Empire of Silence

by Christopher Ruocchio

  The gross incandescence of Ligeia’s smile curdled every fluid in me, and I clenched my teeth so hard that I fancied they cracked. No. No, no. Still I had to respect the play for what it was. Raine Smythe had played the grand prior right into her hand in a matter of moments by first chastising her, then giving her what she wanted to silence her, ensuring that the last word on the subject subordinated the priestess to the tribune’s will. The politician I might have been applauded within me even as my spirit choked on the sound of screaming.

  Whatever happened, there would be blood. I saw that then. Always blood. Blood is not the foundation of civilization—ours or any other’s—but it suffuses its mortar at every level, drips from its walls. Despite the glass and airy light of that room, I felt hemmed in, as though I cowered in some catacomb of the mind, dank and musty and lost. When we think of War and her atrocities, we imagine that the unforgivable is prosecuted on the battlefield, in the heat and fire. It is not. Atrocity is writ by quiet men in council chambers over crystal glasses of cool water. Strange little men with ashes in their hearts. Sans passion, sans hope . . . sans everything. Everything but fear. For themselves, for their own lives, for some imagined future. And in the name of safety, security, piety, they labor to found future heaven on present horror. But their kingdom of heaven is in the mind, in the future that will never be, and their present horrors are real.

  “You cannot be serious, knight-tribune,” said Lady Kalima. Her attention flickered to the tribune’s face. “Surely the prisoners are of more use to us, ah . . . unmolested.”

  Raine Smythe glanced briefly at the count in his high seat before leaning in to address the Jaddian noblewoman. “If you’ve an alternate suggestion, satrap, I would love to hear it. But this planet is under threat. I know it’s not one of your planets, but it is in the Imperial interest that Emesh remain, ah . . . unmolested.” She mimicked the satrap’s cadence, if not her accent, on the final word. Olorin’s hand tightened briefly about the wine-red grip of one of his three swords, prepared to unclip it from his belt. For a moment I thought we were about to have another duel in Borosevo, but the tall swordmaster released his weapon without comment, face composed as that of a scholiast by the next moment.

  “They weren’t an invading force.” All eyes turned to look my way, even the satrap’s. I could not figure out why for a good moment, and then it clicked. I’d opened my fool mouth again. Forced now to explain, I said, “They were looking for something. Sir Olorin, sir, you were there. You’re the soldier, Knight-Tribune—you have the reports. Is the design of the ship shot down over Anshar consistent at all with the design of a military vessel?” When no one answered I looked round, spread my hands. “No, really. Is it? I’m no expert in ship design. Anyone?”

  One of the minor logothetes, a thickset plebeian man with graying hair and a drooping face, cleared his throat and tapped his stylus on the petrified wood surface of the table. “There were no ship-to-ship armaments found on the wreckage of the xenobite craft. It would appear that—”

  I raised my eyebrows. “No ship-to-ship armaments, eh?” I imitated the knight-tribune’s knuckle-rapping gesture and surveyed the lords of two nations, the Chantry prior who wanted me dead, the high officers of the Imperial Legion, and the crowd of logothetes before continuing, “Perhaps there is no third wave. Perhaps our Cielcin friends knew there was no hope of rescue. Perhaps their retreat into Calagah represented a last desperate stand? The ichakta—their captain—only surrendered when I promised medical aid.” That was not strictly true, as you have seen, but the only persons capable of corroborating that story besides Uvanari and myself were Bassander Lin and the Cielcin Tanaran, neither of whom were present or spoke the other’s language.

  “Get to the point, please,” said Chancellor Liada Ogir.

  “Our Cielcin friends?” the grand prior repeated, blood darkening her whitened cheeks.

  “A figure of speech,” murmured Tor Vladimir, his sleepy voice coming to my aid.

  I let the prior’s tangent die down, again affecting the knight-tribune’s knuckle-rapping gesture. “Look. I’d wager that the ships you destroyed in orbit were an escort sent to cover the crashed vessel’s approach. They weren’t kitted for an invasion.”

