Demon in White

by Christopher Ruocchio

  “ ’Tis nothing out of the ordinary, then,” Valka said, trying to reassure me.

  Speaking to my own reflection in the bloody wine, I said, “But it was the Empress. I . . . they know what you are.” Knew she carried a forbidden computer laced throughout the gray matter of her brain. I stifled my fear behind a swig of wine. It tasted of smoke and pepper.

  I swallowed.

  Valka raised narrow shoulders. “They know I’m Tavrosi. You barbarians assume we’re all full of machines. They won’t do anything, besides . . .” Here she seated herself on the arm of the couch that wrapped around the holograph projection bit. “We’re leaving Forum now.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t come back.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  I took another sip of wine. I knew I was drinking it too fast for how fine a vintage it was, but I needed the drink desperately. I needed to sleep—to dream, perhaps—and for a long time. Perhaps I would go into fugue for the first leg of our journey, allow myself that escape and respite: to cease to be for a time and return. It was tempting, and one often heard stories of certain palatine lords—aged and world-weary—placing themselves in cryonic fugue for years and decades at a time to prolong their tragically long lives. Common wisdom taught that such people did so only to extend their lives, the rich and the powerful clinging like drowning men to their wealth and power, but I know better. Such men are not afraid of dying. They are afraid to live, and so live only days at a time.

  “You’re right,” I said. “It’s only . . . coming from the Empress . . . I worry about you.”

  “You worry about me?” Valka’s winged eyebrows shot up. “Hadrian, if your Imperial friends ever learn these things you can do are real, they’ll forget all about me.” Valka had seen me die, had seen my head struck off by Prince Aranata with my own sword. And she had seen me return, sent back by the Quiet for reasons I did not understand. I had told her everything, about the howling Dark beyond death and the rivers of light that flowed across time and separated what was from what might be.

  I seated myself on the arm of the couch beside her. “I can’t do anything. It was the Quiet.”

  She put a hand on my knee and leaned warm against me. I offered her my wine cup and this time she accepted, vanishing half the remaining contents in one shot. She turned her hand palm up for me to take it, and I did, closing my artificial fingers about her true ones, flesh against flesh. After a moment of companionate silence, she asked, “Did you get access to the archives?”

  “No,” I growled, accepting the wine back. “The Emperor’s holding it for ransom, I think. I don’t know why. Said it was for him to decide what I do with my time or something like that. He played like he didn’t know I’d requested access, said we would discuss it when we returned from this fool’s errand.” I made a gesture as if to throw something away. “I’m sorry.”

  Her fingers tightened against mine. “Hey.” She lifted my hand in hers, kissed it. “ ’Tis not your fault.” I crossed back toward the bar to recharge the empty glass. “We’ll figure it out after this.”

  “We’re not meant to figure it out, Valka. We’re meant to fail so the Emperor has an excuse for removing the people’s favorite new hero from the limelight. Or if not the Emperor, one of the old dogs like Bourbon.” I glanced back over my shoulder.

  “Bourbon . . .” Valka wrinkled her nose. “He’s the fat one, isn’t he?”

  “That fat man is a descendant of the ancient kings of France who went into exile when the Mericanii took Old Earth.”

  I could hear Valka’s frown as I poured a second glass of wine for myself. “Why are you defending him?”

  “I’m not defending him,” I said. “He’s a descendant of a family line that goes straight back to the Golden Age. I think that’s worth something.”

  Her response played in my head before she could voice it, and with my back turned to her, I mouthed the word as she asked, “Why?”

  Smiling, I turned and raised the glass to my lips. “You’re the historian,” I said, “you don’t think history is valuable?”

  Valka made a rude gesture. “Not when history is an ass.” My smile did not waver. Valka had never met War Minister Bourbon, knew nothing of the man save what I had said of him. Her dislike of the man was for my sake, and I loved her for it. “You really think they mean for you to fail?” The way she looked at me, as though I were spun from glass . . . no one else looked at me like that. Not since I became a knight. Maybe not ever.

