A piano-wire smile bled across my father’s face, and the silence went tight as a garrote. Threatening the Lord of Devil’s Rest had a long history of failure. Once when Father was little older than I, the vicereine—my grandmother—had been called to attend the Emperor at Forum. Thirty-seven years she was away, and she left the recently orphaned Lord of Devil’s Rest in her stead as executor. It had taken House Orin of Linon less than three years to begin refusing Father his tribute, and by the next year Lord Orin had raised an army among the exsul houses to depose my father and the absentee vicereine-duchess. They’d swarmed in from the outer planets in-system, falling from the sky like rain.
There had been no second year of Lord Orin’s rebellion, and the castle at Linon was home now only to ghosts, a shattered ruin in a twilit crater on a distant moon at the edge of Delos’s system. My father ordered the deaths of every member of House Orin, smashed their genestock, and raided their family atomics. He would have sown the earth with salt if it would have done any good on airless Linon. As it was, he only opened the windows of the sealed fortress and let the air out of the castle.
I think the director realized her mistake, for she ran a hand over her scalp and had the grace to look away. Father knew, I don’t doubt, that he was not dealing with some exsul house—that this was a director of the largest interstellar corporation for ten thousand star systems—but he did not so much as change his expression. “I remind you, Director, that I am not the one who diverted my starship several parsecs to have this meeting. You are. If you believe you can obtain uranium on a scale comparable to that which is mined in-system here—and that you can do so legally—then I will not stop you. If, on the other hand, the unfortunate tragedy on Cai Shen means you must do business with me and my infrastructure, then I ask that you stop playing these games and tell me what it is you need.”
I sat in silence, regretting that I had attended at all. The meeting broke up, and Alcuin led the Mandari party away to meet with the Mining Guild factionarius, leaving the logothetes and Chantry personnel to scatter more slowly.
“You.” Father’s voice did that alarming thing again, sliding softly beneath the other sounds until it latched, adder-like, onto my attentions. “Stay.”
I slumped back into my seat, looked away to watch the retreating backs of Eusebia and young Severn, the old prior leaning on the arm of her subordinate. They moved like a pair of witch-shadows, robes darker than the black armor of the house peltasts who moved to shut the doors behind them. In the moment before the doors closed, I saw Gibson’s stooped figure leaning on his cane, frowning a frown he did not smooth away. That bothered me more than anything else: that he did not master his emotion as he should have done.
Then I was alone with my family.
“Mother didn’t stay for the meeting?”
Father sniffed, adjusted the cuffs of his white sleeves beneath his dark jacket. “Your mother has gone to Haspida.”
“Again?” Crispin set his tablet down and threw his hands in the air. “She only just arrived.”
Lord Alistair waited a moment, drumming long fingers on the tabletop. His eyes were fixed on a spiked, heart-shaped wooden mask that formed the centerpiece of the decoration on one wall. The instant I glanced away to look at the ugly thing, he said, “You promised them assistance.”
Unsettled, I looked round, eyebrows raised. “I’m sorry?”
“The Guild factionarius meeting with Feng. You promised her new mining equipment.”
“Balem?” I sat straighter. “I did no such thing.”
His deep voice deadly calm, Lord Alistair cut off any further protest. “You gave the damned woman assurances that we would do more to aid her workers.”
“We should, Father!”
“Have you any idea how much one of those enrichment crawlers costs, boy?” When I did not answer him at once, he said, “Just under fifteen million marks, and that’s before the import costs and the tithe to pay the Chantry.” He leaned in over the table, eyes narrowing, “Do you know how many of the crawlers have been reported damaged in the past three standard decades?”
Crispin made a noise, and I turned to look at him before answering. He was watching me with the same violet eyes as my father. I thought of the masks outside the door, the faces of my forebears. They filled me with disquiet, the sense that all of us were born to order, cut from the same violet-eyed cloth. But I did know the answer to Father’s question, as it happened, so I shut my eyes and said, “Nine.”
Crispin whistled. “Nine?”