  “Then what were they after?” First Officer Crossflane croaked from beside Raine Smythe, a frown tugging on his chops. “Are they spies?”

  Mouth open, I stared at the man. I had a suspicion, of course. The ichakta’s words still echoed in my skull: They are not here. I needed Valka, needed to talk to Valka. She would understand, could help me make sense of things. She would know. That the grand prior was sitting right there, a vulture in black robes, malice wafting from her like perfume, did nothing to help my burgeoning courage. Balian Mataro sat watching me, head no longer propped on his fist. His black eyes glittered like beetles, like the black stone of Calagah, and his lips were pressed shut. My patron. My sponsor. My jailer. A mad smile threatened to steal its way onto my face, and I drowned it. Joy is a wind. With every word I dug myself into more danger with the Chantry, but it wasn’t the Chantry I was playing for. Thinking of Anaïs, of the marriage pact that hung informal between us, I thought, Let’s see you keep your claws in me, you bastard.

  “Spies?” I said. “I’m not sure how that would be possible, sir.” From the quartered shield plaque on the breast of his black uniform, I knew the man was a knight, though his name was a mystery to me. I leaned forward, addressing myself wholly to Knight-Tribune Smythe. “But if you were to allow me time with the captives—with their captain especially—I’m sure I could get something more out of them.” There was more I could have added. I could have mentioned the Cielcin’s association with the Quiet, only that it would have meant something only to Ligeia Vas, who for all I knew might torture me for my trouble.

  “Something more?” The first officer sneered, turning with incredulous rage to his younger superior. “Raine, this boy can’t be serious.”

  “Let me try! Hold local space for . . . a week. Blockade the planet if it helps you relax. Give me a chance. Their captain will speak to me, I’m sure of it. I’m sure I can—”

  “Enough, Marlowe.” The count did not shout. He did not even raise his voice. He was just like Father. Exactly like Father. He just . . . said it. Shook his head. In his high-backed seat raised above the level of his guests and councilors, Balian Mataro shifted, squaring his bull shoulders. “I concur with the knight-tribune and Grand Prior Vas. The enemy shall be questioned. I’ll hear no more about this.”

  Exactly like Father. I opened my mouth to respond, eyes fixed on the tribune and officer, both in uniforms black as funeral shrouds. I had to convince them, to prove I could be of use. If I could persuade them to take me, they could recruit me right out from under Balian Mataro’s nose. I glowered at the man. “Your Excellency . . .” I stood, bowing low over the dappled jade pink of the table surface. “Forgive me. I have pressed overmuch. I apologize.” The tip of my long nose scraped the surface of the table, and I jerked my chin up and looked at the dais. Briefly I considered making a farce of the whole thing: throwing myself on the floor, beating my breast, and begging forgiveness. It wouldn’t have helped, but the mockery would have made me feel better.

  Must everything you say sound like it’s straight out of a Eudoran melodrama?

  Yes, Gibson, I thought. It does.

  “Take your seat, Lord Marlowe. We are not done with you yet.”

  I retook my seat, eyes downcast. Something in the way the count spoke those words twisted knives in my belly, but in my distraction I did not reflect on their meaning overlong. I was hearing Gibson’s old lessons again. Obedience out of loyalty to the office of the hierarch. True enough—my obedience certainly wasn’t out of love for his person. Not that I hated the count, for he was at his foundations a decent man. Rather I resented what I was to him. I felt as I imagined a particularly adroit princess might have felt in one of Mother�
��s fantasies of Old Earth: not only lowered to the level of a breeding animal but dismissed as a person, as an intellect.

  Knight-Tribune Smythe resumed control of the conversation as if there had been no interruption. “I propose this: the bulk of the prisoners will be kept in the bastille and treated gently. Meanwhile we will isolate the captain and give him to the Chantry for interrogation. Agreed?” A murmur went around the table, and she continued, “We are agreed, then. The”—she looked at me—“ichakta will be given over to the Chantry for interrogation. The Jaddians will sit in, as they are party to this affair already and all intelligence is to be shared between our parties.” With the sweep of a hand she took in Lord Balian, Lady Kalima, and herself.

