell if he’s full of shit? If he leaves us hanging up there, we’re all dead.”

  “He’s spineless,” Thraxa moans. “He wouldn’t dare cross us.”

  “Probably right.” Harnassus grimaces. “See, I’m not the sharpest on magnetism or waveform theory. My focus was practical mechanics. But I’ve got two hundred brains with a thousand degrees between them going step for step with him. He’s smarter than each of them in theory, but not all of them together. If he’s playing games, they’ll red-flag it. Long as we keep him happy, seems he’ll do what we need him to do.”

  “That’s the trick, isn’t it?” I say.

  “You want the genius happy, we need sardines,” Harnassus says.

  “Sardines?”

  “He says he gets headaches without sardines for breakfast on Tuesdays. Tomorrow is Tuesday and he’s fresh out.”

  “You have to be joking,” I say for Thraxa.

  “I don’t damn well know. This man’s been pissing into crystal decanters since he was a teenager. So far, no luck. If the Heliopolitan Silvers here have sardines, they’re denying it. We could raid their kitchens, but we’re on unsteady footing as it is.”

  “Where’s Sevro when you need him?” I mutter. Harnassus raises an eyebrow in query.

  “What? You think he just always smells like fish?” Thraxa asks.

  “I think he smells like wet dog, personally,” I reply.

  “Well, it depends if it’s raining or not.”

  “Gods, the jungles were rough. You remember that trench foot he had?”

  “Thought we’d have to amputate,” Thraxa says.

  “Yeah, you tried.”

  “Then he woke up. Heh. That was funny.”

  Harnassus shakes his head. “This is not the conversation I thought I would have when the Reaper of Mars came to North Africa to make me a Praetor. I thought it’d be all fire and guts and devilish mayhem. Not prepubescent humor. You should check Sevro’s pantry. All sorts of illicit goods there, so I hear.”

  “Why don’t you check it?” I ask.

  “I won’t send any of my men in there.”

  I sigh and motion Rhonna over from my bodyguards. “Go see if there’s any sardines in Imperator Barca’s stateroom.”

  She goes white as a corpse. “Uh, isn’t that a task for support?”

  “Not you too.”

  “It’s just…well, there’s booby traps, ain’t there? Alexandar once tried to steal whiskey. Came back shaking like a softfoot on their first aerial drop.”

  “Fine.” My bodyguards all find something very interesting in the contours of the deck. “Superstitious idiots. I’ll get the bloodydamn sardines.”

  * * *

  —

  Ten minutes later I’m shrieking like a goat on the floor just inside Sevro’s room as a medicus pulls needles from my face, chest, and ass. Incredible pain races through my body as my hands and feet turn purple and start to swell uncontrollably.

  A flat voice drawls from a hologram of Sevro’s face.

  “Don’t touch my shit. Don’t touch my shit. Don’t touch my shit.”

  “It’s pr
ime, sir,” the Yellow says to me as she injects me with antivenom. “It’s prime. The pain will subside in a minute. Swelling should start to go down now. Sadly, the color will remain.” She looks up at Sevro’s hologram. “I’ll…um…wait outside…in case you need me.”

  “Told you,” Rhonna says from the door.

  “Slag off.” When my hands have almost returned to their normal size and feeling has returned to my feet, I stagger up and turn off the hologram. A hidden needle pricks my finger. Shit.

  “Badass-class DNA detected,” a sexy voice says. Nothing leaps at me from the darkness. “Profile match for: Darrow of Lykos. Best Friend. Also known as: Reaper, Boss, Howler One, Apex Asshole, Brother, Mustang’s Bitch. Second-class clearance granted. Welcome. I apologize for warning shots. Master has been notified of your skulking. Stickyfinger traps deactivated. Help yourself to a glass of scotch, Best Friend. Take in some music, Reaper. Admire the trophies from the decimated enemies of the noble Howlers, Boss. Enjoy the extensive pornography library, Howler One. Relax in the sauna, Apex Asshole. It has no traps. But above all else, steal nothing, and enjoy your stay in…”

  “Sevro’s Palace,” Sevro’s voice adds very seriously.