“It’s the Chantry,” I said. “If we had the technical capabilities to effect large-scale repairs . . .” But that was impossible. In those days the Chantry controlled the use and trade of any and all complex machinery. They were seeking daimons, the intelligent machines with which the Mericanii had oppressed the rest of humankind long ago and which had oppressed them in turn. No such monster had emerged in Imperial space in more than two thousand years, but still the Chantry was watchful. When a lord stepped out of line—built a private datasphere, harbored foreign technicians, traded forbidden technologies with the Extrasolarians, or purchased one too many uranium enrichment crawlers without the permission of that system’s grand prior—there were consequences. Daimons were everywhere, they said. Ghosts in the machine. The abominations were only waiting for a foolish magus to summon them from silicon and ytterbium crystal. Those lords who dabbled with that blackest art were subject to the Inquisition, to torture at the hands of the Cathars. In the worst cases, whole planets were sterilized, subjected to nuclear fire or to plague, to whatever horrors the black priests kept in their arsenal.
Aware of this deadly threat, Father’s lips went white. “Do you want an Inquisition, boy?”
“I was only saying that—”
“I know what you were saying.” Lord Alistair stood, looking down his hawk nose at me. “And I know you know how dangerous that is. Do you think Eusebia or that Severn fellow would hesitate for a moment to put any of us under the knife? We walk a fine line here. All of us do.”
Crispin twisted in his seat to look at Father. “We’ve not done anything wrong.”
Leaning back in my chair, I folded my arms. “I’m aware of our obligations to the Chantry’s Writ, sire. I only think that if authorizing the purchase of new equipment is what it takes to restore planeted mining operations to parity, then we have to do it, regardless of the costs. Perhaps I could sit down with the director before she leaves; let me take Gibson. She needs our mining operations as much as we do, and maybe we can make a deal.”
“A deal? You?” Lord Alistair turned away, his full-length coat belling as he did, a swirl of damasked black and red, his attentions on an ancient oil painting of a gondola approaching an island walled in by whited sepulchers.
To my surprise, Crispin cleared his throat. “Why not, Father? He’s good at it.” I opened my mouth to reply, shut it again, and found myself staring at Crispin in numb confusion. Had he just spoken in my defense? I just sat there, looking at my square-jawed little brother, the gaming tablet again in his big, blunt-fingered hands.
“Because your brother made this embarrassing situation that much worse with his meddling.” Father half turned, feet still planted so that his body twisted as he regarded me from beneath hooded brows. The colors of him dimmed, lit only by the faint sunlight through the oculus in the dome above with its darkly frescoed images of conquest. “I gave you a simple task: placate the Guild factionarius. You agitated her instead and cut negotiations short to get back in time for that farce in the throne room.”
I gripped the runners of my seat so tightly I felt my tendons groan. “You shouldn’t have cut me out.”
Father actually turned now. “Do not presume to lecture me on politics, boy.” And for the first time that day, Lord Alistair raised his voice, those heavy brows contracting to form a slim crease just above his nose. Not quite a shout, but
it was enough. Even Crispin cowed. “I know your uses, few as they are.”
My wounded pride outdid my fear, and now I was standing. “Few? I thought I was being coached on diplomacy, Father. Gibson says—”
“Gibson is an old fool who forgets his place.” My father was all lord in that moment, dismissing the scholiast’s three centuries of service with a wave of one glittering hand. “It’s high time the old man retired. We should find some cloister for him in the city, or perhaps in the mountains—he’d like that.”
“You can’t!”
Father blinked once like a glacier cracking, his voice suddenly, dangerously soft. “I believe I told you not to lecture me.” He turned away again, back to his contemplation of the painting with its deathly isle and the small white ship. “We will do nothing precipitately. Like yourself, the old man has his uses. I understand your study of languages is going well.”
Sensing a trap but not yet seeing the shape of it, I said, “Yes. Gibson says my Mandar is excellent and that even my Cielcin is conversant.”
“And your Lothrian?”
