Demon in White

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Demon in White Page 36

by Christopher Ruocchio


  * * *

  Columns of cloud stood among columns of white stone, mingled with the boles of trees two thousand years old, the landscape warped and rippled with roots and great boulders placed there by the architects of the Royal Forest back in the deeps of time. So few feet had trod those pathways in all that time, for the forest—like so many of the Empire’s oldest and most storied monuments—was open to a special few. As in the garden of Vorgossos, I felt that ahead we might come upon a gate and find an angel standing guard with sword afire, so close was that wood in feeling to the gardens of paradise itself. The trees fell away around us, and we rode into a clearing about a great and shallow hill. There the beaten path transformed, was paved with marble cobbles white and moss-grown.

  And there was a gate.

  A triumphal arch stood alone upon the hill, a monument to ages past. Fashioned of travertine and marble it was, its columns and capitals cracked and weathered, its relief sculptures eroded and decayed. Great it once had been, and great it yet remained, more than a dozen times the height of a man and so broad that six might walk abreast beneath it. Yet it seemed to me a thing that looked backward, as if to pass beneath its protection was to enter ages passed or passing, not to come.

  “It’s from Earth,” Selene said. “One of the old Emperors had it brought here. We’re not supposed to get too close.”

  “Is it still radioactive?” I asked.

  “A little,” she replied. “Those pillars mark safe distance.”

  I saw what she meant. A ring of white pillars surrounded the archway, each topped with the verdigrised statue of a virtue looking outward, but there was no chain, no barrier to prevent approach. Certain forms of stone, I knew, held the fingerprint of atomics better than others.

  Taking this as permission to go closer, I urged my horse forward. Stubbornly, the beast moved, and when I was within ten paces of the nearest pillar, I dismounted and held the reins in my hand.

  Close as I was, I could make out the inscription above the great arch, done in the ancient block capitals of the English alphabet—though the language was not English at all.

  SENATVS

  POPVLVSQVE ROMANVS

  DIVO TITO DIVI VESPASIANI F

  VESPASIANO AUGUSTO

  “Is it . . . ?”

  “The Arch of Titus?” she said. “Yes.”

  After the God Emperor had beaten the Mericanii and flooded the Earth with nuclear fire, he had descended upon the planet and—garbed in a radiation suit—had visited the ancient city of Rome. He had walked the sacred road from the walls of the ancient city to the ruins of the old Forum, and there—alone—had crowned himself Emperor of Mankind.

  He had passed beneath this arch on that road, perhaps had touched the stones as he went.

  It was a sacred artifact, and I have since learned that the new Emperors—on the eve of their coronation—reenact that solitary journey in the Royal Forest, walking alone through the forest to the gates where the coronal triumph begins. Thus each new Emperor arrives at the Sun King’s Hall just as the sun of Forum rises above the sail wall and the city glows with the light of a new day.

  I knew none of this at the time, and said in wonder, “Why is it here?”

  She told me only a piece of this. “Haven’t you ever wondered why the Last Stair is called the Last Stair?” Selene did not dismount, but drew up beside me, looking up at the crumbling Roman arch. “A new Emperor begins his walk here alone, just like the God Emperor did. These are the first steps. I thought you’d want to see it. It must be . . . twenty thousand years old? Twenty-two? Twenty-three?”

  The first steps . . .

  I did not reply to Selene at once, but took a step or two nearer until I stood almost in the shadow of the stone marker. I wondered what would happen if I tried to walk forward. The Martian Guard would descend, I guessed, as much to save me from the radiation as to prevent my trespass. Could I make it to the gate before anyone would stop me? Would Selene follow me where only Emperors had trod? Despite the threat of radiation, I felt an insane impulse to touch the ruin.

  “How is it preserved?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t really know, some kind of resin, maybe?”

  “Thank you,” I said, and smiled up at her, “for showing me this.”

  Selene returned my smile.

  * * *

  Our tour ended, we took the horses back to the gatehouse, where a uniformed attendant took my beast away. I was privately relieved.

  “Hadrian!”

