He came down a set of widening stairs into a foyer. Both the stairs and foyer were done in the same polished speckled black stone, which spoke not of ostentation, but of strength and security as well as wealth. Sealed doors lined the walls and led off to his personal apartments and those reserved for visiting or other resident stewards. To steward, one need not actually hold Entitlement; it was enough to be an Initiate of the Fourth Secret, and in these desperate times, the Church could use all the help and all the instructors they could lay their hands on. Vos Raansik was at capacity with 450 acolytes and could not function smoothly without at least ten stewards so most of the apartments were in use now but empty at the moment as the day’s training was about to begin.
His slippered feet were soundless upon the smooth stone as he crossed the foyer to the far wall. There he stepped into the middle of three thick glass tubes with open fronts, each wide enough to accommodate three men, and all apparently without floors. As his feet settled to where the floor should be, his body was seized gently by an unseen force and began to sink lazily. At his back, the sun, visible through the glass, climbed higher into the sky while before him all was black. Soon the black gave way to light creeping up from below to fill the tube. The training grounds were revealed as he continued down: ten mezzanine levels filled with acolytes, many of them practicing the movements that Kan Fosso had made famous during his career on the fight circuit.
The crane might not be as fierce as the tiger or as deadly as the snake, but it was well-respected for its concentration, focus, and longevity. It was also quite capable of defending itself.
Fosso reached the bottom of the training grounds and stepped from the aperture in the glass tube. Sunlight streamed into the grounds from behind him through ten stories of tinted windows set within I-beams and concrete. All the surrounding walls were windows held together by the same latticework so that the view to the outside was limited only by the mezzanine floors and various pieces of building maintenance machinery.
The tiered ranks of acolytes quieted as Fosso stepped up onto the dais from which he routinely gave instruction. He looked them over, all of them, with hard eyes that nearly glowed, saying nothing. While he was not dissatisfied by what he saw, he wondered if men alone, with the Entitlement of God or not, would be enough in the face of the King of Spades. They would have to be, though. For even if the King of Hearts made an appearance, he could not save them all.
When all was quiet, he took a deep breath and uttered a guttural and thunderous, “Ho-oh!” with intonation that rose and fell to indicate affirmation and challenge both.
A heartbeat of silence ensued and was shattered by countless shouts and hoots of charge. The men at the base of the dais swarmed forward, each eager to cross fists with Kan Fosso, Champion of Voskos, Senior Steward of Vos Raansik Cathedral. Men upon every mezzanine level scrambled for a way down, by way of stair or by mad leaps through open space. Fosso scanned the crowd for Lissa, noted her, and summoned forth his Halo of white gold. He exhaled sharply and the Halo flared, bowling over fifty men or more who had stood in its path. Other men clambered over their fallen fellows, shouting all the while, making for Fosso. When the first got close enough, Fosso struck him with his crane fist, fingers bent and gathered together to a point which was the striking surface. He struck the man squarely in the center of his broad forehead, causing instant unconsciousness and the man’s eyes to roll up to the whites into his head. Fosso was surrounded now, but few of these acolytes had progressed beyond the Second Secret and so offered little in the way of threat. Each strike Fosso blocked or turned away set his attacker’s teeth to rattling. Even without clothing himself in steel, his muscles and the bones beneath were like iron, but he moved as swiftly as the wind, never stopping and never being caught unaware.
More and more of the acolytes rushed the dais. Fosso leapt once delivering a roundhouse kick that turned four heads abruptly to one side before they dropped to the floor like stones. Sar Aaston was the first of the stewards to fall. A rising front kick caught him under the chin, lifted him up, and sent him sprawling into the crowd.
A sunset-red glow caught Fosso’s eye, but when he looked, the telltale light of Lissa’s hatchling Halo was gone. She was improving almost before his eyes.
