Incorruptible

by Lilith Saintcrow

  They exchanged another glance, adults weighing whether to believe a frightened child. She was beginning to hate those little looks.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Paulus said, heavily. “If he’s turned traitor, why did he bring her here?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” She glared at him, wishing she knew how to use that invisible force Michael called grace to shatter something. Then she felt even more childlike. A tantrum wouldn’t help, no matter how satisfying the idea. “Michael fought those things off. He kept us both alive. He’s a good guy.”

  He’d also sworn that they’d listen to her, but it looked like he’d been a little optimistic.

  “He may have deviated from the Principle.” Malachi paced to the window, stood looking out. He almost vibrated with contained energy, kind of like Bob when he’d had too much over-boiled SunnyTime coffee. I’m a Celeres, he’d said, with a peculiar little smile. We run fast. “But still… it doesn’t make sense. You’re right.”

  “I want to see him.” She was very aware every single man here was bigger and stronger than her, and of the marks on these two moving hungrily. Something in her chest—a cork, a dam, a necessary stoppage—had been wrenched free, and the strange almost-glow hanging a few inches from her skin was a trip and a half. It felt like being near a power transformer on a sunny day, invisible and barely audible electric force just looking for a place to strike.

  “We can’t take you down there just yet, lumina. Every legionnaire in radius will be pulling at you.” Malachi subsided when the bigger guy glanced at him.

  “We’re just lucky Gabon broke your contact so we could get you out of there, and that you weren’t hollowed out. That’s difficult to treat, we’d have to hospitalize you in the Baths.” Paulus folded his beefy arms, leaning against the door to the outer hall. “Our first priority is making sure you don’t get drained or injured. You need food, and rest, or the Principle will burn right through your mortal shell.”

  That sounds uncomfortable. It explained why Michael had tackled her. Saving her again, like always. “I want to see him. Can’t he be brought up here?” He’d said they would let him stay if she insisted. Or were these guys on the monsters’ side? She had her own reasons for suspicion, didn’t she?

  Good ones.

  “Not until we know exactly what happened.” Paulus’s chin set, not stubborn but thoughtful. “You said he had a laptop?”

  “He destroyed it after he told you guys about me, so they couldn’t track us. But they did. They kept finding us.” She’d already told them, why did they keep asking? Did they not believe her because she wasn’t male? It figured. “He got s-stabbed, and torn up when that thing in Las Vegas—”

  Malachi’s frown turned him saturnine, and his fingers twitched. “He took you through Vegas?”

  “There wasn’t another route once we got to…” She trailed off. I hate having to repeat myself. Nevertheless, she tried again. “He said we had to get to the Eyrie in L.A., and then we’d be safe.” She was beginning to feel lightheaded, and her stomach spoke up, rumbling. Of course it couldn’t be simple or easy, even when they’d reached their destination. It would have been good luck, and God knew she didn’t get much of that. “But it’s not safe if he’s not here.”

  “He could have been fostering a dependence,” Malachi said softly, turning to regard the glimmering city spread below the window. “It’s not out of the question.”

  “That’s not the real issue, though.” Paulus tilted his head, a listening movement. His boots were like Michael’s, heavy black clodhoppers with thick soles. “Ah. Food will be here in a few minutes, lumina.”

  “Don’t call me that!” For a moment she couldn’t believe she was actually yelling at someone, but hot injustice filled her to the brim. She was so goddamn tired of this bullshit, the endless male bullshit. “Michael calls me that, and you bastards left him there to die!” The tears were coming, she couldn’t stop them, but they were made of pure rage instead of hurt.

  “We most certainly did not.” Paulus didn’t even blink, but he hunched his shoulders like Michael sometimes did when he wanted to appear less threatening. “He’s in the Baths, lumi—ah, ma’am. He was badly injured. As soon as he can speak he’ll be able to explain. Right now we don’t know enough.”

  Badly injured was putting it mildly. And they put him in a bath to recover? Jenna opened her mouth, unsure what was going to come out.

