Demon in White

by Christopher Ruocchio

  Stony silence greeted this speech, silence and an unquiet tension moving beneath the surface of the air. It was almost a shame the Synarch was not present. It was almost a declaration of war, pitting the authority of the throne—in whose shadow I stood and acted—against that of the altar. Once upon a time, the Chantry had been crafted by the Imperial state, but it had grown beyond those humble beginnings, as all weeds must. Grown until it was like a worm in the Empire’s bowels, grown until the question of who was host and who the parasite could not be easily answered. Of old the Emperors crowned themselves—as the God Emperor had done in the ashes of Rome—and crowned the Chantry’s Synarchs, who knelt before the throne. But the Chantry had grown strong, and perhaps there would come a day, and soon, when the Emperors knelt and permitted the high priest to set old William’s crown upon their brows.

  Could the Emperor protect me? Protect Lorian and the others?

  Or would the Chantry’s will prevail?

  I was willing to bet on His Radiance.

  “So,” Prince Hector said, breaking the silence in his hands, “my brother has informed you of his intentions.”

  Remembering my place and burying my anger beneath propriety and false modesty, I bowed my head. “Yes, Excellency.”

  “And did His Radiance inform you that it was the opinion of this Council that such a marriage was inadvisable?”

  For a moment, I almost, almost wanted Selene, if only to defy these dusty ministers and their . . . what? Their jealousy? Almost I understood the Hadrian of my visions who sat with Selene at his feet before a crowd of kneeling lords.

  Almost.

  “He did, Excellency.”

  “Ah.” Prince Hector had the grace to look down.

  Slashing through this awkward moment, the Minister of Justice put in, “I will . . . give your reply to Wisdom Vergilian, Lord Marlowe, along with your, ah . . . advisement.”

  I bowed more deeply than I had before. “Thank you, Lord Minister. I hope to move past this ugliness as swiftly as may be.”

  * * *

  Pallino met me outside with a complement of ten Red Company guards. None of them had been permitted weapons inside the Sun King’s Hall, but the men were armored and shielded, and would serve as some defense in the event of an attack. Since the knife-missile, Corvo and Crim had both insisted on increased security about my person whenever I left the Tamerlane—they’d even posted a guard to my door while I slept. Corvo had insisted the decade of troopers in their red-fringed tunics and black plate would serve as a show of strength and discourage any attackers, but I could not shake the feeling they only made me look afraid.

  I told myself I was being absurd. The Emperor, after all, was the most powerful man in all the galaxy, and he had more guards than anyone, between the common legionnaires, the Martian Guard, and the Excubitors who surrounded his person at all times, to say nothing of the fleet of Martian warships, Legion warships, and Chantry vessels that forever orbited the gas giant and the sprawling capital city. No one called the Emperor a coward, or thought him one. No one would dare. I told myself that I was different. I was a knight, and knights should stand on their own feet, protected by their own hands and skill at arms.

  My escort hadn’t gotten far when a voice sounded behind me. “Lord Marlowe! A moment!”

  Turning, I beheld the ancient Lord Cassian Powers hurrying toward me, a brass walking stick seemingly forgotten in his hand. He moved with surprising speed for one so old. I extended an arm in salute before bowing—the man was a soldier and a lord—and said, “At your service, my lord.”

  The Avenger waved this formality aside with his stick. Cassian Powers stood a head taller than me, and beneath the heavy gray cloak he wore the simple belted tunic jacket and trousers of a military officer, devoid now of insignia and rank, but his high boots were pure and polished as though the man had just come from the parade ground.

  “I’d hoped to have a word with you, if I may.”

  I looked round the open-air colonnade that wrapped around the exterior of the government building to the west wing and the approach to the main hall. To my astonishment, the Lord Adviser had no escort, no attaches or adjutants. No guard.

  “Of course, lordship,” I said. “Here?”

  Lord Cassian Powers laid a hand on my shoulder and smiled, eyes magnified by his glasses until they filled the crystal lenses. “Here is fine! No secrets, not between us and the old electric eyes, mm?”

  I had met with Lord Powers on only a few occasions. The Avenger of Cressgard was an aloof figure: hero of another time, a relic kept on display and trotted out at ceremonies and at times when the Council needed his advice. He was perhaps the greatest Cielcin hunter in history, and one of the galaxy’s foremost experts on the xenobites and their culture, and so when he asked for a word, I allowed myself to be led through the pillars and down onto an overlook that peered out over the monorail line that ran from below the great hall across empty sky to the isle where floated the halls of justice, huge pillars gleaming in the sun.

  Far below, I could make out the green and gray and white-walled terraces of the Royal Forests. I could not see the Arch of Titus, not from this height, though I spotted bare patches in the trees, and guessed that one such clearing must hold the Roman monument taken from the gray hills of Earth.

  “It is rather a lot, isn’t it?” the old soldier asked. “All this?”

  “The City?” I asked, not sure I followed. “It’s far more than I ever imagined.”