He grinned and leapt back, turning a tight somersault in the air to abandon his position on the dais. The height and speed he achieved drew gasps from some of the newer acolytes—he looked weightless, but solid and hard as steel at the same time. Fosso had no mercy for gawkers. His crane fists lashed out, always with the final snap of the wrist to punctuate the fingertip strike. Acolytes fell like rain around him. Stewards Gresskan and Pallsiver went down to a single hopping roundhouse kick. Sar Morros was the first to engage him for more than mere seconds. Their arms tangled, or appeared to. Morros struck with his own crane fist, but was blocked stroke for stroke. Just as the assistant steward thought he was getting the upper hand, Fosso front-kicked an acolyte approaching from one side in the midsection dropping him, and managed to block the simultaneous attacks from both Morro and another acolyte coming from the other side. Fosso felled the acolyte with with an elbow to the forehead, and focused on Morro, intensifying his assaults and beating back the steward’s defenses until gaining an opening through which he snapped a crane fist upon the steward’s brow, removing him from the fight.
There were few acolytes left now, but among them stood the remaining stewards. Lissa was somewhere, hiding in plain sight behind the power of her Halo. He couldn’t sense her at all and wondered if she had had a sudden jump in perception and grasped the Sixth Secret over the course of this exercise. It pleased him to think so and would explain her perfectly masked presence. If she had, she would be more of a challenge than the rest.
Though stewards Fennin, called the Red Wolf, and Krassis, Fullston, and Niistravo, together called the King Kites, had spent time successfully on the fight circuit, none of them had advanced beyond the Lesser Secrets, nor had any of them shown near as much potential as Lissa had. Their skills would force him to give his full and undivided attention, but it was the thought of the imminent contest with Lissa that he relished.
With their experience, those four were warier than stewards Tiilda and Essroth, however. Tiilda leapt for Fosso, but Fosso kicked off the ground, drew his legs up so his body was a tight ball, and soared over Tiilda, driving his legs down into the assistant steward’s back. Tiilda’s grace snapped like a taut wire, his limbs all bent in different directions and he crashed to the floor, unable to rise. Essroth tracked Fosso’s path through the air and tried to take advantage of the senior steward’s landing. He succeeded only in delaying his own defeat by a few extra seconds. Fosso caught the wrist of his striking hand in a grip that made Essroth’s eyes go wide and drove the top of his wrist—the crane’s head—into Essroth’s nose.
Fosso kicked off the ground once more, rising like a shot, his Halo flaring to brilliance. A blazing circle of white-gold light sped down, growing as it descended, until it met the floor where it impacted with a bass thump. Unconscious men and women lying on the floor bounced up as high as a meter and crashed back down unceremoniously from the shock. Anyone who had been left standing and was within the confines of the circle was standing no longer, having joined the rest in unconsciousness. The Red Wolf and the King Kites were able to escape Fosso’s Golden Crown. A sunset-red figure also flashed out of the way only to merge again into shadows and nothing.
Raising their Haloes, the four stewards moved quickly to surround Fosso as he landed. Fennin, the Red Wolf, sported an animate wolf’s head atop his shoulders and was covered from foot to crown in writhing blood-red energy that pretended at fur. His claw-tipped fingers were bent as if he held a cup in each hand. The King Kites were were not so fantastic in their displays, but their Haloes radiated marbled light: blue and gray for Krassis, brown and white for Fullston, and gold and black for Niistravo. Their fighting styles were also unlike Fosso’s, each with their hands set into three-fin
gered claws.
Fennin crouched, looking for a moment like a wolf on its haunches, before he sprang at Fosso, howling. Niistravo followed up, pulling through the air, hand over hand, with his claws until engaging Fosso, who ducked to avoid Fennin. Fennin sought to uproot Fosso with his momentum and grapple with him, but his course took him past the senior steward. Niistravo’s claw hands came fast and were accompanied by sparkles and flashes of gold that dazzled and distracted, but were ineffective against Fosso’s superior perception. Fosso blocked each and every one of Niistravo’s attempted strikes as well as those added by Krassis, who’d joined them. Both started, though, as Fosso bowed sharply, his right leg sweeping up high behind him to catch Fullston on the chin, defeating his plans for a sneak attack.
Krassis and Niistravo shared a look to cement their resolve and renewed their efforts, both increasing the strength of their Haloes. Fosso smiled and met them: Fennin with his right arm and Niistravo with is left. He could feel them pushing themselves, though, and it was having some effect. He had to exert himself more to prevent their strikes from budging his blocks and there was still Fennin to consider. The Red Wolf, most skilled of all the assistant stewards, circled them waiting for an opportunity.
