Demon in White

by Christopher Ruocchio

  Irshan smiled through it all, though I detected his teeth clenching tighter beneath those curling mustachios. I was trying him, a little.

  You’ve retreated enough.

  The words came from some old childhood lesson. I had faced worse opponents, faster ones, stronger ones. Iubalu. The Demon of Arae. Even Father Calvert on Vorgossos. Creatures that moved so fast they were invisible, creatures even highmatter could not cut. Whatever Irshan was, he was not them.

  His sword glanced off my ribs, carving a white scratch on the black ceramic. Snarling, I clamped my elbow down on the blade and slammed my shield hand up into his chin. Irshan gasped and staggered backward. The sword ground against my side and fell from his fingers. Before he could retrieve it, I stepped over it and kicked it backward—I hoped far enough to get it in the water and end this contest before I could be humiliated. But my footing was awkward, rushed, and the blade skittered to a halt two yards from the edge.

  “Noyn jitat!” Irshan massaged his chin. He spat upon the platform. Was there red in it? “Let me say again what an honor it is! To be here. Fighting you.”

  I did not feel like talking. I only bobbed my head.

  “You do not say much!” he observed, settling—to my astonishment—into a loose-handed boxing guard. “I understood you were a great talker.”

  He was trying to distract me.

  “Nothing?” He beat his chest with both hands. “Very well. Keep your secrets. Epa!”

  It almost felt unsporting, attacking an unarmed man, Maeskolos or no. But that was not the time to fuss about propriety. Maria Agrippina was watching, her and half the great lords of the Empire—or so it felt. I did not rush the Swordmaster, but gave ground, moving steadily back to finish the job I’d started with his sword.

  Irshan darted forward, a colorful blur. I thrust my sword at him, but he slapped it aside with the flat of his hand and—stepping inside—threw a cross that caught my unarmored jaw and knocked me back a step. He worked his way around, struck me knife-handed in a joint between my armor’s ceramic plates and bruised my floating ribs. Breathing hard, I jumped back, slashing wildly. But Irshan blocked my sword on his gauntleted forearm again and again, moving faster and faster with each successive guard. He slapped the blade again—how was such a thing even possible? Fingers closed about my wrist, trapping my sword between us. He came inside my left arm, nearly embracing me, all his efforts focused on tearing the sword from my grasp. My left hand battered uselessly against his back. Ducking just a little, I got my sword behind his knee and lifted, charging forward in a way that took the man off his feet and slammed him to the ground. I raised my sword to strike—the crowd roaring—but Irshan kicked once, twice. The first foot stopped my sword on his sole, the second caught the edge of my shield and torqued it loose. Irshan writhed and snapped himself back to his feet, delivering a neat roundhouse kick that knocked the shield clean from my hand. It sailed clean across the barge platform, steel rim pinging as it bounced and rolled . . . and fell into the water.

  Trying not to slow or let dismay sink its roots in my heart’s soil, I swung at the Jaddian, my blade flashing about my head in sheets of blurry white. Irshan danced through them like a juggler through his knives. On the last flurry I tucked my sword, fist snapping round in a hook that clipped the man with the pommel. Irshan let the next blow through, my blade digging useless against the armor skin beneath his clothes. Seizing his opportunity, he punched me in the cheek, and redoubling his attack hooked his hand behind my ear and seized my hair to push me down and to one side.

  I lost my footing and fell even as I felt my scalp tear and blood run down my neck. Wincing, I must have lay there for just a second, for when the white of pain retreated and the dull ache began, I saw Irshan standing ten paces away.

  His sword was in his hand.

  He wasn’t smiling.

  “I have to say, I’m disappointed,” he said, resting the scimitar once more against the back of his upraised hand. “This is all you have?” The crowd sat silent, almost still, and the Maeskolos spoke loudly, voice caught and amplified by the floating cameras, relayed from the Colosseum’s surround. “Get up! Stand and face me.” He slashed his sword through a showy arc, teeth bared. I could see the blood on them. That last pommel strike had knocked out one of his teeth. “Get up!”