  Behind my eyes every degradation of the body and spirit practiced by the cathars of the Chantry ran like video reels played at a hundred times natural speed. The cutting and burning, broken bones and peeled skin, foreheads branded, noses slit, the disembowelments, decapitations, and rapes. The screams I imagined echoing out of Vesperad, out of steel-walled prison cells, blossomed and withered and blossomed again like flowers season after season. And these men and women sat in sunlight and in warmth, not smiling but still contented as Ligeia outlined the next phase in the operation.

  And I was made a liar. I had promised the Cielcin they would not be harmed, had given my word as palatine. By the Great Charter, my word was a kind of law, and they were asking me to break it. More than that, it was a personal blow, an affront to my sense of self, to who I was on this new world of mine: Marlowe again, but not of Meidua.

  “. . . must be present, of course. We’ll need a translator.”

  Translator. The word—its special associations, its affinity with myself—stuck out of the morass of failure that remained of that meeting. Translator. And then it hit me, sunk in like an arrow shaft, like a blade. “No!” I almost stood again. “No, I won’t!”

  Ligeia Vas was smiling. It was a moral victory for her, if not one ending in my death. “You have no choice. As you say, it seems there is none better suited to the task.”

  “No!” I did stand then, startling the two logothetes I sat between. I turned wild eyes on Raine. “You mean to tell me you don’t have a translator on that ship of yours?” The Obdurate, up in orbit, was a supercarrier containing dozens of smaller frigates, thousands of crew. “Not one?”

  “Not many scholiasts aboard Legion vessels, lad,” Sir William Crossflane replied.

  Desperate, I turned to Lord Balian. “Your Excellency, please. You must forbid this.”

  “You wanted to talk to the demons, boy,” the prior said, answering for the lord she nominally served. Her white face glowed the same hue as my family’s funeral masks, and those blue eyes might have been violet but for a trick of the light. They glittered, and then they were only the blue of Gilliam’s eye, sightless, staring, fixed beyond sight. “Talk to them.”

  CHAPTER 72

  PALE BLOOD

  THE PLACE GLEAMED LIKE a surgical theater, which I supposed it was. The interview chambers beneath the Terran Chantry’s bastille—a surprisingly unassuming brutalist structure at the base of the ziggurat atop which Castle Borosevo perched—were all built to the same model, like stainless steel balloons inflated inside cubes. The walls and floor and ceiling of the room we occupied all blurred, melting into one another, and glow panels were fixed to the ceiling, colder than space. There were no shadows in that awful place.

  Uvanari’s back was toward me as I entered, led by a white-robed Inquisitor and two black-robed cathars, bald and blindfolded. It recalled for me an icon of the pagan god Andreas, its legs and arms spread in an X. Though it was turned away from me, I saw the white blur of its reflection in the brushed metal wall of the cell, so I knew that it was naked. Per the inquisitor’s instructions, I stayed out of sight, waiting in a corner beside a rolling cart laden with surgical implements and glistening pale tubing. My breath frosted the air, and frost crunched beneath my feet. I felt the weight of eyes: the human watchers, the same ashen-hearted little men who had ordered this inquest. Ligeia would be there, and Ogir. And Smythe.

  Smythe. I had thought better of the one-time plebeian officer.

  The cathars busied themselves attaching sensor tape to the xenobite’s body in different places, and then one came for the cart beside me, wheeled it around the cross Uvanari clung to so the creature could see it. A thin, high wail escaped the Cielcin, bringing a smile to the inquisitor’s flat, native face. She thought them signs of pain and fear, those expressions which colored my own face.

  Uvanari was laughing. “Qisaba!” it swore, stopping the piercing sound, the words of its language a guttural contrast to the grating height of that inhuman laughter. “Why did you bother healing me?” It grew quiet, tried to crane its neck to look round, but it couldn’t see me. But it must have known someone was there from the blur of color reflected on the metal wall, if nothing else. What it said next cut through me: “Raka Marlowe saem ne?” Where is Marlowe? “I was promised sanctuary.”