In a burst of impossible speed, Fosso’s hands flashed, casting away the defenses of both the remaining King Kites, and mirrored blue steel sheathed him like a falling shadow. His hands shot out, the heels of his palms hitting like pistons, straight through their open arms and hammering into each’s chest. They rose up off their feet and followed a V pattern away from Fosso.
Fosso turned to address Fennin, but he saw Fennin preoccupied with a sunset-red flash from above. The blurred shape sped down upon him like a falling arrow, striking him only to spring away and disappear like dissipating fog. White light shining from his eyes and gaping mouth, Fennin stood for yet a moment before collapsing.
“Excellent,” Fosso called. “You’ve been keeping secrets, Lissa. When did you master Sar Stusson’s fist?”
Tinkling laughter echoed through the training grounds, but Fosso could not locate its source as he turned in a circle attempting to pinpoint it.
“Congratulations, Lissa. You are Entitled by God. Now, let’s see what you can teach me.”
“I make no pretense at superiority, Sar Fosso,” her disembodied voice replied from everywhere at once.
“You mistake my intent. There is no reproach, chastisement, or sarcasm in my words, only high praise. Lissa Kaaskau, Initiate of the Sixth Secret, do your best to evade me.”
Fosso bowed his head of blue steel and his Halo shone with greater and greater intensity. A secondary Halo began to grow from the first, spreading out and lighting the training grounds like a small sun. The resulting ball of light buzzed and thrummed like a dynamo, sending off sparkles and streamers of light like water bursting from the joints of an articulated pipe.
“There you are,” said Fosso aloud, pleasure clear in his voice.
A sunset-red spot marred the light that Fosso was producing. It flitted to and fro, but within the area of Fosso’s influence, there was nowhere to hide.
“You can see that I’ve had to counter your stealth with this gaudy display and only because I knew to look for you,” Fosso said. “Truly magnificent. But the contest draws to a close, Lissa. How would you finish it?”
“I would have you chase me, Sar Fosso,” she replied, a combination of longing and challenge both mingling in her voice.
Fosso leapt into the air for the sunset-red mark, the great light springing from his shoulders adjusting with his movement. Lissa darted just out of reach, and Fosso followed and thus they danced in the open air of the training grounds, rising to just below the ceiling, skimming the floor, back and forth between partial floors that laddered the walls, until finally, Lissa could run no further and they lighted upon one of the mezzanine levels. They were not done, though.
Lissa no longer hid from the senses, but like Fosso, she was covered in what looked like a thin layer of flexible steel, hers the color of sunsets. She was like a replica of Fosso, in fact, though petite and feminine and, of course, of that brilliant red. Fosso studied her new shell for a moment before engaging her physically and saw that it was more likely to bend light than to stop a knife. She had trained in Olka Stusson’s style, though, and moved like gossamer on the wind, the very attempts to reach her seeming to drive her away. She had never been easy prey and would be less so now. Still, she was not yet Stusson’s match, and Fosso was not unaccustomed sparring with either of them. Grasping the Sixth Secret was of immense benefit to her in every measurable way possible, but it would not ensure her escape.
He’d dimmed his Halo, but Fosso dogged her, taking a number of her strikes, each of which ringing like the sound of a great bell, but otherwise not slowing or repelling him.
She giggled nervously now, her breath coming in irregular gasps. She missed a step, recovered, and continued to retreat, afraid to lose sight of her pursuer and so moving backwards all the while. Finally though, Fosso loomed before her, appearing to rise up, growing to immensity, and catching her in the unbreakable trap of his arms. His Halo resurfaced, the white-gold lighting her rich red beautifully. Her shell melted away, and she stared as if entranced
“Do you yield?” he said.
In the grip of his arms, with his Halo poised to finish her, she opened her mouth to answer, but could only manage inarticulate sounds until, breathless with effort and awe, she mastered herself to say, “I do.”
7. THE CORPSE GENERAL
10,689.158
Jav walked the top of the courtyard wall—still growing but nearly to its full height now—on his way to meet Raus. There were many people milling about which was odd and created a very casual atmosphere that was quite in contrast to the daily routine of the Palace. It was excusable, of course, even understandable, but disconcerting nonetheless. The courtyard might normally be busy as such, but not until the Palace growth was complete and Arcade could be repopulated with shops and stalls and eateries. The walls were usually busy with incoming and outgoing off-world jump deck traffic, since, officially, all of the decks inside the Palace were strictly internal. But there was no off-world travel as yet and there wouldn’t be for several months, so Raus was a bit of a spectacle to the average man or woman, at least for the time being.