  Crim hurried toward me from the shuttle port outside, his Red Company greatcoat flapping crimson from his shoulders like a Swordmaster’s mandyas. Selene was still near me, and so two pair of Martian Guards stepped in to interpose themselves between my rushing officer and me. Seeing this, Crim slowed. I was midway through the act of accepting my shield-belt back from the guardsmen and froze. The Norman-Jaddian officer’s face, usually olive and full-blooded, looked almost bleached.

  “What’s the matter, man?”

  The lieutenant commander shoved the hands of one Martian away. He made a sharp gesture with two fingers, pointing first to me, then himself and back again, indicating that what needed saying should not be said aloud.

  I pressed forward, abandoning Selene, and pushed the Martian aside with the hand that held my effects. I spoke low so as not to be overheard by the Martians and in Jaddian to stymie any listeners. “What happened?”

  “Dolofin,” he said, voice low. “Murder, my lord. You weren’t answering your terminal.”

  I felt my blood run cold. Murder? Careful now, I practically whispered into the man’s ear, covering my mouth with my free hand to frustrate the cameras. There was no telling who might be watching, and I could not trust Selene or her guards, either.

  “One of the cleaning staff,” Crim said, panting from his run but matching my close tones. “Doctor Onderra . . .”

  I seized Crim by the lapels with my free hand. “What?” I dragged his ear close and hissed. “What happened?” It wasn’t possible. If something had happened to Valka . . .

  “Valka’s fine!” Crim said. “One of the batmen died, though. Distracted it before it could get her.”

  I released him, shoving him back, eyes wide and wild. A flash of anger rose in me. His clumsy wording had made me believe—if only for a moment—had made me believe that Valka was dead. I glared at him, waited for him to speak.

  “There was a knife-missile,” Crim said, smoothing his jacket beneath the long coat. “In your chambers.”

  CHAPTER 37

  BLADE WITHOUT HANDLE

  “IT WAS MEANT FOR me,” I said, eying the ruined device on the conference table.

  “That is the high probability,” said Tor Varro, arms folded.

  Otavia Corvo frowned and stared down at the weapon from beneath her floating cloud of hair. “I’ve no idea how it got aboard,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I said.

  “It’s mine,” Crim said, “noyn jitat, some security officer I turned out to be.”

  It was, as Crim had said, a knife-missile. Such a small thing, no larger than one of my pencils. Someone had smashed it, snapped it in half, and it was held together by a pair of glass wires, with a fuel cell at one end and a vicious spike on the other.

  “Which of the batmen saved her?” I asked. Valka was in medica with Doctor Okoyo, injured but alive. The doctor had given her something to help her sleep while the correctives did their work stitching her wounds. I was headed up there right after this meeting.

  “Martin,” Crim said. “Good lad. Others all liked him.”

  “Family?” I asked. I knew the fellow, if not well. I had a staff of batmen who rotated service in and out of fugue, who kept my schedule and ensured that Valka and I were taken care of. Martin and the rest of his shift had come out of the ice only
with the return to Forum; before that—except for the business with Iubalu and the hunt, I suppose—he had been frozen for decades.

  “A sister, I think,” Crim said, “but that was before he signed on. Reckon she’s long gone.”

  Not taking my eyes from the weapon, I said, “Find out. If he has any surviving relatives, I want them paid his stipend and told he died saving her. Have his effects posted to them.”

  “Aye, my lord,” Crim said.

  “The doctor was lucky he got there when he did,” Varro said. “His entrance confused the missile’s routing circuits, else she’d been done for.”

  “Who smashed it?” I asked. I’d forbidden security cameras from my apartments, jealous of mine and Valka’s privacy. In that moment, I wondered if that had been a mistake. Not only could I not see the attack as I might like, but we’d have no footage to review and determine when the knife was placed in my chambers, and by whom.

  Varro answered, “She did. Caught it after it stabbed Martin and broke it on the bulkhead.”

  That’s my lady, I thought, still unable to calm myself. I should have been there, not gallivanting about the Royal Forest with Princess Selene.