  “What’s the real issue, here?” Malachi went up on his toes, dropped back, did it again. He couldn’t bear to be still, it looked like, and he turned back from the window, both eyebrows lifted inquiringly. “You’re the ranking officer, Paulus.”

  Neither of them were paying any goddamn attention. It was, Jenna thought, par for the fucking course.

  “As soon as our lady Incorruptible is settled, I want you to go down to Records.” Paulus glanced at her, a flash of dark eyes. At least his weren’t blue. “Don’t say anything to anyone, just go down and find Gabon’s listing. I want to know why he was left out on the East Coast and not pulled back during the Breaking.”

  That made Malachi go still at last, examining the thickset man. “A lot of us weren’t.” Those strange pinpricks of blue light in his pupils flared and the invisible force thrumming through Jenna intensified slightly, a soft tugging at her chest.

  “And we don’t know why.” Paulus folded his beefy arms, but his right-hand fingers tapped at his biceps in turn, a sign of deep thought.

  “The Breaking?” Jen had the sinking sensation that they weren’t going to tell her anything, but oddly enough, both of them returned their gazes to her as soon as her mouth opened.

  “We used to have many Eyries,” Paulus said, heavily. “But about a century ago, Incorruptibles started vanishing. Some said the Principle was displeased, that we had fallen away and grace was withdrawn. Thirty years ago, we realized there was just this one Eyrie left on the continent. We’ve lost contact with others in the world, and without an Incorruptible we can’t bring more of our kind through. We don’t have any Authorities, we don’t even have any Principalities left; the last one was Gabriel Archer and he vanished during the Great Siege. We’ve been fighting a losing battle. Casualties can’t be replaced. Gabon should have been recalled in the nineties, or even the mid-naughts. He wasn’t, and I want to know why.”

  “He probably didn’t want to come back, if he deviated.” Malachi clasped his hands behind his back when Jen glared at him. “I apologize, lumina. I see treachery everywhere; it’s in my nature.”

  “If you guys would have told him to come back, he would have.” She realized it was true as soon as she said it. Michael wasn’t here to defend himself, and she would be damned if she let these guys trash-talk him. “He’s a rule-follower. He doesn’t even break the speed limit unless those things are chasing us.”

  “That’s good.” Paulus nodded thoughtfully. Maybe she was getting through to him. “Nevertheless, we have to be sure. You may be the last Incorruptible on earth, ma’am, and if you are, it is vital we don’t allow any injury to you, no matter how small. Now that you’re here.”

  Oh, now that I’m here you’re being a Monday morning quarterback, aren’t you. She bit back the words with an almost physical effort. And if he’d been recalled, those… things, the demons, they would have eaten me at the diner along with killing everybody else. A shudder worked up from her feet, shaking all the way through her.

  It was a particularly gruesome thought.

  “Did Gabon ever force you to do anything?” Paulus said it gently, but there was a glint in his eyes she didn’t like. “Did he make you afraid, or hurt you at all?”

  “Of course not.” The very idea was ridiculous now, but she had been terrified. She took a step back, bumping the kitchen counter. It hurt, and she longed to see Michael, just to make sure he was really okay. “I mean, I was really…he had something he called a tacky-yum for a little while. It made me feel drugged. Otherwise I would have tried to escape and g
ot my head bitten off.”

  Malachi leaned forward on his toes, back to vibrating in place with suppressed energy. “And how long did he keep you under tacium?”

  “Just until we stopped the first night.” She sounded like a hostage with an unhealthy attachment to her captor. But she could see the reasons for everything he’d done, now, God knew hindsight had absolutely perfect vision. “I know how it sounds, I really do. I just… I trust him. He even got stabbed protecting me against that thing that… it’s crazy. It’s all crazy.”

  “That’s a natural response,” Paulus said ponderously.

  “Funny, that’s just what Michael would say.” She took a nervous step sideways, keeping the kitchen island between her and both men. A subtle change in the force flowing through her chest made her wince, swallowing a gasp.

