by Adam Burch
I lean against the wall. I truly take in his visage in the pale moonlight. More than old, he’s dying. His oddly colored reddish hair is now dull and gray. It has sprouted fraying ends from his unkempt head. The paint of the facial tattoos is tucked deep into the crevices of his leathery skin. He looks emaciated, a skeleton with barely enough muscle to hold up his frame. His white eyes, which at one time seemed fierce in their blindness, now seem faded. It’s hard to believe this is the man who beat me in a fencing match a few hours ago.
I stand tiptoed and look out the porthole of my dungeon. The world beyond is like whipping cream scraped across the landscape in mountainous, snowy swirls. It’s beautiful in its pure bleakness.
“Have you been modulating your pupil dilation?” Faria asks.
“Yes,” I respond. “Still it has been six months.”
Faria nods. I sit back down. “Master, how did you come to Tao?” I ask.
He smiles with brown teeth. “It’s a long and tragic tale and of no concern.”
“If I wasn’t interested, I wouldn’t have asked.”
“I’m surprised you waited this long. You’ve guessed I’m not from around these parts.”
“It was your winning charm that gave you away,” I joke.
“Long ago there was a war. A war that exploded suns, extinguished millions of souls. This was hundreds of years before the generations of Nightsiders that scurry the oceans of Tao today. The historians that deign to recount it called it the Chironian Civil War.”
“Chilleus and Cuillan,” I whisper. I remember the great myth that Phaestion and I both loved as children.
“Chilleus and Cuillan were legends even to me,” Faria says, nodding. “Anjin commanders who served long before I was born into service. Chiron was a moon of the Titanus star system. My people were conscripts.”
He says the word with a bitter inflection. There’s more to it than simply being drafted, I think.
“Wars are petty things. They rob men of dignity, turn them into meat and guts. Never fight a war not of your choosing, Edmon Leontes,” he says. “When our great war was over, the Titanus star was no more, and the people of its worlds and moons were scattered to space.”
“You always said fighting was the truest expression of self.”
“Martial art is not war, boy,” he says sharply. “There’s nothing personal about war.”
I now wonder if Faria is any less deluded than any of my teachers.
“So, you found your way to Tao?” I ask.
“I was the last alive on a dying cruiser, the Perseid. My brothers, who died first, set the ship on autopilot with a trajectory for the black hole at the heart of the galaxy. I was not designed by my creators to live beyond the conflict’s end. They never saw the possibility of their own demise first,” he adds wryly.
“It was my duty to helm the ship past the dying embers of Titanus, through the dust of New Byzantium’s remnants, and into the heart of an event horizon. I disobeyed. Call it a defect of the genetic code. I changed course and set sail for the nearest Fracture Point.
“I lived for weeks off what was left in the meager galley, then the rotting corpses of my own brothers.”
I must look horrified because he stops his tale.
“Your eyes show disgust. I slaughtered many in battle, but feasting on the flesh of my own kin? How do you come back from that, Edmon Leontes?”
I have no answer.
“Such was the will to live. You would have done the same.”
I nod, not knowing that I would.
“I washed ashore on a Bernal Sphere, a space station colonized by a group of ascetic monks called the Zhao. The sphere orbited a blue star the charts name as Janus. It’s remote, perhaps seven or eight points from Market.”
“Market?” I ask.
“A main hub of civilization. The monks nursed me to health, but they could not prevent my biology from deteriorating. My cells were reaching their maximum number of divisions, and there was not exactly a means for a full intracellular transplant.” He laughs as he explains.
“Fortunately, the Zhao are anything but conventional,” he continues. “They taught, and I learned quickly. The threat of failure was enough incentive. I outlived my expiration date and reached equilibrium.”
“Equilibrium?” I ask.
“A place of inner peace free of earthly pains and pleasures. The monks train for that. It’s what keeps them alive for centuries.”
Centuries?
