Demon in White

by Christopher Ruocchio

  There is always a price to pay for victory. I prayed the caskets nearby had been emptied long ago, and that we avenged men with that attack, not killed them. The plasma would not burn the creature’s armor, but it would heat and damage perhaps those exposed components of common metal and turn any organic matter to ash.

  I raised my sword to Udax in salute and hurried forward to see the ruin of our enemy.

  But demons die slow deaths.

  One white sword lanced out, ejected from Iubalu’s arm with all the force of a javelin. The white spike caught Udax’s compatriot fully in the chest, impaling him. The blade passed clean through, shattering ceramic armor and the Irchtani’s hollow bones. Iubalu stood, the metal components of its skeleton glowing cherry red where the plasma torch had heated and warped them. It moved slowly, joints ill-fitting in their sockets, but it stood all the same: three-armed, claw-footed, with one pale sword left in its grip. It used that sword for a prop, ceramic edge grinding against the metal as it stood and punched one of the caskets in its fury. Cryonic fluid gushed out and hissed where it struck the creature’s glowing titanium body.

  Udax shot at it with his rifle, but the shot washed against the ceramic breastplate to little effect. As though the Irchtani were little more than a fly, the vayadan-general pointed one of its remaining arms toward him and fired once. A nahute shot from a compartment in the forearm and flew up toward Udax, who spread his grayish wings and leaped away.

  Its faceless gaze settled on me, and I saw its helmet had closed over its gaping smile, sealing what yet remained of the flesh safe within. Presently the cowl opened, and that leering grin returned.

  Still leaning on its sword, Iubalu said, “You cannot win. You’re surrounded. Outnumbered. You’ve lost one ship already, and I will feed you to my master when I bring you to him.” A resonant click filled the air, and as I watched, the sword was unmoored from its place inside Iubalu’s arm and slid into the monster’s hand.

  “You can hardly stand,” I said, bruised and exhausted as I was myself.

  No answer.

  Only the smile.

  Iubalu pointed its sword at me, then spinning it took it in two hands, raised high like an executioner. The third arm it held across itself. I almost grinned. What a strange contest this would be, where it could not match me sword for sword. It would have to block my attacks—perversely—with its own arm, or with the armored portions of its body.

  My targets were small enough: the backs of the knees, the insides of the thighs, the elbows and shoulder joints. And the face: the only part of the creature that still seemed made of flesh. I raised my sword, point aimed up at that evil grin where it loomed above me.

  The white sword fell and the third arm punched out at the same moment. The Irchtani’s plasma weapon had done its damage, and both attacks came slowly—which was to say they came fast as any merely human opponent I had faced. Even my palatine eugenic strength and reflexes were barely up to the task, and I leaped aside, dodging the overhead slash of the blade and parrying the arm. Had the Cielcin been human—or even truly Cielcin—the blade would have skinned the arm and sliced clean through ribs and lungs and heart.

  As it was, Iubalu whirled its blade around and tried for a flat cut, but the blade was too long for that narrow aisle, and it caught on the bank of fugue caskets at its right hand. I moved well inside the reach of those arms, and it turned to mark my progress. I had to get around it, had to give Siran and her men clear shots at its exposed backside. Had to get it away from our sleeping men.

  The vayadan-general took one lurching step. Its left leg was clearly lamed, the joint fused by the Irchtani’s heroic effort. Unable to rely on its sword in such tight quarters, it threw a hook with its free hand. I did not try to block it, but ducked. The iron fist crashed into one of the sleepers’ instrument panels and shattered the delicate screen. Infuriated by its damaged functionality, Iubalu struck the panel again and snarled.

  It did not fire one of its rockets at me. I wondered if it still could. But it was the size of a mountain next to me, and like an avalanche it came, driving me back with vicious blows from one hand and another, ever keeping the third hand and the sword upraised like the tail of a scorpion. I did not try to absorb the blows as a boxer might—any one of them might land hard enough to turn my bones to powder. I only tried to turn them, tried to keep my footing.

  The sword slammed down. Its ceramic edge struck my shoulder with enough force it might have sliced me clean in half were it not for my armor. I felt the underlayment harden in response to the impact, the gel layer between layers of nanocarbon armorweave briefly turning to something harder than stone. Than steel. I was grateful—and lucky—that the attack hit my left arm. The false bones in my shoulder did not ache, did not injure as my true bones might have done. Still I let out a cry, and the force of the blow was enough that my knees buckled, and I went down.