  “Yes,” I said, feeling like glass myself as she wrapped her arms around me, pressing her face against my chest.

  “Well then,” she said, “ ’tis well that whether we fail or not is up to us.”

  CHAPTER 7

  BEFORE THE SUN FELL

  JEWEL-BRIGHT AND BLUE-GREEN AS the Earth of legend was Gododdin, shining through the false window that fronted the Tamerlane’s bridge. I stood alone on the forward observation platform, looking down and out at the planet into whose orbit we had so recently entered. Tangled ribbons of cloud raked across her surface, white as snow; and but for the rusty bloom of deserts here and there her landscapes flowered like drops of Eden beneath her golden sun.

  The sun I would destroy.

  The false window dimmed its light so that a man might look upon its majesty unshuttered. The ancients believed that the Morning Star was a jewel carried into the heavens by a great hero who had reclaimed that star from the lord of the underworld, and that in payment for his heroism, the gods set him to sail the skies, forever carrying that gem aloft. Earth’s Morning Star was only her sister planet, Venus, but it was easy to understand how the ancients made that mistake. They say the oldest stars have hearts of diamond, and maybe it is so. But the ancients may be forgiven for their error, whereas I deserve the underworld.

  “We have contact with the surface, captain,” came Lieutenant Pherrine’s pleasant tones.

  “Traffic control?” asked Captain Corvo. I did not turn from my study of the world beneath us, but squinted, trying to pick out the glitter of satellites and ships in parking orbits as we drew nearer.

  Pherrine answered, “No ma’am, it’s from Fort Din.”

  “Put it through on the central well, lieutenant. Hadrian!”

  Only reluctantly did I turn my face from the window. I had dressed in my diplomatic best: polished black boots cuffed just below the knee, black trousers with the crimson double stripe down either side, knee-length quilted jacket with fitted sleeves and a high collar depicting my pitchfork and pentacle in red above the heart. Over it all I’d donned a brilliant white cape cut lacerna-fashion and bordered with a maze pattern to match the red on my trousers and of my crest. I wore my sword again in its magnetic hasp at my right hip alongside a plasma burner.

  I looked every inch the Knight Victorian, I thought, catching a glimpse of my reflection in the glossy black wall as I approached the holography well. The well was a pedestal two yards across, about waist high in the center of the bridge before the captain’s chair. I approached via the catwalk that ran from the forward observation platform to the captain’s station above the stations and consoles of the other bridge officers.

  As I drew near, the figure of a man materialized above the pedestal, replacing the wire-frame model of the Tamerlane. His back was to me, but he had the ramrod straight, square profile of any Legionary officer, and from the silver braids draped across his shoulder I took him for a man of some import.

  “You must be Captain Corvo!” he said, voice gruff but not impolite. “Sir Amalric Osman, Knight-Castellan at Fort Din. Let me be the first to welcome the Red Company to Gododdin system.”

  Otavia Corvo was still too much the Norman for all this Imperial pomp and circumstance. I watched her smooth mild amusement from her face before answering. “Thank you, Sir Amalric. I am Captain Otavia Corvo of the ISV Tamerlane, here on Imperial orders.”

  �
��Is Lord Marlowe with you?” Osman asked, looking uselessly around. The projection pickups only afforded the fellow a view of a narrow slice of the bridge around Corvo. He could not see me. I raised a hand to signal Otavia to stall. I wanted to get a measure of the man first, and leaned in to study his blunt, square-featured face and bald scalp. Osman struck me as one of those common legionnaires promoted to the rank of officer and patrician status by long years of service. There had been a time when such men were rare in the Legions, but seven centuries of fighting had bled much of the aristocratic officer class from the ranks, and new blood had been permitted to rise on merit.

  I crossed my arms, listening.

  “He should be with us momentarily, Knight-Castellan,” Corvo said, glancing toward me.

  Osman straightened his jacket like a recruit afraid of his first inspection. I felt my eyebrows shoot up. I never had gotten used to being taken so seriously. In truth, I felt like little more than the boy I had been on Emesh. On Delos. Not someone whom fort castellans were nervous to meet. “Very good. I was surprised to hear the Emperor was sending him. We didn’t expect a Victorian in the first place, but . . . the Halfmortal? Tell me, captain, are the stories about him true? Can he really not be killed?”