The trap was well and truly closed. How had he known? There were no cameras in the scholiasts’ cloister. There couldn’t be. Anything more complex than a microfilm reader wasn’t allowed within arm’s reach of an unsupervised scholiast. Had someone bruised his ear at the keyhole? Or . . . I remembered suddenly and smiled. There had been a servant cleaning the windows above the courtyard, hadn’t there? I stood a little straighter, imitating a soldier’s parade rest and hoping to hide my surprise. “Quite good, but not so good as to send me to the Lothriad—the Commonwealth.” I exaggerated my small smile, hoping to mask my understanding with a joke. “I know enough to ask for the bathroom, but I might get lost elsewise.”
Crispin laughed, and Father glared sidelong at him before addressing me. “Do you think this is a game?”
“No, sire.”
“The scholiast revealed the visit to you, did he not?”
No use in denying it. “He did, Father.”
“He’s getting old. He forgets his place.”
“He is wise and experienced,” I snapped.
“Do you defend him, then?”
“Yes!”
Shrugging, Crispin offered, “He’s not a bad teacher, you know.”
“He’s a great teacher,” I said, thrusting my jaw out. “He did what he did only because there’s no sense in keeping these things from your son, sire. If I’m to rule after you, I need to be involved.”
“If you’re to rule after me?” Lord Alistair blinked and shook his head, genuinely confused. “Who ever said you were to rule after me?” On reflex more than anything, I looked at my brother. No. No, it wasn’t possible. It didn’t make any sense. But Father wasn’t done. “I haven’t named a successor and won’t for many years, by Earth. But if you continue like this, boy, I can tell you one thing.” He paused, his back still to me, framed by the painting of that dread little isle. “It will not be you.”
CHAPTER 6
TRUTH WITHOUT BEAUTY
ON THE FLOOR OF the coliseum, a team of four douleters worked with stun rods to bring the azhdarch to heel while three others worked to clear the remains of the slaves who had been sent out to fight the offworld beast. I watched one work with a spade to throw sawdust on the bloodstains, since like many people I found the alien predator hard to look at. It was something in my cells, a deep memory of what life ought to look like that stemmed from the days when the curve of Earth bounded our collective universe. And the azhdarch was just wrong. In many ways it resembled a pterosaur, those bat-lizards of antiquity, with its leathery wings. In other ways it resembled a dragon out of fantasy with its long, spine-covered tail and hooked claws. But the neck—nearly twice as long as a man—was open from its vestigial head to the start of its thorax and lined with hooked, snarling teeth that hinged open and closed like the mandible-leaves of a fly trap.
I saw one brave douleter—a red-haired young woman—lash out with her stun rod and catch the thing in one leathery flank. It let out a gurgling howl and lunged sideways, dragging the other three douleters by the great chains they held. The crowd gasped and cheered, and the beast blew sputum from its open throat. Even from the safety of the lord’s box above the shield curtain, I could see the blood in it.
“Devils are up next,” Crispin said, punching me in the arm. “You ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.” I turned back to the book in my lap, rubbed the blade of my right hand. The charcoal there had started to smudge the image, clouding the profile I had drawn of Lieutenant Kyra’s face. We’d been sent, Crispin and I, to attend the opening day of the Colosso season in Father’s stead. He was away with our grandmother in Artemia, discussing matters of state.
As a boy I’d hated the arena. The bluster of it, the blood and circumstance. The violence offended me. The shouting and screaming all battered my ears as the trumpets blared from on high, amplified by the coliseum’s massive sound system, and the announcer’s voice cut above it all. The smell of unwashed bodies mingled with that of grilled artificial meats and the iron stink of blood assaulted the nose even as the screaming did the ears.
Yet it was the offense against life that wounded me most, the callous spending of humanity. The fighters were slaves, I knew, and perhaps that excused the violence for many, but I had just seen three men torn to ribbons by a flying xenobite monster and seen children squealing with delight and terror in the stands. Bare-chested men, their bodies painted red and gold or red and black, beat on each other and sloshed cheap beer onto themselves, shouting and laughing at the spectacle. The sight of blood sickened me as the news of Cai Shen and the massacre had not. For here was something immediate, concrete. And the people reveled in it.