He waves off my incredulous stare. “There’s a price. Equilibrium brings stagnation. Change is the essence of life. The existence of a monk is dull and monotonous. There is no pain, but also no love. All I had known was the life of a soldier. I was born and bred to follow orders. Go here, kill this, shoot that. The life of an ascetic is not so different. Wake up, clean this, meditate on this. I craved more. I had seen men holding women, looking at a child who shared their own eyes.”
“You left.”
“I gave up immortality. I took an oath never to share the knowledge that the monks imparted to me. They supplied me with my first month’s passage on a cargo ferry. I rode on the backs of cruisers, sailed over the nebulae of the Calcaides. I witnessed the births of red giants and white dwarfs and floated down the tributaries of dark matter, which carried me to Market.”
“Market. You named that place before,” I say.
“Spacers of the Second Age met at predestined coordinates to trade. Eventually one or two had the good sense to stay put. Then one or two more. Drifting ships, cruisers, and junks of all kinds became strung together. Market is its own world now. You float through micro-g of a cargo hold turned interstellar night club, only to cross an access tube and slam to the floor of a rotating clothing shop’s artificial g. It’s where all those who leave atmo end up. It’s just about the only place that connects this scattered tribe we call humanity.”
“A city in the sky,” I say wistfully.
“Dirty, garbage, rubble-bed in the black, more like.” He chuckles. “Kind of like Ancient Earth, I’m told. Market can be wonderful, though. Languages, food, and accoutrement of every shade and taste exist there. Characters and lowlifes lurk around every corner, whispers of the greater cosmos far on everyone’s lips. That was where I learned of Tao, in a bookshop, the Eye of the Pyramid.”
“Actual books?” I ask, stunned.
“Some cultures still print on physical objects. By then, my eyesight had started to fade. So I learned to appreciate more tactile forms of communication. I was scanning some antiquities when a man entered, pale with blond hair, very strong. He wore robes of fine silk with flashes of copper armor. He looked like a feudal relic.”
I nod, picturing a nobleman of Tao. It was rare our people left the planet. I wonder if he was a Julii.
“Arrogant and with eyes of judgment. But he wasn’t the one who caught my eye. It was the collared woman on his arm, a Nereian goddess, all dark skin and smooth curves.”
“An islander.” I’m reminded of my Nadia.
“I followed them. The man sought accommodations, and I intercepted the woman for a private tête-à-tête.” He smiles roguishly. “She revealed her name—Qualia. No sound ever rang so sweet in my ears. She was the man’s servant, and they were from a planet called Tao. She called herself a Daysider. This sparked my curiosity of the planet’s peculiar geography. I wasn’t sure if the place was paradise or a backwater. Chaos and order forever contending with each other.
“I fell in love nonetheless. I convinced Qualia to abandon the lord, and we booked passage on a UFP ship. I had found myself a new wife, but she wished to return to her home in the Western Sea, the Isle of Drum.”
“And?” I press him.
“Tao has always been xenophobic. Its isolation from the nearest Fracture Point by several months’ trip through deep space made your people cloistered, distrustful of outsiders. The islanders welcomed me. I didn’t look too different from their natives, but your noble houses—”
“T
ook Qualia,” I say, guessing the story already.
“For every Combat competitor like your father who willingly steps from the muck to take the garland with brute strength, there’s a scryling whose legs shiver as he’s handed a stick and forced to face trained killers. The government forced me, like it did others, to fight so their highborn sons could kill.”
“My father—”
“Edric Leontes was expected by most to die in the arena,” Faria answers. “Through skill, he clawed his way to victory.”
“And dared it a second time,” I add.
“That’s why he’s worshipped. You might want to look up who your father killed to win.”
Augustus of the Julii, I suspect.
“And Qualia?” I ask, not wanting to hear any more about my father.
“The Pantheon makes volunteers where none exist. Qualia was young and strong, but the moment House Wusong guards touched her, four were dead by my hands. I used the techniques of the monks. I used them without thinking. I couldn’t fight them all, though. They returned with an army, took her, and forced me in the arena.”