  The captain looked at me through the holograph with bemusement in her amber eyes. “You’ll have to ask him yourself,” she said only.

  “Wonderful!” Osman said, a bit stupidly—but perhaps it was only nerves. “I look forward to meeting him.”

  “You won’t have to wait long, sir,” I said, still not visible to the other man.

  “Lord Marlowe, sir!” Osman snapped a salute and stood at full attention as I circled into view. Otavia withdrew.

  I gave the castellan a short but gracious bow, by doing so emphasizing that I was a lord and knight of the Imperium, not merely another soldier. Often I have done this, greeting the officers with every lordly courtesy as a member of the nobility, and greeting the common soldiery as a common soldier. Thus one impresses the officers and ingratiates oneself with the men. “Well met,” I said.

  “Well met indeed!” Osman replied, and introduced himself again. He looked me up and down. “You’re younger than I expected.”

  I knew how I must look to an up-jumped plebeian like Osman with my smooth face and long black hair. I did not look much older than Prince Alexander, who was only thirty. It tended to work against my reputation, which was why I had made sure to speak first. I have always had a strong speaking voice. My tutors had seen to that. “Appearances can be deceptive, castellan,” I said. “I trust you have news of our quarry?” We had been twelve years reaching Gododdin. Plenty of time for the emergency beacon to have reached one of the deep space relays.

  “The convoy? Not as yet, lordship. We dispatched the ISV Legendia and a small fleet of outrider vessels along their last known trajectory but have yet to receive word by telegraph.”

  Trying to keep the frustration from my voice, I said, “Understood.”

  “I’ve arranged for a landing port at Fort Din. With your permission, my lord, I’ll wave the coordinates and landing procedures to your ship.”

  “That’s good of you, but it won’t be necessary,” I said. “Unless you’ve any particular objection, I’d prefer to land in the city field. I like to see a bit of the places I visit. Would you be so kind as to send a driver for us?”

  Osman blinked, and I hoped the man had not taken offense. “Of course, my lord. At once.”

  * * *

  Catraeth was one of those cities built after a world’s initial colonization and showed no signs of the ugly, prefabricated structures built by the Consortium for rapid settlement. Its buildings were all of white stone quarried from the mountains in whose last peak the city sheltered above the seemingly infinite expanse of grassland the natives called the Green Sea. In the distance, great shoals of rock upthrust from the flat landscape like islands and broke the perfect horizon beneath an eggshell sky.

  It was early morning when we landed, and the first blush of dawn arose to hide the stars. Three unmarked groundcars awaited us on the tarmac once we emerged from the landing terminal. Stewards took our luggage and stowed it in the trunks with the help of some of the hoplites in our personal guard.

  “ ’Tis clean, the air!” Valka said, restoring her hair to order after a gust of wind tousled it.

  “Smells different,” Alexander observed, taking in the sights. It occurred to me that, humble as the airfield was, the prince had not seen so much land in his lifetime, living as he had among the clouds.

  “That’s the earth, boy!” Crim exclaimed. Two years of wakefulness on our twelve-year journey had done little to crack the enamel on Alexander’s Imperial pride, and I sensed my squire stiffen at being called boy by the Norman. “Aah, it’s just rained! Can you smell it?” He took in a deep lungful of the air. “Makes one feel human again after all that time on the ship, eh?” He clapped Pallino on the shoulder, and falling back on Jaddian—his mother’s tongue—he exclaimed, “Rayissima!” Beautiful.

  It was.