Jav sighed. All would settle in the next few days.
He was nearly to the jump deck when a little man caught his attention. To describe him as little was perhaps unfair. He was older, nearly given over entirely to gray, but he was broad in the shoulders and chest, and didn’t appear to have even a pinch of fat on him. Jav thought he looked familiar and knew that he must have been a soldier, surely retired now and not one of Barson’s. Strange that he should still be in such trim physical condition at his age. Jav realized that he was staring at the man, and worse, scowling unintentionally as he turned the question over and over in his head.
Jav cursed himself after they passed one another, annoyed by his own inadvertent rudeness, but then overwhelming that feeling was something else. He felt like he was forgetting something important. Something was pricking inside him like a pin—whispering?—for attention. He didn’t have time to dwell on what it might have been, though.
Raus greeted him with loud good cheer, clapping his huge hands down on Jav’s shoulders. He wore the ash gray uniform of the Death Squad: a long-sleeved pullover and loose trousers tucked into low black boots, thick and heavy.
“Hello, Raus,” Jav said. “Are you ready for your date with immortality?”
Raus’s brow furrowed as he thought for a moment, and then he said, “I’ll let you know if it feels any different from the variety I’ve been experiencing so far. If you mean to ask whether or not I’m ready to commit to serving the Viscain Emperor, then the answer is yes.”
Jav nodded, silenced by Raus’s grave reply. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you to the Emperor. We’re going to be very busy over the next few days. Thi
s will be your first time away from the Tower in how long?”
Raus shook his head, unable to come up with an accurate figure.
Jav liked Raus. They had known each other for less than a month, but in that time, Jav had come to feel a connection to Raus, recognizing a core similarity in their natures despite their apparent differences. He sympathized with what Raus had had to do over the course of his life. And he certainly couldn’t ignore their shared difficulties with soul echoes. Similarities aside, though, Jav also knew that part of his openness to Raus was due to the void left by Ren Fauer’s death. He missed Ren every day, knew that he could not be replaced so easily, but it filled Jav with hope just the same to be able to connect with someone so soon after Ren was gone.
“Your brother is in good hands,” Jav said. “It’ll be good to get away.”
• • •
They moved along the top of the wall through thinning traffic and into the Vine proper through a wide aperture. Inside, the artificial light contrasted little to that of the waning Sarsan sun. Raus was trying to comprehend exactly what he found himself within: a plant, a palace, a spaceship, a god, the Emperor himself. The scale alone humbled him, but the thought that the whole structure was aware, could think, could create, could bestow parts of itself as boons was enough to cause him to rethink his worldview. Initially he’d had no idea of the scope of the Emperor’s person. He’d bargained because he had nothing else to lose and potentially everything to gain. When Jav started telling him of the Empire, that it was more or less the Emperor himself, Raus had been skeptical, but reserved judgement, at least outwardly. Now there was no denying that the Vine rose without end into the sky, that it formed a Palace that both dwarfed and humbled Kapler Tower. Raus had seen firsthand the power of Artifacts as well. Jav had threatened to pull his arms off, and it was clear that it had been no idle boast. He had also raised skeletons from the mass graves surrounding Kapler Tower and set them to his bidding. For all the science Raus thought he knew—which had never left room for something so ethereal as divinity—Raus felt like a child all over again, marveling at the “magic” of magnets as he had at age four. There had always been explanations for Raus’s ability to produce electricity—in truth, a trait shared by all humans amplified to a staggering degree in Raus’s case—or his brother’s ability to prophesy—which was either perception outside of linear time-space, or unconscious extrapolation of passively received stimuli, or some combination of the two. The brain and the body were capable of many things that were not, strictly speaking, normal and even more so when adjustments to each were made by skillful hands. But there were always limits. The Emperor’s existence spoke to Raus of an end to limits, of infinity, and of the divine. He was humbled, ready to serve, and happy to do so at Jav’s side.
The Blood Solution (Approaching Infinity Book 3) Page 9