“You refused to fight,” I say.
“On the contrary,” he corrects. “I wanted to bleed them. I rained death and destruction.”
“Then why are you here now?” I ask.
“Four days and nights I fought in the rotunda. Those that crossed me fell to my blade. Myself and one pale Nightsider were left standing. Camglobes hovered between us. We met like storm gods. Equally matched, though in the end, I stood victorious. When I looked down upon him, however, I didn’t see a warrior who had slain many in the arena that day, only a boy. Someone’s child. Someone’s brother. I sheathed my sword.”
“You showed mercy?” I ask, shocked.
“It was the greatest humiliation I could have given him. The High Synod ordered me to take his head or forfeit my own.”
“He would have killed you had he the chance. What was one more life against your love for Qualia?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” the dark man concedes. “The pointlessness of it? The fact that they ordered me to do it? The knowledge that it wouldn’t stop there and I’d be forced to kill many more? You may find yourself in such a moment one day. I have taken life only once since that day.” I remember Snaggletooth, the Hauler that he killed for me. “If I ever again kill, it won’t be because someone ordered me to.”
We sit for a beat, then—
“You bound me to take the life of someone of your choosing? You won’t kill on anyone else’s word, but you’d condemn me to kill on yours?”
“I never said it was fair, Edmon.” His skeletal face smiles like a grinning death’s head.
I seethe, but the bargain has already been struck.
“So you were sent to the Wendigo?” I growl.
“Directly to the Citadel,” he corrects. “I humiliated Chilleus of the Julii. Death was too good for me. I was tortured. Qualia was murdered in public. She could’ve lived, Edmon, found another husband, had children . . .” There is a hitch in his voice as he chokes for a moment. “The following year, Chilleus Julii entered the arena again and slaughtered everyone in an attempt to wipe the stain of his loss from people’s memories,” the old master says with disgust. “Vengeance burned inside me. I could have died with my brothers aboard the Perseid. Or with the Zhao monks on their sphere. But when I imagine what’s beyond this life, I don’t see resolution, only a certainty I’ll no longer exist. I’d fight to keep what little life I have, no matter that it fades into decrepitude, no matter that it is full of hate.”
Islanders are taught all life comes from the sea. To the sea it returns. Nightsiders believe death in Combat is the only honorable death. The fallen are burned in veneration. I’ve never thought much of joining the ancestors beneath the waves or as sparks in the sky. Both options seem better than the truth that Faria gives. The murders of my mother and of Nadia and all the others before and since seem like such a waste. My heart grows cold.
“Dead men don’t seek revenge,” Faria mutters.
I’ve made an oath to punish those who have killed my loved ones. That’s all that matters.
“You were a singer, they said,” Faria says, interrupting my thoughts. “They said your songs of rebellion shook this little world.”
“Once,” I answer. It feels an age ago.
“Sing something now,” he suggests.
I feel ridiculous. I’m bald, bearded, and a filthy, stinking, dirt-monger in rags.
“Any tune. That’s all this old man’s asking. Don’t worry about Goth,” he says. “He’s frightened of the light. He’ll have found a spot in the depths of the tower and won’t come out until the moons have passed.”
I think on it. “My mother once told me my people were here before the Great Song, before the hybrids, back to the time of the Elder Stars. This song is from that time.”
Faria nods.
“Across the stars, spread far and thin,
The mother calls us home
Much too late, now we begin
To answer the call alone
To home, to home, through black of night
To home, to home, on edge of light,
From all, to one, born, and live, and die again.”
Silence holds memory of the final note. The light of the moons begins to fade. “Edmon,” Faria says softly. “You were not meant to be caged.”
The universe is littered with corpses of what’s meant to be.