  “Submit!” Iubalu exclaimed, and clamped one iron-fingered hand over my faceplate, bending me backward as if in some dreadful dance. Those black glass fangs drew down and ever nearer, and I recalled the way Prince Aranata’s fangs had extended as he tore out old Sir William’s throat. With its second hand, Iubalu traced a line down my armored face, almost caressing. A vague horror turned over in me, and I tried to get my feet back under me. But the force with which Iubalu held me in place was so great I could not stand. Where were Siran and the others? They should have been right behind! “Submit!” The lips did not move. The words came from speakers somewhere in the chimera’s chest, their sound garbled now from the damage they’d sustained. The face itself was dead, a taxidermied ornament, monument to the creature it had been.

  I could not get away.

  I could not get away.

  But it hadn’t pinned my arm, and my sword was still in my hand. I struck wildly with it, blindly. The highmatter blade battered against Iubalu’s armored flank, but it did not seem to notice. Not at first. Not until the third strike caught the elbow of one of its remaining arms. The pressure on my helmet faded, and I fell. Snarling, Iubalu seized me by the ankle and lifted me bodily from the floor.

  Then and only then did Siran and the others open fire. Plasma streaked through the air—one shot coruscated off my shield curtain—and a moment later I was flying, soaring up the aisle toward the far end. I hit the ground just beyond the end of the aisle and skidded across the floor, armor grinding beneath me. I came to rest mere feet from the mound of bones, my sword still in my hand. Iubalu came on, moving like a tower slow in falling. It did not even seem to notice the men firing at its back—did not feel the plasma fire licking at its armor. Its one leg had locked entirely, joints fully fused, but still it came, still dangerous, still more than a match for an ordinary palatine.

  The crack and violet flash of a grenade filled the air, knocking Iubalu from its feet and shattering four of the nearest fugue creches. Before Siran’s men could throw another I shouted, “Stop! Stop! The sleepers!” Now I could get the vayadan away from them, I found I was unwilling to risk further life and limb on behalf of our people.

  Hearing me, Iubalu punched through one of the creches with its free hand and drew the sleeper out by the neck, tearing hoses and wires free. It squeezed. Metal fingers bit through flesh and crushed bone, pulped the neck and shoulder. It dropped her ruined body at its feet and stamped, smashing ribs and organs to a red-brown paste between its claws. Its smile never faltered. Furious, I fumbled with the hard switch behind my ear, forced my helm to open and fold away. “Here!” I cried out, and tore the coif from my head. The cubiculum air was cold against my face as I pounded on my chest like a drum. “Here!”

  I stood then exposed like Beowulf before Grendel, alone on that patch of narrow ground. The monument of bones at my back seemed to push at me, to spur me forward. Avenge us. Avenge us. Avenge us! It was as though I heard their dusty voices urging me, groaning from that howling dark. I did not look back, for I
felt that if I did so I would see that divine darkness and feel the shapes of dead men in the night, pointing as my image had pointed the way for me out of that terrible place.

  Forward.

  Through.

  But I did not have to move. Hand dripping gore, Iubalu stumped forward, sword raised and ready. Conscious of my exposed face, I pointed my weapon toward the beast.

  Once more the vayadan-general let out its hideous cry, high and keening as metal scraping glass. I bared my teeth in answer, matching the Cielcin smile.

  It leaped. I lunged. Iubalu’s gore-smeared fist clipped me just under the arm and I clenched my teeth as the armor bore the brunt of the assault. My blade bounced useless off one armored thigh. Gritting through the pain, I recovered, raised my sword above my head to parry the sword as it fell. Highmatter and ceramic met again, and the ceramic parted with a sigh, blade spinning away. Howling, Iubalu thrust the broken hilt into my chest, knocking me off balance. Staggering back, I spat, saw red in the saliva where it flew. The pain in my ribs was a distant cry, far off as the groaning of the dead in my mind.