  “Second class?” I ask.

  “Yes. Master says you know why.”

  I look back to Rhonna at the door. “Nope,” Rhonna says, and bugs out. Screwface makes a motion of standing guard and ducks into the hall. “Pixie,” I mutter, and shut the door.

  The suite is large, comprised of half a dozen rooms filled with his prizes. I’ve avoided this place since arriving on Mercury. To be here is to be reminded of how we parted. The place is too much like my friend. Mugs of evaporated whiskey sit in ranks atop banners of fallen warlords he’s trampled. Candy wrappers fill the eyeholes of solid gold skulls taken from Magnus’s floating palace in Africa. The scepter I gave Adrius in Attica sits on the couch for Sevro to use as a back-scratcher. Only one place is spared the chaos strewn throughout the suite.

  My wife once told me a man’s soul can be seen in the room he keeps the cleanest. I asked her what room is my soul. She tapped my razor.

  Sevro’s soul is his armory, but for a different reason.

  One wall is for use. Three suits of Sevro’s wolf armor hang central on the longest wall, surrounded by a shrine of knives. Tickler, his favorite, is missing. Replacement razors gleam with oil. Several from the gens Falthe are there, as is the Minotaur’s with its horned pommel. I gave it to Sevro as a gift when his youngest was born. He always coveted it, especially after Sefi won Aja’s off him in a game of “who gets the most kills.” PulseFists and more esoteric weapons fill the rest of the shelves.

  One wall is for memories. One of Ragnar’s razors. Weed’s old pipe. Quinn’s Howler cloak. The bloody cape Octavia au Lune wore the day I killed her. Highest on the wall, in a place of honor, is the slingBlade I used at the Institute. I look at it for a long time before I take it down. It is far heavier than my razor and far smaller than I remember. I swing it till it makes a swish swish. I laughed at him when I saw it there the first time, laughed even harder when I found out how much trouble he went through to track it down. But I think I skipped past the part that mattered—how much the blade meant to him. With his father always away, always secretive and frightened to show his love, that blade gave Sevro something to follow. Something to dedicate his life to. Until he found something else.

  The last wall is for his family. Holos of his girls float above coin-sized projectors, so that it seems like a hundred reveries fill the shelves. They’ve danced here in the darkness without anyone to see them for months. There are little bracelets and tokens, ink footprints and palm paintings. An emerald cape Victra gave to him when we sailed for Earth. A golden unicorn figurine. And in the center of it all: his father’s blood-red Ares armor with its spiked crescent helmet.

  The bench where he would dress for battle faces this wall.

  The armor looks so odd surrounded by the domesticity. But it is easy for me to forget that Sevro’s life was always war, because his father waged it instead of raising him.

  After I saw how Lorn’s sons were consumed by his vocation, and theirs continue to be consumed, I tried to separate war and family, like Fitchner. I thought they were two worlds that should never meet. Sevro knew what I did not. What it is like to be raised by a warlord, by a distracted man. And he knew that our world is one where everything collides. He didn’t close his mind to his family before battle, because he knew they did not make him weaker, they made him stronger than he was by himself. I feel the key underneath my jacket.

  Even though I will never be able to agree with his decision to return to Luna instead of Mercury, I understand it. He even said it to me, though I did not want to hear it at the time. He would not make the same mistakes as his father. If I ever see him again, I will ask that he forgive me asking him to make that impossible choice. And if I see my boy again, if I see my wife, I will not close myself off to them. I will be the father and husband they deserve.

  I AM ONE OF THE TORTURED.

  The Gorgons, a handsome Gold woman with a pert nose and a gecko of a Gray, pour alcohol over my burn on the first day. Just getting acquainted, they say as I scream. They inject something into my neck, and time does indeed slow down. The agony sustains itself for what feels like a week. Then it is gone, and the pain of my burn is omnipotent once more.

  The Gorgons ask about the Bellona blade they found on me, about my name, but if I give it to them, then what will they do with it? The Fear Knight is away, so it seems. Would they contact the Annihilo? Would Ajax intercept it and send a killsquad here to finish what he started and Seneca left incomplete?

  I need the Fear Knight to return. I need his direct authority.