“The Fracture Point burst in the skies the day I was born,” I say. “Nine years later, I saw some of the first off-worlders to come to Tao in decades. There was a captain that didn’t look so different from you, Faria. He was dark as night, strange reddish hair. He didn’t have the same tattoos or facial markings, but he looked like you. Could he have been the child of one of your brothers or . . .”
My voice trails off. Faria is disconcerted by this mention, I can tell.
“We only have a few more moments” is his only reply. The cell returns to shadows, and I’m blind again. Faria stands. “I take my leave,” he says. “The guards will come, and they must find their healer waiting.”
“Master, thank—”
“Not until our enemies are dead and our thirst satisfied. We meet again in six months’ time,” he says. As silently as the moons slipping past the window, he’s gone.
CHAPTER 22
NOCTURNE
The next six months are dark and lonely. There’s a rhythm in their passing. I wake, train, and push my body to the limit, and after the exhaustion, I meditate. I find the cells inside, push the lactic acid out of my muscles, and repair the damaged tissues. Then I begin again. It’s a delicate balance.
I practice the Dim Mak. It’s not easy. There are only so many times that I can make my own arm or leg go limp without becoming bored. The first tries are terrifying. If I cannot duplicate the strike to return feeling to the limb, damage will be permanent. By the twentieth time, I revel in my new powers. The five hundredth time, I might as well be asleep. I need to practice the more lethal strikes, but I can’t practice on myself without permanently paralyzing my own body, so I’m decidedly against it.
I punch and kick the reinforced obsidian of the dungeon wall. My skin grows tough and calloused. Soon it’s the rock that splinters under the force of my blows.
I remember when Phaestion showed me his famed siren swords. I couldn’t hold them then. Now, I breathe deeply. I feel the vibrations beginning deep within my belly. I cultivate them and strengthen them. They boil like water in a kettle; their frequency becomes fever pitch. There’s nowhere for them to travel but up. Like a flash flood, the energy rushes through my thorax. I channel it as I unleash my fist. Through my shoulder, my arm, through the tips of my fingers, the current courses. I picture my father, Edric Leontes, the leviathan, leering. The vibrations release as I hit the dungeon wall.
I scream on impact, and there is an explosion, a veritable sonic boom. I’m flung back from the wall with tremen
dous force, slamming into the wall behind me. I wake a moment later with a throbbing headache. I hold my aching skull and take a few tentative steps to reach out and touch the wall. A giant crater divots the surface. It’s like a grenade exploded. I laugh in shock. I did that. I may not have a siren sword, but I have my body. My body is my sword!
Goth howls several floors up. He heard me, and he’s going berserk. There’s a sound of twisting metal. He tears a cell door from its hinges. The crash reverberates as the creature hurls the iron door to the ground and the cell’s occupant screams in desperation. I recognize the screams. It’s the man with one leg who cried for mercy in the Combat, the one who had lost a daughter. He screams for mercy now.
“Ancestors! Forgive me. Help me! Someone, help!”
Do something, Edmon! I could race up several flights to the man’s cell. I might make it in time. He’s going to die because of me, because my noise provoked the monster.
“Please, no!” the man shouts.
I should help. I must help. I don’t move. I can’t. If I face the beast before I’ve mastered this technique, before I’m ready, I’ll be done for. If I die, Nadia’s death, my mother’s, will be in vain. I must do nothing.
The screams escalate as Goth’s talons tear open the prisoner’s belly. The man calls out for his mother in his last moans of consciousness. I hear the sickening crunch of teeth on bone and the snorts of the creature’s chewing as he feeds.
It is the first time that someone has been in danger and I’ve done nothing when I could have helped. The man died because of me.
That’s when I realize the truth of the old saying—those who seek vengeance must dig two graves. I’ve started down a path from which I can’t return.
In the “evenings,” I explore, crawling through the narrow air ducts. I stop at cells and listen. The sounds of other human beings breathing and moving are comforting. They make me believe I’m not alone in my suffering. I want to speak to some of them, but I keep my mouth shut. Knowledge of my presence would only cause more problems than it would cure.