  The inquisitor looked at me to translate. She had not picked my name out of the string of alien words. I realized I was holding my breath, “It asked why you healed it just to hurt it again.” I did not bother with the part about sanctuary. What was the point?

  “Marlowe!” Uvanari turned its head, trying to see me. “Bakkute! You said! You promised!” Its earlier amusement with the situation was gone. It had an enemy: me.

  To the inquisitor I said, “It asks for me.” Then in Cielcin I added, “Asvatatayu koarin o-variidu, Uvanari-se.” I wasn’t given a choice.

  “You will not speak to the prisoner unless translating!” the inquisitor snapped, stepping backward off the grating in the floor that waited, hungry, beneath the cross. She slipped a recording nodule from her wrist terminal and held it to thick lips. “Sixteen one seventy-two zero two thirteen. Inquisitor K. F. Agari presiding. Subject is the Cielcin xenobite named Uvanari in the Calagah report. Brothers Rhom and Udan assisting with lay translator.” Her black eyes narrowed, face turning down as she made a note on a holograph image that sprouted from her wrist. “You are the captain of the ship shot down on this world?”

  The interview began in this vein: cool, detached, clinical almost as the room itself. I was only an interface, a substitute for the translator devices it is said the Tavrosi, the Normans, and the Extras take for granted. Indeed I tried to be less than myself, to put myself away from that terrible place. Just go away inside, I told myself. Not a scholiast’s aphorism, only the scrambling thought of a young man in too deep and far from home.

  “I am Itana Uvanari Ayatomn, Ichakta of the ship Yad Ga Higatte.” From the flat tone of the creature’s voice, I knew this was the Cielcin equivalent of confining itself to name, rank, and serial number. My heart grew leaden in expectation of the blood that was to come.

  Inquisitor Agari accepted this translation with a nod. “Why have you come to Emesh?”

  I translated this, swapping Emesh for this world, knowing the proper place name was meaningless to the Cielcin. To my horror, Uvanari only repeated, “I am Itana Uvanari Ayatomn, Ichakta of the ship Yad Ga Higatte.”

  Whatever the inquisitor might have been, she was not so stupid that she failed to recognize the repetition. At a gesture, one of the two cathars approached, circled round behind the Cielcin, and worked a mechanism on the back of the cross that swiveled one arm down within easier reach of the humans. The arm still restrained, the cathar—without speaking, entirely without hesitation—removed one glassy claw from the end of Uvanari’s first finger. It made a dry cracking sound as it snapped, thicker than human nails. And yet the principle was the same, and the xenobite bit back a cry as blood welled up, blacker than the cathars’ robes, and dripped onto the grate below the cross.

  “Tell him he has eleven more.”

  Instead I said, “I’m so sorry. I tried to stop this, but . . .” What more could I say? I
stopped, tried to find somewhere else to look, found only our dull reflections in the brushed metal walls. I imagined doing this over and over, with each of our prisoners, until each creature collapsed into fury, then madness, then death, bled and cut away until nothing remained. The ancients used to believe there was no science in torture, nothing to be gained. I will not say they were wrong, and yet the Chantry’s power in torture was never that it found the truth, even when it did. Rather it was that it taught the great to fear, even the Emperor. It was teaching the Cielcin then.

  Just go away inside. I prayed to no one and to nothing. But then I froze, stalled a moment, realizing I had not translated Agari’s last statement. I had not threatened Uvanari but apologized, and no one had noticed. No one had noticed. I could say whatever I wanted, could take my own path—such as it was—to answers. I only had to be careful.

  “Why have you come to Emesh?”

  “I am Itana Uvanari Ayatomn, Ichakta of the ship Yad Ga Higatte.”

  “Why have you come to Emesh?”

  “I am Itana Uvanari Ayatomn, Ichakta . . .”

  “Why have you come to Emesh?”

  “Why have you come . . . ?”

  “Why have you come . . . ?”