  Powers leaned against the rail, looking out over the floating isles and the bridges and tramways that connected them, at the pale curtains of the sail wall billowing in the winds. “The City, yes. But I mean the people in it. The Empire. Sometimes I look at it all and say to myself, ‘Self, these idiots are not worth saving! Better to let the whole thing fall out of the sky!’” I said nothing, and when I kept saying nothing, Cassian Powers turned to peer at me with those magnified eyes. “I surprise you? My apologies. If it is fear that holds your tongue, I assure you: what you said before the Council was correct. They won’t risk further charges against you or your people. And in any case they will not harm old Lord Powers, the Avenger!” He made a fist, mocking. “We may speak freely.”

  “What is this about, sir?” I asked. The sir was a bit curt, but quite correct. The man was a knight and wore a sword on his belt still, and we were both soldiers.

  “Straight to business, mm? Very good.” He turned away again. “They’re going to give you my seat.”

  What was I supposed to say? I could not read the fellow. It did not help that Powers was turned almost fully away from me in his admiration of the Eternal City. At last I settled on something safe, and said, “I’m . . . sorry.”

  Powers waved this down. “I’m grateful, truth be told. Five hundred years is a long time to be at war, and I was not young when it began. Truth is, I’ve been trying to retire for years, they just won’t let me.” He looked round, laughing softly. “I’d quit twice before this, you know? After Cressgard and again . . . oh, about two hundred years ago. Returned home to Ashbless and all . . . but they kept calling me back. I feel a bit like old Camillus—you’re a classics man, aren’t you?”

  I told him I was. Camillus had been a hero to ancient Rome, a statesman recalled from his country estate to save his country and serve as dictator no less than five times. Camillus might have been king.

  “Amazing these stories have endured so long, isn’t it?” Powers wondered aloud. “Camillus. Rome. Caesar, and the rest. Makes you wonder what we’ve forgotten. What’s buried in some library somewhere or in some reliquary of the great houses.”

  Shrugging, I replied, “Not so amazing, really. The founders went to great pains to ground our Empire in tradition. The stories are part of who we are, for better or worse.”

  “Better or worse . . .” Lord Cassian was nodding along, scratching his cheek with k
nobby fingers. “You don’t like it here, do you, Sir Hadrian?” The old soldier stared at me intently, and with his glasses the effect was startling. “I don’t like it either.” His stare transformed, and he seemed to be peering through me. “Are you . . . all right, Sir Hadrian?”

  Something in his demeanor—or his voice, perhaps—reminded me so sharply of Tor Gibson that I almost expected to find the scholiast looking back at me when I blinked and turned away a moment. I had not expected to find kindness in the City at all, much less in the person of the Avenger himself. But Lord Cassian did not look like an Avenger, he looked like an owl.

  “I know how it can be,” he said. “Let’s get something straight: this Halfmortal business . . .” He made a move as if to throw it all away. “Nonsense. All the stories people tell about you—and me—don’t help in the dead of night. I know what it’s like. The nightmares.”

  “I don’t have nightmares,” I said, too quickly.

  “Spoken like a man who has nightmares,” Powers rebutted, and said again, “I know what it’s like. But it does get easier. You’ll hate the Council—Earth knows I do. You’ll still look horror in the face, but you won’t have to smell it.”

  Pushing away from the rail, I stood straight beside the older man. “I prefer the horror to a knife in the back. I’ve as many enemies here as out there . . .” I trailed off, muttering, “Leopards, lions, and wolves.”

  He had been speaking of alien powers, but Lord Cassian took the lions for a reference to the Imperial Lions, and said, “Well, speaking for us old Lions, we conservatives aren’t so bad. It’s only that most of us don’t conserve anything. Too busy fussing about reputation and appearances. Take the former Intelligence Director. So eager to protect our Empire he nearly killed its greatest defender. And for what? Because you did his job for him? Perhaps he thought you wanted his job.”

  “I don’t!” I snorted with derisive laughter. “And I don’t know about greatest defender, either.”

  “You killed Aranata Otiolo. You killed Venatimn Ulurani. You killed this chimera, discovered an alliance between the Pale and the Extras . . .” He removed his spectacles and smiled, eyes suddenly shrunken to normal size. “You’ve conserved more than our brave Lions ever have. They’re embarrassed. You are what they should be, and they know it.” He prodded me in the chest. “But don’t believe your own legends, boy. That’s all they are. Legends. All this talk of Halfmortals, devils, and avengers . . . it’s madness.”

  I wasn’t sure I agreed with him. I hadn’t really killed Ulurani, not the way the broadcasts said, but Lord Powers had not seen me die on Sagara’s vessel. He had not seen the Howling Dark, had not spoken with the Brethren. Whatever nightmares haunted old Cassian Powers, they were not like my dreams.

  My dreams were real.

  “Where’s Marlowe?” a familiar voice sounded on the colonnade above. I heard Pallino’s low voice answer, but couldn’t make out the words, then the same voice shouted, “Out of my way, pissant!”

  I spun round, hand on my shield’s catch, hovering near my sword.

  Lord Augustin Bourbon clambered down the marble steps to the overlook where Powers and I stood, flanked by four guards in Bourbon livery. “Cassian!” he said, “Surprised to see you.”