  White hands reached toward me, each of jointed metal. I could not get away, and so leaped toward them, ducking beneath Iubalu’s grasping talons, my blade vanishing as I leaped. I slammed into the chimera’s body like a wrestler, and though I could not hope to compete with the size and mass of it I placed the emitter of my sword against the still-glowing joint at one hip and squeezed. Highmatter flowered there, slicing clean and cold and straight through the hip, severing Iubalu’s leg entire. Unbalanced, I leaned against the massive chimera with all my weight. It toppled backward, and I leaped away just as the legionnaires dared to approach. The noise of its falling was so great I expected to see cracks in the steel plating of the floor beneath it.

  “Lord Marlowe! Stand clear!” one of the men shouted.

  A moment later I saw the blinking of a grenade. “Stop!” I shouted. Too late.

  The explosive rang out, so near the damaged stump at its hip it blew apart the pelvis and lower abdomen before Iubalu could move. Legless now and with but two of its four arms, the creature flailed, lashed out as my men—human and Irchtani alike—drew about it.

  “The arms!” I shouted. “Don’t kill it!”

  Unshielded now and struggling to move, it was a small matter to fire at the beast’s underarms, to fuse the shoulder joints with licking tongues of plasma. Joints melting under the assault, Iubalu still managed to pull its arms to itself, curling them like a boxer in defensive pose.

  One hand on my aching side, I stood over it, blade pointed at the hollow of interlaced struts and tendons that served for its neck.

  “You’re beaten,” I said. “Surrender.”

  Iubalu only looked at me with its eyeless gaze. I had not looked at it so close before, and so saw for the first time the badge it wore upon its chest: the faint outline of a grasping hand, six-fingered, white-on-white. That disturbed me more than I can explain. The Cielcin do not depict things in art. They do not illustrate, do not represent. Their only artwork is calligraphy, the circular Udaritanu writing they adapted from the anaglyphs of the Quiet. To see the image of a hand on Iubalu’s chest was like finding a book written by dogs.

  “Your fuel supply is compromised. You cannot run.” I pressed the sword in a little. The nanocarbon tendons brushed aside, uncut, but I saw a braided steel cord sigh apart. The still-organic face spasmed like the limbs of the dead exposed to electricity. “Surrender.” And speaking the beast’s own tongue I added, “Ietta.” Submit.

  “We have other ships!”

  My sword flashed, cutting through one arm at the shoulder. “How much of you do I have to cut away before you surrender?” I shoved the limb away with one foot, wincing as pain shot through my ribs. Sword point back at its throat, I said, “I will you the same offer I made an ichakta of the Itani Otiolo a long time ago: surrender, and I will see that you and your people are returned to your master.”

  Uvanari had surrendered at once, seeing a way to preserve its life and duty to its prince and master. Iubalu, it seemed, understood its duty very differently. Or perhaps it knew, perhaps understood that once in human hands its human-manufactured components would be laid bare to our technicians—that whatever secrets lay hid in that mechanism that served it now in place of a brain would be picked over by Chantry scholars, to take its intelligence to war against its master.

  The vayadan’s one remaining hand clenched, opened, clenched again. Its elbow would not bend, nor its shoulder, but it pointed at me, and for the first time that day moved its lips. “There is no returning,” it said. “No surrender. He is coming. He will avenge us.”

  Fearing some final trick, I pressed my sword close against the edge of Iubalu’s neck. “Order your people to stand down,” I said. “Do it!”

  Iubalu played its final trick, then. Somewhere deep in the artificial mechanisms of its body and mind, something died. It ceased even the attempt at motion, and the faint blue lights that glowed in it went out. All was quiet then. Terribly quiet. The ruined limbs, the shattered body, the one remaining arm . . . these all transmuted in an instant. It was not a body I stood over, not the wreck of an alien chimera, but only an inert mass of metal and ceramic. An empty shell.

  Nearly empty.

  At a stroke, I think, Iubalu had wiped all traces of its memory and personality from the machines it inhabited, but it had not died. For an instant thereafter, the lips moved, murmuring words I could not hear.

  I unkindled my blade and lowered myself painfully to one knee, the better to listen. And what I heard froze every drop of blood in me. “He has seen it, hurati. He has seen your death. The sacrifice . . .” It never finished that thought. The ursine smile slackened, and I knew the vayadan-general was dead.