  “You see?” Paulus dropped his arms, spreading his hands like Bob faced with an angry customer to calm down. “That’s why we can’t have you around a large group of legionnaires until you’ve rested; they could injure you, drawing on grace. An Incorruptible must be cared for.”

  Malachi flowed across the room, cutting her a wide berth and heading for the door. “I’ll go down to Records, then. With your permission, lumin—I mean, ma’am?”

  “Go ahead,” she said, numbly. “Knock yourself out.”

  “When you’re finished there, I want you to go down to the Baths.” Paulus’s expression turned remote.

  Malachi paused. “Oh?”

  “It strikes me that Gabon might have something to say that someone in the Eyrie may not wish him to.” Paulus’s dark gaze rested on Jen, and now she was hugging herself, tightly. Squeezing as if she could find some comfort, though there was none to be found, and just then a faint knock sounded at the door. Jenna restrained a flinch at the last moment, and Paulus’s expression said he’d noticed it anyway. “That’s Bernard with the groceries. We’ll stay with the lumina; I want a full guard detail on every floor. Let the city care for itself tonight, we have an Incorruptible to protect.”

  “Wait.” Care for itself sounded dire, and Jenna almost cursed herself for opening her mouth again. Still, she couldn’t help it. “What about the city?”

  “It’s full of the diaboli,” Malachi said over his shoulder as Paulus moved away from the door; the bigger man moved in an arc to keep himself on the other side of the kitchen island. Nice of him. “Our main job is to protect the Incorruptible, but we also clean the streets to make it safer for mortals.”

  Mortals. Just the flat, humdrum way he said it was more chilling than any number of demonstrations.

  Jenna decided she’d had enough. She turned sharply, almost hitting the counter again, and headed for the large bathroom. At least it had a locking door, and she sat on the closed toilet for a long while, listening to the rustling of grocery bags and a few soft murmurs. Sounded like they were putting things away.

  Her stomach ached, her head was full of a strange whirring sound, and all she wanted was to see Michael again. Or, to be more precise, to crawl gratefully into bed and hear him breathing in the darkness, even if he was on the other side of the room.

  It was, she suspected, the only way she’d ever feel safe again.

  Rather Be Stabbed

  Floating, amniotic warmth cradled him, almost as kind as grace itself. Michael’s eyes opened a crack, then slightly more. The green shimmer told him he was in a tank, and the thing clamped over his mouth and nose fed him oxygen. It was a far cry from the pools of his early training, where a legionnaire was wrapped in linen with a reed or similar hollow tube, held to his face with complicated fabric-twists, poking above the surface. The secret of the fluid’s making was jealously guarded, and the Baths were only for the most grievously wounded of legionnaires.

  Or the ones who needed to be held in narcotic stillness before summary judgment.

  Am I really that hurt? Who’s guarding her?

  He had plenty of time to think while he floated, naked and twitching occasionally as flesh repaired itself, fingers slack and toes dangling a good foot above the bottom of the tank. Had he deviated from the Principle somehow? It didn’t matter, she was safe.

  I wouldn’t be so sure, Michael.

  Shadows moved outside the tank’s glass walls. Were they filing past to look at one of the condemned, as was the rule? Or were some coming to look at a legionnaire who had brought in an Incorruptible? Was he being held up as an example, or a cautionary tale?

  Wondering about that is useless. Think about what’s really bothering you.

  He didn’t want to. He wanted simply to rest, and remember being in Jenna’s arms. Remember the taste of her, and how she slept, her breath a warm spot on his shoulder and her dark curls tangled over a cheap hotel pillow. Remember the feel of her, grace and a hot, tight glove around him…

  Michael stirred, again. Thick liquid rippled.

  She’s not safe yet.

  It was simple, once he had some quiet time to piece it together. They hadn’t moved to collect him and his lumina because someone didn’t want them to. Of course the unclean needed her for their own purposes, but the break in the pattern, now viewed from above, was clear. Someone in the Legion—one of Michael’s own brothers, sworn to the Principle—had simply told the local diaboli that an Incorruptible had been found, alerting the creatures it was his duty to hunt.

