Empire of Silence

by Christopher Ruocchio

  “You’ve seen her?” I cradled my head in my hands, looked down at the thick carpet, a mandala-patterned thing in black and white done in imitation of the Tavrosi fashion popular in the Veil and the colony worlds. I tried not to think about Anaïs, about what she was.

  “She’s worried about you. Says the Chantry has been forcing you to translate while they question the Cielcin.” I bobbed my head, looked around for an abandoned glass that might still hold some wine. None was visible. “But she also says you’re the reason they were all brought in alive. She said you’re a hero.”

  The wry amusement Valka forced into her words was more than my exhausted, scream-addled mind could handle. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She thinks it’s all some grand adventure, Valka. It isn’t.” My voice rose with each staccato pronouncement, and my fingers curled into claws. I was nearly shouting by the end, eyes blazing.

  The woman swore in her native language, then hissed, “Imperials.” Her favorite curse. Somehow her scorn was comforting; the knowledge that someone else in the universe shared my present fury helped, like light reaching for light across the dark material of civilization. “Can’t they use an autotrans like the rest of the civilized universe?” She shoved her hair back past her ears. I’d wanted to do that.

  “A what? Oh.” A machine intelligence, one of the slave devices the Tavrosi saw as commonplace and the Chantry saw as sinful. “You know they can’t.”

  Her strange eyes blazed. After a moment of companionable silence, she asked, “What are they like?”

  “The Cielcin?” I looked away, out the window and over the red roofs and the metal ones to the vast swath of the landing field, trying again to find the place in the labyrinth where another, younger Hadrian had been dumped naked to die. I had never gone back, never repaid the debt I owed the old crone in the hospital flophouse, never revenged myself on the dock workers who had robbed me. I’d never figured out what happened to Demetri and his crew, either. How had it all turned out this way? Earth and God and Emperor, I should have been on Teukros, at Nov Senber. I should have been Tor Hadrian by then—should be Tor Hadrian now, dressed all in green. But there are other powers that move our world, powers greater than man. Powers that, like time and tide, wait for none. Even Emperors, like starlight, bend to the blackest forces of natural law. I waited for the space of several breaths before saying, “They’re . . . They’re like us, but not so much as I first believed.”

  I told her everything then: about the descent into the tunnels, about the standoff at the Quiet’s sepulcher, about Uvanari and Tanaran. I omitted my own messy role in the interrogation of the Cielcin in the tunnels. It is easy to say only that I did not want Valka’s recovering opinion of me overturned, but the truth was that I didn’t think I could share that particular episode then and there. The thought made me sick.

  “We’re safe, though.” I rubbed my eyes with my knuckles, pressed myself back into the cushions of my armchair. “At least I think we are. It doesn’t seem as if the Cielcin were an invasion force. Even the Chantry has started to believe that.” I smiled my weakest smile.

  Valka leaned in a little, eyes intent. “And they haven’t tried to . . .” She made a slashing gesture across her own throat.

  “Kill me? No, no. They need me right now.” I stood up, gathered a few of the stray glasses from counters between my chair and the little kitchen area in one corner. I filled one with water from the filter unit, drained it, filled it again. “Do you want some? I may be out of wine.” Valka declined with a raised hand, and I leaned heavily against the granite counter. “I’m trying to convince the knight-tribune to use the captives as leverage, to open peace talks with the Cielcin, but no one will listen. The count won’t even attend council meetings. I think he just wants it all to be over.” And I think the Cielcin worship the Quiet, I wanted to blurt out, but leaden exhaustion and the sick, scalp-prickling sensation of being watched that had vanished while I stayed at Calagah crawled over my skin. I eyed the most obvious camera in the room, a tiny black lens embedded in the room’s lighting and climate control panel. One of ten thousand eyes, I did not doubt, networked and feeding information into house security’s monitoring station that was cataloged, if not actively reviewed by voyeuristic police.

  “Can you blame him?” Valka asked, ringed fingers tracing the black lines on the back of her exposed left forearm.

  “Gods, no!” I spun the cup like a humming top, the weighty glass rattling. I closed my hand around it to stop it spinning out of control. “But we need to be better, not anaryoch.”