  “I assume you’ve already swept the ship for stowaways,” I said, turning my full attention on Crim. The security officer was still pale, his burgundy uniform and dark hair rumpled.

  He swallowed. “Aye. There was no one. Nothing.”

  “Then how did it get aboard?” I asked, looking round at everyone gathered in that conference chamber. “And how did it get into my apartments?”

  “We’re still running over sec footage,” Crim answered, not looking me in the eye. “One of our people must have smuggled it in.” I was shaking my head, but Crim carried on. “No one else has had access to the ship, much less your apartments, lord—outside a few delivery personnel, but they never leave the cargo bays before turning round.”

  “I don’t suppose it’s possible the knife-missile was piloted remotely? Steered through the halls?”

  “Possible, but not likely.” Varro narrowed his eyes. “That’s an Akateko model. Heat-seeking, motion-sensing. No transmitter. Unless they’ve refitted it. They’re meant to be untraceable.”

  Still looking pointedly at the table in front of him, Crim said, “I’ll review all the footage we have. Everyone coming and going. Who had access to your apartments.”

  “Should check scans on inbound cargo,” Corvo suggested. “It might have come up on one of the supply runs. Something we missed.”

  Lorian Aristedes cleared his throat, looking up from a methodical examination of his hands. “I don’t suppose the batman himself might be our man?”

  “And killed himself on purpose?” Crim almost sneered. The security officer was clearly unbalanced by the episode, embarrassed the missile had slipped by him unnoticed.

  Aristedes shrugged, but did not stop his careful knuckle cracking. “You’re suggesting one of our own people had reason for wanting Marlowe and the doctor dead . . . in which case you’d have to explain who and why. Far more likely one of our people was paid off.”

  “In which case you’d have to explain who’s paying,” Crim said acidly, “and why they want our boy dead.”

  With languid slowness, Lorian looked up at other officer, pale eyes in bloodless face. He smiled. “I appreciate your difficulties, Lieutenant Commander, but it strikes me as far more likely that Sir Hadrian has some political enemy than that one of our own has a grudge.”

  Into the stiff air following this riposte, I said, “The Emperor has offered me Princess Selene’s hand in marriage.”

  Silence ruled the conference chamber. I looked at no one, not at Crim or Varro, nor at Corvo or Aristedes. The knife lay before me, its pointed end angled nearly at my heart, the glass wires spilled like innards.

  “Ah,” Varro said at last. Was that surprise in the scholiast’s voice? “That would explain it.”

  “That’s bound to make some enemies,” Corvo allowed, crossing her arms. “Why weren’t we told?”

  Eyebrow cocked, I said, “Because the Emperor hadn’t cleared it for public disclosure.”

  “That explains the horseback riding,” Crim said.

  “Horseback riding?” Corvo made a face.

  A brief bout of nervous laughter sounded from the end of the table, and turning I saw Lorian covering his mouth. “Oh, that is going to make you enemies. The old blood’s not going to like that at all.”

  “No, they won’t,” I said.

  “Hohenzollern, Mahidol, and Bourbon all refused to lower their banners at your triumph,” Aristedes said, flexing his overlong fingers. “It could be any of them.”

  I started, looking round at the small officer. “You noticed that?”

  “It was hard to miss.” He pressed his lips together. “Bold move, that was. Almost too bold. They’d have done as well to mail you a bloodstained silk glove like the old days . . . with their names embroidered on.” Lorian drummed his fingers as if pressing the keys of some unseen console. “Though I suppose we should thank them. It’s given us a start on our list of suspects.”

  Corvo swore. “I hope that’s the end of it.”

  Both hands raised to his eyes to hide his tiredness, Tor Varro said, “We should hope it is not even the start of it. We can’t hope to win an assassins’ war with the great houses.”

  “Well, we are in an assassins’ war with someone, counselor,” I said, and snatched the knife-missile from the tabletop. Someone had cleaned it, for neither Valka’s blood nor the blood of the batman, Martin, was upon it. “Poine,” I said, using the old word. A blood feud. They had tried to kill me, whoever they were. They had nearly killed Valka—had killed one of my men.