  It was the only reading of events that made any sense at all. And now he was helpless, floating in a bath, while she was among the legionnaires who undoubtedly did not suspect one of their number of such a thing. Even the Celeres, with their noses for treason and divergence, had obviously not found the traitor.

  Liquid sloshed again. He was fighting the sedation, struggling with its drugging hold on limbs and torso. Agonizingly slow, buoyancy lifting him by increments as he tensed, trying to semaphore his unease.

  No, he wasn’t being lifted. The liquid was draining.

  Michael was lowered by inches, feet touching a tiled tank-floor, weightlessness sliding away until he lay curled on his side as if he had been descended to the mortal realm from elsewhere again, bright light stinging his eyes, the twin curved scars on his back oozing and his jelly-slick skin shrinking from the cold, thin dark marks scalpel-slicing their way deep and deeper, containing and reinforcing, healing and confining.

  “Easy there, centurion.” Someone sounded amused, and the rumble under the words told him it was a high-ranking officer. “Easy, you’re not well yet.”

  Centurion? I’m just a legionnaire. Michael’s eyes rolled and he scrabbled weakly at the face-mask. The tube in his throat threatened to gag him now that the relaxant in the fluid was wearing off.

  Rather be stabbed than intubated. Ugh.

  The strap at the back of his head loosened, and he coughed the tube free. The tank’s door was open, a cold draft pouring over slick skin. Gooseflesh crawled all over him too, painful prickles turning into stabbing needles,

  “Easy,” the officer said again. “I regret I had to interrupt your upgrade, centurion, but I have questions.”

  So do I. He coughed, bringing up a clot of bile, and spat for where he sensed the drain was. The mask skittered away and was automatically retracted for cleaning. The tank would be flushed and sterilized for another poor wounded legionnaire, but right now Michael didn’t care. He tried forcing himself to hands and knees, failed when both slipped and scrabbled weakly on jelly-slick tile, and tried again.

  “Calm down.” It was a Celeres—one of the blues, the one with a sarcastic twinkle to his dark eyes and his feathery eyebrows tipped with cobalt. “She’s with the Decurion and a Celeres, she’s safe.”

  Not if one of them has deviated from the Principle. Who could alter records and override a Priority One message? Only a high-ranking officer, that’s who. “Not…necessarily,” he husked. “They knew we were coming. Even after I threw the burner away, they knew we were coming. Denver. They killed the team in Denver, had a Corrupter in Vegas.” Now he could spit out his news, and he rolled
half onto his back, examining the Celeres. The legionnaire almost vibrated with readiness, his fatigues well-worn and his marks flush with grace.

  What if this one was the traitor?

  “I know,” the blue-haired man said, grimly. “I went looking in the Records Department. Someone overrode your initial call-in, and tipped everything from you afterward into a killfile. The legionnaires in Denver were coded as a recon, not as a pickup, and they were betrayed. There is diabolerie afoot, Michael Gabon.” He paused, bending to offer a hand. “I’m Malachi. Malachi Pike.”

  “Principle guard you.” Michael’s throat was raw. “Where—” Another cough-spasm racked him. He was weak as a newborn kitten, but urgency gathered in his bones, beat under his heart. He couldn’t even grasp the Celeres’s hand; his arm was leaden. “Where is my lumina?”

  “Fortieth floor. The heart of the Eyrie.” Malachi regarded him almost sidelong, a sober, gauging gaze, but he left his hand in midair, patiently waiting for a grunt to gather his strength. “Whoever altered the records left very little trace. I think it’s best I bring you to Paulus; he’s the highest-ranking officer left.”

  What? “How many…”

  “Not enough.” A Celeres normally didn’t look this set or grim; whatever else this Pike had found out, he was keeping to himself. At least if he was the traitor he wouldn’t be telling Michael this, would he? No, he would just murder a helpless legionnaire in the bath, and it would be over. “That will change, with an Incorruptible here. Paulus is old, he’ll probably be promoted to Principality when this is over.”

  “How do you know he’s not the traitor?” He was well on his way to mistrusting every single one of his brothers, and that was a dangerous position to be in.