  She sniffed, but there was laughter in the sharp lines of her face. “Your pronunciation . . . ’Tis terrible, you know.”

  “I’m sure it is.” I spun the glass again. What I was saying was probably safe enough, but the vast number of things I wanted to say and couldn’t was making me nervous. “I wish I could tell you more, Valka. I really do.” One never knew who was listening. Officially the recordings were exclusively for castle security, but he was a fool who thought the Chantry couldn’t gain access through one channel or another.

  Valka hung her head, a little too crestfallen. “I understand. Imperial business.” To anyone who knew her, this sudden hangdog surrender was like a slap. I nearly let my cup fall again, but I caught it at the last second, still surprised. Briefly her jaw stiffened, muscles in her temples flexed, and her eyes drifted closed. And then the lights flickered and faded, leaving us in darkness. Another of the castle’s frequent brownouts. I despaired, fearing the climate control would break down and leave us sweating in the dark.

  She looked up, eyebrow arched, all Valka again. “I forget those stupid things are there.”

  “What?”

  “The cameras. ’Twill be a few minutes before they get them back online.”

  The cameras. “Ah.” It took a moment for what she’d said to fully process. Then I realized, remembered, and my eyes went wide. Ten thousand eyes had closed; we were alone. “How did you . . . ?” My eyes flicked to the room’s control panel. The tiny red light beside the camera was gone. “Are you sure?”

  “Completely.” She tapped her temple. “What shall we talk about? Murder? Treason?” I felt the blood drain out of my face, lurched to my feet. Valka laughed, actually laughed, pointing at me. “Oh, your face!” She wiped her eye with a finger, tapped her temple again. “I’m saving that one, Marlowe.”

  I wasn’t laughing. My words escaped through my teeth. “Are you insane?”

  “You’re the one acting crazy.” She smiled her most cutting smile. “No one heard me.”

  I was slow to sit back down, certain that at any moment the guards outside would blast the wooden doors inward with a riot cannon, guns blazing. When nothing happened, I said, “But how?” I looked at the dead lights on my room’s environmental control panel. “The brownouts? It’s you?”

  For the third time she tapped her temple. “Neural lace.” She’d used the phrase before in our first meeting.

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  She hissed something incomprehensible in her native tongue, then said, “I keep forgetting. Here.” Valka turned away, long fingers feeling the back of her scalp, parting the red-black hair. “Feel just here.”

  “What? I—”

  “Just do it.” I did, pressing my fingers against the base of her skull. There was something there, a lump no wider than a pea. Through the strands of hair, I could just make out the gleam of something white as porcelain against her pale skin. I wasn’t sure what it was, wasn’t sure what to say, so I stood in confused silence, my hand still in her hair. “In Tavros,” she said, “we all get these as children, if our parent has the social credit. You can take your hand out of my hair now.”

  I withdrew my hand as if shocked. “Yes. Sorry,” I stammered, turning away. “But what . . . is it?” Even as I asked, fragments of my cultural heritage whispered in my ear.
Demoniac. Witch. Sorceress. It was a machine, of that I’d no doubt. The perversion of the body with machines. She had committed one of the Twelve Abominations, one of the arch-sins for which the Chantry would execute anyone, anyone, without trial or second thought. I recoiled inwardly, feeling a compulsive religious need to cleanse myself. But I knew one thing—Valka was not kidding about the cameras being dead. How she had done it I could not say, but she would not have revealed such a thing without the utmost certainty that she was safe. I’m afraid, I told myself. Afraid of Valka.

  But fear was a poison, and whatever I was, I was better than that. “You can just”—I waved a hand—“do it?”

  Her laughing demeanor collapsed like a wave. “There’s no just about it.” She pulled a face. “’Tis expensive.” She crossed her legs, the fading ripples of her smile ebbing from the cream of her face. “It has its advantages, however.”

  With the same fascination the sheltered student shows for the macabre, I leaned forward. “Like what?”

  Those golden eyes blazed. “Not now. You were saying?”