  The Avenger placed a hand on my arm, indicating that I should back off from my weapons. Only reluctantly did I back down as Lord Cassian said, “Only offering my replacement a few words of advice, Augustin.”

  “I see,” Bourbon said, and shifted his posture, aligning himself in a way that effectively blocked Lord Powers from the conversation. “I hope you’re happy, Marlowe.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Flouting the Chantry. Destroying the life of an esteemed public servant . . .” He was practically seething. Surely the blood was boiling in his veins. “Your men could not have escaped the Inquisition without daimonic influence. You’re guilty. I know it.”

  Eyes shut, I took the space of a breath to collect myself. It would not do to strike the Lord Minister of War. He was my superior, scion of a far older and nobler house and an Imperial Counselor besides. I could not challenge him. I could not respond to his accusation, for to defend myself at all was to appear defensive. But I could attack. “Your esteemed public servant is a traitor, my lord. Spared the fate of a common murderer only by his own incompetence.”

  “Sir Lorcan Breathnach has served the realm for more than two hundred years.”

  Served you, you mean, I thought, eyes sweeping over the expansive palatine, his ivory suit and azure toga, the equestrian boots decidedly absurd on a man too fat to ride a horse. “And had he wished to be remembered as such, he would not have tried to kill me,” I said, certain now that Bourbon had been in on it. Confronting me like this was sloppy. Sloppy and arrogant beyond belief. Unless his outrage was truly genuine. Unless he and Breathnach had been close friends. But I was not certain Lord Augustin was the type of man who had friends. He struck me as the sort of man who categorized his fellow human beings as only assets or threats, and played one group against the other until the first sort had destroyed the second. Unable to help myself, I pushed. “One has to wonder at the fellow’s motivations, though. I can’t imagine why he’d want to kill me . . .” I never broke eye contact with Bourbon. Let him explain that.

  Bourbon’s jaw worked like a bellows, like pistons turning over the chugging mechanisms of his mind. It seemed the Lord Minister had not thought so far ahead. “He . . . he knows what you are.”

  “What I am?” I echoed, taking a step forward. “What am I, lordship?” I spared a glance for Lord Powers, who had replaced his spectacles on his crooked nose and watched our altercation unsmilingly.

  “I don’t know how you did it,” he said. “What spells you used to frame Sir Lorcan.”

  “Frame Sir Lorcan?” It was too much, a wild, incoherent accusation. “My lord, we have Lieutenant Casdon’s confession!”

  “Your lieutenant’s confession!”

  My lieutenant, I thought. As if I’d arranged for Casdon to lie, convinced her to hang for my sake—and she would hang. “Lord Minister, let me ask you a question.” My boot heels clicked on the paving stones as I moved to stand well within striking distance of the great walrus of a man. There was always a chance the man might strike me in a fit of pique, and if that happened all bets were off. I could challenge him, and Valka was not awake to stop me. Not that she would. “Do you think His Radiance is stupid?”

  “What?” Bourbon blithered. “How dare you, sir!”

  “How dare you!” I countered, keeping my voice level and tightly controlled. “You come here accusing me of ruining the reputation of a man who did try to kill me. You accuse me of consortation after the Inquisition has cleared me—you heard my recording in Council. Would His Radiance our Emperor retain my services if there were the slightest shred of evidence suggesting that I am what you say I am?”

  That shut him up. Lord Powers may not have feared the palace’s eyes, but Lord Powers was an innocent man. Lord Bourbon was anything but. His jowls quivered, and a series of outraged sounds escaped him, but did not form themselves into words. A spider Augustin Bourbon might have been, but he’d misplaced one of his many legs and tangled in his own web.

  I smiled up at him. I was gloating. I should not gloat. I was the one about to retreat to the safety of my ship in orbit as a precaution against further assassination attempts.

  I was in no position to gloat.

  CHAPTER 45

  VISITATION

  I WAS GROWING TIRED of standing on receiving platforms, and returning to the very spot where I’d awaited the arrival of the Grand Inquisitor and Sir Lorcan Breathnach filled me with the most unpleasant sense of déjà vu. But the ship that hung in the bay before the platform and the walkway was not the brutalist black monolith of a Chantry vessel, but a graceful, almost bird-like craft of snow-white tile and gold filigree, ostentatio
us in the best baroque fashion, with fan-like solar sails folded and sheathed.

  Corvo stood by me again, First Officer Durand at her side.

  “I wish she hadn’t insisted on coming here to see you,” the captain said. “I could do without the security detail turning my ship inside out.”

  She meant the Martians, of course. A full century of the Martian Guard had arrived the previous morning and begun the work of making safe the Tamerlane for the princess’s visit. A full third of their number stood on the far side of the gangway.

  “Can it,” Durand said, pushing his prop glasses up his nose with a finger. “Door’s opening.”

  A cornicen emerged in white livery and winded his clarion. The sound echoed painfully in that harsh, metallic space, and a moment later cried out that the Princess Selene of the Aventine House had come.

  She appeared a moment later, dressed in a gown to match the crimson of her hair, which she wore up in an intricate tangle of braids. Her handmaids Kiria and Bayara followed on, and another decade of Martians in red and white, blank-faced, their feathered crests standing tall.