I often wonder what the ancients would think of us, of our violence. I have heard it said that those generations that killed Old Earth had derided such violence in their everyday lives. It was ironic that the same people who had enacted nuclear war on the Homeworld, who presided over the refugee camps and rotted the ecosphere, had balked in the face of blood sport. Would they call us barbarians, those men of ancient days?
I darkened the line at the edge of Kyra’s face with my pencil. Enough philosophizing. Crispin was cheering now. “I get to go on after the first bout!”
“What’s that?” I did not look up from the image on my lap, accentuated one curl of hair. My mind was on other things. On Cai Shen, on my father. On Crispin himself. In my mind I kept hearing my father’s words to me beneath the Dome of Bright Carvings. Who ever said you were to rule after me? It was meant for Crispin after all. Every bit of it. I was to be discarded, packed away. Married off to some Baron or Baroness like an ornament or forced into the Legions.
“I get to go on!” Crispin smiled, looking genuinely excited at the prospect. “Father said I get to fight today.”
“Oh.” I looked at him only briefly. “I knew that. You keep saying.” I pressed the pencil so hard against the page that the charcoal snapped, marring Kyra’s slim nose. I cursed inwardly, realizing that I resented my brother. I already hated him, but hatred is something pure, like a fire in the belly. Resentment, though, sat in me like a cancer. I did not want what was his. Rather, I resented that he had taken something that I had implicitly understood was mine. I did not wish to win my father’s throne, as I said. I only wanted Crispin to lose it.
“Father says I can only fight the slave myrmidons, but I could take Marcoh, I know it. Couldn’t I take Marcoh, Roban?” Crispin stood up in his seat. My brother had dressed in armor for the occasion, in a suit of titanium and ceramic accented a deep red. Black leather had been stretched over the muscled breastplate, the Marlowe devil embossed there, drinking the light like blood. He wore a half cape over his left shoulder, all rich velvet, crimson where it caught the light, black where it did not.
The round-faced knight ran a gloved hand over his tightly curl
ing hair. “I’m sure you could, young master.”
“He favors those big swords—what do you call them?” Crispin took a drink from a glass of some blue energy drink, snapping his fingers at Roban.
“A montante,” I said. I scratched Kyra’s name in small, neat letters in the bottom right of the picture above the date with a second pencil removed from the leather kit between my feet.
“That’s the one!” Crispin burbled a low laugh, grabbing another pair of olives from the china bowl on the small table between us. “They’re so slow.”
Roban did not stir from his place by the door. “The young master is quite right.”
“Short sword and main gauche are better,” Crispin declared, planting one foot on the table and upsetting the bowl of olives. It shattered on the floor, olives bouncing and rolling across the tile. Crispin ignored it, ignored the servants as they rushed forward to collect the fallen olives and smashed china. “Do you know who they have for me to fight?”
Sir Roban shrugged. “Just some of the slaves, I imagine.”
“More than one?” Crispin’s teeth flashed in the dim overhead lighting. His back was to the coliseum floor, his face in shadow.
“Perhaps, sire.” Roban jounced his helmet under his right arm. “I was not informed. They left that up to the Colosso’s vilicus. I was told he would come looking for us when they were ready for you.”
Crispin swung back down into his seat and snatched up his drink with a gauntleted hand as he leaned forward over the rail. On the field below, the Meidua Devils emerged from a lift along the right side amid tumult and the sounds of trumpets. They were dressed in the ivory and scarlet of Imperial legionnaires, their faces blank armored swaths the color of bone, their names stenciled in red across their backs above identifying numbers. Tom Marcoh stood in the middle, the number nine huge on his back. He was a broad man with stripes on the white ceramic of his upper arms to mark him as a centurion, not that he was any such thing. He was a performer, a toy soldier, and as nothing next to the true soldiers I had known.
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