  “Hmm?” I was a shadow of my best self, pressed flat and spread at distorted angles across the universe of truer things, distorted by the relativistic gravity of events. “Oh! The Quiet.” What I had discovered had been more or less entirely stamped from my mind, washed out by the woman’s diabolic display of power. I told her everything then. I repeated Uvanari’s confession that the Cielcin expedition had come to Emesh not for war but to pray in the chambers at Calagah. That was why they had steered their damaged ship for the ruins, of all the places on the vast globe—so that they might die in the halls of their dead gods.

  “Why didn’t they turn around when their scout ship was attacked?” Valka asked, straightening her earthen vest.

  “I think they were looking for something,” I said. “They are not here.” Valka’s brows rose, and I repeated the ichakta’s words in its native tongue. “‘Rakasuryu ti-saem gi.’ That’s what it said. They could be looking for anything. The Cielcin have a culture based on plunder. That’s why they’re fighting us: for resources. Before we came along they had to parasitize their own fleets. It makes sense that they’d carry off any Quiet technology they could find.”

  She shook her head. “What Quiet technology? You’ve seen Calagah, Hadrian. ’Tis just stone.”

  “Maybe on Emesh! But that can’t be true of all the ruins in this part of the galaxy.” I did not bring up my vision. I would not talk about it. Not again.

  “I’ve been to Sadal Suud, to Rubicon. There’s nothing. We don’t even know how developed they were. They’ve left nothing.”

  Mania wrestled with the flattened shadow of depression, and I sat up straighter, pushed my long hair from my face. “Nothing we understand, but the Cielcin . . . Valka, the Cielcin evolved surrounded by all this. They must know something we don’t.”

  She was quiet a long moment, beautiful face downturned. At last she nodded. “All right, what do you—” A knock sounded at the door. I froze. Valka froze, and then her eyes slowly widened. “Are you expecting anyone?”

  All I could do was shake my head. I had to swallow once, twice before I could find my words again. “Are you sure you stopped the cameras with your . . . whatever it is?” She looked hurt, but I didn’t waste time on egos. “You’d best . . .” I tapped the back of my head to indicate the demon machine crouched at the base of her skull. “We’ll talk later.”

  “We’d better.”

  As with Valka, I knew whoever it was at the door must have been vetted by the two Mataro hoplites standing like display armor in the hall, and so I opened the door without fear. “Sir Olorin!” I had trouble banishing the surprise from my voice. “To what do I owe the honor?”

  “No honor!” the man said with a jovial wave, shaking a dark bottle at me. “Pleasure! I was told I might find you here, that I had only to be looking for the guards.” He smiled an absurdly toothy smile at the two masked and helmeted hoplites at attention on either side of my door, pointed cruciforms painted over the convex planes of their faces, doubtless hiding a profusion of sensor equipment. The Maeskolos still wore his customary blacks, but they were silk and not leather. He had discarded the flowing crimson mandyas as well, and the shirt he wore hung open to the breastbone, displaying a plane of bronze chest and a square-cut gold medallion that reminded me of the one Demetri had worn, this one stamped with a single unbroken circle. I wondered at that a moment, doubtless appearing either tired or a fool. Or a tired fool.

  At last the other man said, “May I come in?”

  I blinked. “I . . .” I stepped aside, one slippered foot nearly tripping over the other. “Yes, yes, of course. Please.” He passed over the threshold, and I latched the door after shooting an unreturned smile at my guards. Mindful of the swordmaster’s declaration, I tried again. “To what do I owe the . . . pleasure, then?”

  Sir Olorin Milta pivoted smartly on his heel, knee-high boots squeaking on the hardwood, three sword hilts swinging freely, knocking into one another like wind chimes. “I’ve come to be understanding that the last few weeks have been . . . somewhat . . . trying. I thought you could use a drink.”

  My politician’s reflexes, native-born in me and sharpened somewhat since my time in Borosevo began, activated my fight-or-flight response, and the question began ringing like a klaxon in my ears: What does he want? What does he want? What does he want? But I smiled. “Even if the times weren’t trying, I could hardly refuse. But may I introduce my . . .” My what? My friend? My colleague? My muse? Valka had not stirred from the couch, unaware of or unmoved by the swordmaster’s lofty station. That surprised me—I may have been a stuffy Imperial palatine, but the Maeskoloi were the stuff of legend, even in Valka’s distant, ensorcelled home. “My . . . This is Valka Onderra, Doctor Valka Onderra, of Clan Onderra Vhad Edda.”