  My stomach feels inside out it’s so hungry. My hair has begun to fall out from radiation sickness. Soon all of us are bald. All of us are nauseous. Our bodies are naturally resistant to radiation, but with it floating in continuously from the Ladon, our DNA unwinds bit by bit. Soon the symptoms will worsen, the Elysian Knights and I talk intermittently as the days ebb and flow. I look for some sign of insanity in them to explain their allegiance to Darrow and the betrayal of their own Color, but I detect none except for the zealotry in Alexandar and Drusilla. The rest seem only to be here because House Arcos, their patron, joined years ago. Drusilla speaks of the Dream of Persephone. Of helping the people, as if all lowColors were paupers and slaves before the Rising.

  It’s a laugh. I’ve met Reds and Browns happier than most Golds I know, and all of them with better lives than the Grays who fed our military machine. But Grays never broke under the hardship. Of all the Colors, they’ve remained the most loyal to the Society.

  Some time in the morning, on what may be my fourth day with them, Ignacius and Drusilla are taken away. Ignacius is returned first, sheet white and holding three stumps where there used to be fingers. When Drusilla returns, she says nothing as she sobs into the stone.

  Any belief that I am a plant amongst the Arcosians disappears. The torture binds me to their pack, as I supposed it would. Conversation becomes scarce. Slowly, Alexandar draws in on himself, becoming dour and hopeless. It is all Drusilla can do to keep him drinking water and eating their gruel.

  My scheme begins to seem so foolish. There is nothing to be gained out of the misunderstanding that brought me here. I will die here, or I will risk telling my captors who I am, and wait at their mercy for my enemies to decide my fate.

  I’ve resolved to tell them when I am strung up on the chains for the fifth time. The time-dilation drug is too much to bear, and even the Mind’s Eye cannot spare me from its rigors. But Pert and Gecko, as I’ve taken to calling my torturers, disappear once I’m hoisted up. The cavern is dim and unadorned. Stalactites drip water into a shallow pool. Beside that is a chest full of torture devices. I hear footsteps behind me. A man breathing. “Can you walk?” he asks,
his accent more Lunese than Ionian. I nod. A magkey unlatches the lock on my manacles. “Follow me.”

  I follow the man out of the cavern to a main tunnel. To the left, past the prisoners’ cavern, come the faint sounds of laughter and cooking. He leads me right into deeper tunnels until we come to a small cavern.

  It is his personal chamber. A thin thermafoam mattress with a field blanket serves as his bed. A small solar stove sits in a nook carved into the wall along with several weapons and a long-range com. A thin black hasta hangs on the wall beside a filthy wolfpelt. A second nook is home to several dozen figurines carved from disparate stones. Beside it is a map of what looks like a cave system. I join him to sit on two small pads facing each other.

  Atlas au Raa is a vaguely alien man. It has been years since I’ve seen him in the flesh. After the death of my parents, he was sent to the Rim to harry the Ascomanni in the Kuiper. Whatever he did to displease my grandmother must have been grave. In his absence, she gifted his office to another.

  I am struck by how soulful he now seems. Was it the distant dark that did it? Or was it the war he returned to find raging in his absence?

  Behind the sunburnt eyelids lurks an intense intellectual presence. He is masculine like his son Ajax, but nowhere near as thick. He is taller and leaner than his brother, Romulus, but less dramatic in posture. His eyes are wider and a clearer gold. A scar encircles his neck where his throat was once cut ear to ear. His long hair is black shot with gold and held back in a ponytail.

  I probe deeper with the Mind’s Eye.

  Forty-nine years of age. Left-handed. Limp originating from the left knee. Multiple hidden knives in his moth-colored light armor. Lack of ego projection, indicating absence of insecurity in body and deeds. Sociopathy? Delusions of heroism? No. That’s usually supported by zeal. Why so distant? Extremely lonely? Tired? Bored? Distracted? Absent in his personal presentation is the theatricality of his public work. Which suggests a sophisticated system of operation, likely supported by the books in his library, and perhaps a personal philosophical treatise. This is a philosopher-torturer with the practical detachment of a pig butcher.