  Both Bastien Durand and Tor Varro were silent. The former kept checking his terminal, doubtless still in communication with the Tamerlane, while the latter stood with eyes closed. I thought I heard him humming softly to himself, but did not disturb him. Before long we were underway, and I watched the pale streets roll by as the day grew ever brighter. There were few other groundcars, and those of the peasants out so early went on foot or took the trolley cars whose rails ran in the streets. Once or twice the flash of a flier passed overhead. An old man in a white apron stood sweeping off the porch of a quaint bakery, and not much further down a woman busied herself ordering a rack of discount paperbacks outside her little bookshop. As we climbed the hill toward the white-walled fastness of Fort Din above the city, I looked back at the landing field, its blast pits like pores in the face of some giant, and spied the great granaries and processing plants that made Gododdin what it was.

  The planet’s placement in the gulf between the Sagittarius and Centaurus arms of our galaxy made it an important stop for many a traveler and merchant vessel on the outward road, but Gododdin’s primary importance was agricultural. The ancient fabulists often believed—when they imagined commerce between the stars—that starships would be laden with food, that crops grown on Marinus might be flown on ice to Jadd and back again. And while certainly luxury goods are thus transported from time to time, the fabulists were wrong when they imagined that one planet might serve as a farming colony for several others. The travel time between worlds is simply too great, and while wine and liquor or even tea might be transported at monstrous cost and the finest livestock shipped in fugue, each planet more often than not must learn to feed itself or starve.

  With one massive exception.

  The Green Sea was not grassland, but hundreds of square miles of fields where the Legions grew their bromos, the genetically engineered oats that have kept billions of our soldiers on their feet since the time of Boniface the Pretender. It was from bromos that protein-base was manufactured. I told Alexander all this, pointing to the granaries and the fields beyond, where already I could see farm equipment at its slow march.

  “We’ll have to find some place in the city to eat,” Pallino said darkly. “It’ll just be rations at the fort.”

  “Aren’t we staying at the consulate?” Alexander asked. “The governor-general is a cousin, I heard. Nicholas or something like that.”

  “Let’s see what we can see at the fort,” I said in answer.

  Fort Din rose above the city, sprouting from a spur of the mountain. Of the same stone as the city it was, but simple in the way all military buildings are simple: blank stone and concrete blocks whitewashed and without columns or arches. The curtain wall was there to impress more than to repel invaders—siege warfare as in the Golden Age of Earth had not been practiced since the advent of high explosives—and the citad
el within reared stark and clean, its central spire a spike of steel and glass bright as pearl and bloody in the morning light. A lance aimed defiantly at the sun.

  Legionnaires in scarlet and ivory had the gate, and faceless they waved us through. Our little motorcade stopped before the steps leading to the doors of the great keep, where fifty men in uniform stood at attention to either side. Sir Amalric waited at the top alongside an aide and some others.

  “Here we go,” I said to Valka. She took her hand from my knee as the porter opened the door for us. It clam-shelled upward and I stepped out onto the tarmac, cape fluttering in the morning air.

  There were perhaps a hundred paces between our car and Sir Amalric at the top of the stairs, and I began my walk. I’d have liked it if Valka walked beside me, but she preferred to distance herself from me in these official appearances. She was not of the Empire, and would not be mistaken for such. A cornicen sounded his trumpet from somewhere on the walls above, and I half-wished that I’d brought our own herald to answer. But it was better this way. To appear ostentatious was to exaggerate my importance. Understating my arrival like this sent a different message: that I did not need to exaggerate.

  I was right, for before I had gone twenty paces the sky flashed and grew bright as day, and I stopped and looked up in wonderment, remembering only belatedly that Gododdin had an orbital mirror to magnify the light of its sun. I saw its shining hexagon skirting the horizon, and the faint shape of its three arms dark through its halo. I disguised the moment of surprise—of weakness—with a gesture: touching curled forefinger and thumb to forehead, lips, and heart in the sign of the sun disc. Last three fingers extended, I raised the circle to the sky in pious benediction.

  The cornicen sounded again.

  What cosmic prank had brought that false sun to shine the moment I set foot on Gododdin? What irony brought that false light to mark the Sun Eater’s first visit to the world he would consume? I felt a smile pull at my lips then, as I weep now in writing. I breathed the air that two billion men and women shared. The air I burned to nothing, the men and women I washed away in fire. They cheered me as I came, and welcomed me with silver trumpets.