  It was war.

  “We cannot afford to discount other possibilities,” I said. “House Bourbon means the War Ministry, which means Legion Intelligence, and I’ve never been popular with the Chantry.” I swept my gaze over them. “We cannot let it get out how close they came to succeeding. We cannot let them know they got to Valka. In fact, delay sending word to M. Martin’s family. Burn the body, store the ashes, but mark him as in fugue. And put the guards, the medical staff, anyone who handled the cleanup back on ice. Anyone nonessential. We need Okoyo, obviously, but she’s loyal. We cannot have the details leak.”

  Varro raised a hand to object. “My lord, word is all over the ship already.”

  “Word, yes,” I said, “and Princess Selene knows something is wrong. She was there when Crim found me.” I glanced at the security officer. It was another way the man had failed me. At least he’d had the good sense not to charge in shouting about it. “Word is fine. The story can leak as it likes, it’s the facts I want controlled.”

  Aristedes was grinning ear to ear. “In a fortnight all the Eternal City will be saying the Halfmortal survived an attack from a Mandari assassin.”

  “In a fortnight I will have been variously shot, stabbed, strangled, poisoned, burned alive, and blown out the airlock,” I said soberly. “Let them all be true.” All the lies would clog the air like smoke. “I want no report filed below. They’re bound to send someone once the rumors start. Who that is will tell us something.”

  Otavia had not uncrossed her arms, but took a step in from where she leaned against the bulkhead. “In the meantime, you shouldn’t leave the ship.”

  “On the contrary,” I said, turning the knife over in my hands, careful not to break the glass wires, “I need to act like nothing has happened at all.”

  “I’m not letting you out there without a guard,” Otavia said.

  “Captain, nothing happened to me out there,” I said, and winced internally, realizing that statement doubtless seemed a rebuke. “At any rate, I cannot ignore a summons if one comes—and what summons will come will tell us something, too.”

  The Chalcenterite leaned back in his chair, sta
ring at the ceiling as though entranced by the light there, or as if staring into the top of his skull. “There is one thing that bothers me.” Everyone turned to look at him, and even Aristedes ceased his fidgeting. Certain he had the floor, the scholiast said, “It is likely whoever planned this attack knew you’d left the ship. Why plant the weapon in such a way as to practically guarantee it would be, ah . . . activated before your return?”

  Something cold formed in the pit of my stomach, and I felt my eyes grow narrow. “You think that Valka was the target?”

  “Not necessarily,” Varro said. “But it is well known you share a bed. There was a possibility the doctor would return to the chamber before you did. Those Akateko models are indiscriminate. After all, it attacked poor Martin before it had even finished with the doctor. Sorry.” Something must have showed on my face, for the scholiast ducked his head at the sight of me.

  Lorian answered him. “It is . . . possible that this plot was not meant to succeed.” He aimed one bony finger at the knife in my hands. “There’s our bloodstained glove.”

  I set the weapon back on the table. A declaration of war. I caught myself nodding along with the both of them. “Varro, once you have analyzed the weapon to its fullest, destroy it. Do it yourself. Once this story gets out—in whatever form—the Emperor will send an inspector, possibly an Inquisitor. I do not want them prying through that thing’s memory and discovering it made it into my chambers. If the Inquisitor asks to see the weapon, tell them we destroyed it as a matter of safety.” I glanced up at the cameras that monitored the room. I’d ordered them stopped, but there was no harm in being sure. “This meeting did not happen. Otavia, you will make sure the sec footage backs that up?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Generate false footage if you have to, and freeze any of the techs you use. Alter the fugue charts. They were never awake. I don’t think they’ll be looking too closely at us—we were the victims here—but it’s possible whoever sent the thing will have access to whatever report the Inquisition might file. And one other thing . . .” I hesitated, recalling both Selene and the Emperor’s words on the matter and the looks on their faces. “We must add Prince Alexander to this list of enemies.”

 

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