  I was still kneeling by Iubalu’s side when Siran joined me. Through her suit speakers, she said, “You need to put your comm back on.”

  “What is it?” I asked, but did as she said.

  The reports flooded over me. The Mintaka had won free. The Cielcin in the hold were routed, and with Cade’s men gone Corvo and Aristedes had shelled the rear section of the ship entirely, destroying the force that had killed Cade’s century in the engine rooms. Our reinforcements had boarded the Cielcin craft and were driving the enemy back. Defeat had to turned to victory—and for the Cielcin, victory had become disaster.

  But I heard almost none of this. My thoughts were with the last thing Iubalu had said.

  He has seen your death.

  I’d seen it, too. Seen it a thousand thousand times when I tread the lucent waters of the rivers of time. I had seen myself burned and crucified. Beheaded and betrayed. Tortured or hanged or eaten by the Pale. I had seen myself crowned Emperor of Mankind. Seen myself killed by the very silver-crowned demon king Carax had described before the Solar Throne. Had this Shiomu, this Prophet seen it, too? Had the Quiet granted Dorayaica visions as they had granted them to me?

  Or was there some other power above the stage? Kharn Sagara had spoken of others, of powers old when the universe was young, of creatures that dwelt in the night. I had given nearly a hundred years by then to understanding the Cielcin, and I felt again all at once that I knew almost nothing, felt that our two races—mankind and the Pale—were only pawns on some larger board whose scope I could not see.

  Leopards, lions, and wolves.

  Had I been wrong to think the Cielcin worshiped the Quiet? Or wrong in thinking that was all they worshipped?

  I permitted Siran to help me to my feet. “Have this one taken away,” I said, spurning Iubalu’s metal corpse with a toe. “The Emperor will want to see it.” I clipped my sword back into its scabbard at my right hip.

  If what Iubalu had said was true, if Syriani Dorayaica had been granted visions by the Quiet or some similar power . . . I stared blankly down the aisle of shattered fugue creches, but I did not see it. It was
as if I saw through the Merciless and the Cielcin ship that entrapped it, as if I stared across the bottomless black of space and beheld those eyes, blacker still, staring back at me. I saw once more my vision of the Cielcin marching across the stars, only this time a white hand went before them and blotted out the sky.

  The strange mood passed, and passing left me with a parting thought: if what Iubalu had said was true, this Prophet and I had all too much in common.

  CHAPTER 28

  THE DEVIL TRIUMPHANT

  THREE MILLION PEOPLE CROWDED the Campus Raphael, and the eyes of the galaxy were on us. In the weeks to come and the years to follow, the broadcast of that glittering parade would play across public dispatch and on holograph projectors on every planet in the Empire and beyond.

  The Triumph of the Devil of Meidua.

  There was a painting made—I saw it only once—a massive canvas that hung in the Sun King’s Hall at the top of one of the grand staircases. I was told His Radiance had ordered the legendary court painter, Vianello, be decanted from fugue for the first time in nearly five hundred years to commemorate the event. It was Vianello who had painted the Emperor’s official portrait, and the portraits of the previous fifteen Emperors, remaining among the living for only so long as it took him to finish his work.

  I do not know what became of the painting after Gododdin. Taken down, no doubt. Burned, or perhaps stored in the Imperial vaults on Avalon where none would ever see it. I do know that the triumphal arch erected to my victory over Iubalu still stands on Nemavand, though by Imperial decree my head was chiseled from the monument and cast into the desert, where I don’t doubt it remains to this day, resin untouched by the etching sands.

  Both arch and painting depicted the same thing, though neither could capture it, for an Imperial triumph is a spectacle more of sound than sight. The music of horns and silver trumpets filled the golden air, and the exhortation of the millions gathered there was like the breaking of some mighty sea against the shore of a city of gods. Ahead of us and behind marched rank upon rank of Imperial Martians in their red armor and white cloaks, and my Red Company marched behind them as we proceeded through the hippodrome and the Grand Colosseum toward the Last Stair and the Sun King’s Hall. How tall their plumes! Red feathers and white horsehair running in the wind! How proud their banners! How bright their spears flashing in the sun! And the thunder of their march in time to the music of horn and tympani was enough to shake old Jupiter from his forgotten sleep on lost Olympos and proclaim our message across the stars.