  “Xenologist,” Valka added, her accent suddenly thickening as she rose and offered her hand to the effete Jaddian swordsman. There was a look in her eyes not unlike that of a gourmand faced with a particularly grand cut of meat. She offered a hand to shake, which the Jaddian took and—to my private relief—did not kiss.

  Olorin smiled, all teeth again, so white I thought them synthetic. “Sir Olorin Milta. Lovely to be meeting you. I . . .” He looked round at me. “Is this a bad time, Marlowe?”

  “Ah . . .” I hesitated on the verge of saying, Yes, I’m afraid so.

  My eyes went to Valka, who was still examining the swordmaster, and she beat me to the punch. “Not at all. I should be going.”

  “Must you?” Olorin’s eyes darted, weirdly, to me. He seemed to be mulling over some private thought, then refocused his attentions on the Tavrosi woman with deliberateness. “Please. My call is a social one. I’ve brought zvanya.” He proffered the bottle of pale orange brandy for the lady’s inspection. “Any friend of our friend the translator is a friend of mine.”

  Friend? I eyed the swordmaster warily, glad his attentions were elsewhere. When did that happen? To be sure, he hadn’t argued against capturing the Cielcin as strongly as Lieutenant Lin had, but I wouldn’t have named him as a friend.

  “What is it?” Valka asked, stooping over the peeled foil label.

  “Zvanya!” the swordmaster repeated, rubbing his thin lips and the fine stubble growing over the hard planes of his face—evidently the Jaddians did not lase their pores in puberty. “You have not had it?” Valka said she had not, prompting the man to uncork the liqueur on the spot. “Tavmasie! Then you must stay, please! Please!” At his request I found a trio of clean tumblers and waited while Olorin poured three drams of the rose-clear liquid.

  I sniffed speculatively at my glass. “Gods, that’s strong.”

  “It is strong as it needs be! Buon atanta!” Olorin said with gravity, then slammed the entire glass back.

  One after the other, Valka and I imitated him. The taste of raw cinnamon overpowe
red me, undercut with the flavors of strong wine and the barest trace of orange. All those notes were drowned, however, in a medicinal alcohol bite clean and bright as fire. My eyes watered. Valka coughed. Olorin laughed. “Ehpa!”

  “Cheers,” I said back. “But forgive me, Maeskolos—I don’t mean to seem ungrateful, but . . . well, I’m rather surprised to see you here.” Valka had hurried over to the small kitchen area, where she was filling her tumbler with water. The Jaddian liqueur had not agreed with her, it seemed.

  Catlike, the swordmaster settled into the armchair I had occupied moments earlier, his large, dark eyes scanning over my open journal with an air of detached interest. “I’d been wanting a word. Since Calagah.”

  Valka cleared her throat. “You’re sure you don’t want me to go?” To my surprise she made a questioning gesture at the bottle of zvanya, prompting a polite wave from the swordmaster. “If you boys want to talk, I’d be happy to go elsewhere. I don’t want to intrude.”

  “No!” I said too quickly, eliciting a sly smile from the Jaddian. “It’s not an intrusion. I wasn’t doing anything anyway.” And we aren’t finished talking, Valka, remember?

  “Did you draw this, Lord Marlowe?” the swordmaster asked, changing the subject abruptly as he lifted my journal from the table.

  I turned on the spot, looking over the swordmaster’s shoulder at the image of the Cielcin’s flayed wrist and broken fingers. Olorin lingered on the image a moment, his own fingers barely touching the charcoal-blackened claws. “I did. Am.” I shook my head, trying to clear it. “It isn’t finished.”

  He flipped back a page, revealing a concept sketch of a Jaddian mamluk leaning on a ceremonial glaive. I am no longer sure where I saw one with such a weapon, but the overlong bladed plasma spear made the spindle-legged homunculus appear even more like a marionette, knock-kneed and all elbows. He flipped back through the book quickly, passing a cloud of portraits—himself, Lady Kalima, Sir Elomas, Balian Mataro, Switch and Pallino. My mother. “These are remarkable. Quite . . .”