  I got up. My head was still pounding, and I knew each drumbeat heralded more lost blood. Fingers found the tear. It wasn’t serious.

  “You can yield!” Irshan said. “No one would fault so great a man as you! Bow out with dignity.”

  Was that Agrippina’s plan? Force the Halfmortal to beg mercy in Colosso? Embarrass me, humiliate me in front of nearly a million of the most powerful men and women in the galaxy? And for what? For Selene, of course, and Alexander. Breathnach’s hatred had been motivated by class: the hatred of the prole for the nobile. For all her airs, the Empress was no different. Like Bourbon—like the other houses who had not dipped their banners—she simply would not accept a former outcaste for a son-in-law, nor could she forgive as Alexander had forgiven me. Humiliating me would castrate me, politically, would see me stripped of whatever rank and power I possessed, would see the Red Company dispersed, would destroy my dream. I might still sit the Council, I might still wed Selene, but men would laugh that the Hero of Aptucca was beaten in the Colosseum by a contract fighter paid by wine-soaked and feeble-minded Prince Philip. I imagined Valka banished from Forum, imagined Lorian chained once more to a desk. I saw Crim and Ilex and Corvo and the rest paid and sent—shipless—back to the freeholds whence they came to fight and die as they would. And all of it: Smythe’s sacrifice and Ghen’s and the deaths of so many thousand men would come to naught. My own death would come to naught. My resurrection. My visions. My dream.

  All this flashed across my mind in an instant—in the instant it took to stand.

  But stand I did. I stood and took up my sword, point straight and leveled at Irshan’s heart. A fey impulse took me, and thinking of the Cielcin and the striped masks they wore, I traced my thumb along my cheekbone beneath the left eye, drawing a red line.

  As a boy, Sir Felix had forced me to stand with sword in hand—arm extended—for minutes and then hours at a time. I was certain I could out-wait the more flamboyant Maeskolos.

  I was right.

  He dashed toward me, attacking high. Unshielded now, I moved to turn his blade with my own, but he dropped it, passed it from one hand to the other and lashed out. The point scraped against my armor, carving another fine scratch on the old enamel. The next thrust came at my eyes. I swung sideways, swept the attack away, only for one slippered foot to strike my knee. The suit protected the joint and stopped it hyperextending, but I still stumbled, staggered back as a slash skated off my arm. Irshan’s hand and blade were a blur. The blows came so fast and so precisely that memory of my fight with Iubalu flashed like lightning into my conscious mind.

  All laughter had fled the man’s face. His jovial demeanor was gone. The scimitar caught against the edge of a thigh pad and, grinding, tore through tunic and underlayment alike. I felt the skinsuit compress to stanch the bleeding and winced. It had taken skill to make that cut. Armorweave does not part easily.

  But I had no time for awe or material science, had no time even for artistry.

  The Jaddian sword whistled toward my head, and though I blocked it I did not block the heel spur kick that bit into my wounded thigh. My leg buckled, and I went to one knee before Irshan. I slashed wildly, hoping to catch the man in the liver. The sword would not cut, but a solid thrust to the liver would have the man on his back anyway.

  But Irshan twisted, and my thrust found only the lining of his short jacket, and his hand . . . his hand found mine and seized fingers and sword hilt alike and twisting forced me back to my knees.

  That was when I knew Irshan meant to kill me. He hadn’t been sent to humiliate me at all, but to rid the gala
xy of Hadrian Marlowe.

  I must have made the Empress angrier than I knew.

  The crowd gasped and cheered as Irshan pulled the sword from my fingers and cast it away. I heard a distant splash. Irshan raised his sword, and though I could not see his face I knew he turned his eyes to the royal box, to the Empress and Crown Prince Aurelian, to Selene and Alexander, Titania and Vivienne, to Ricard and his master, Philip, and all the rest. I knew he awaited the judgment. Thumbs up or down. A million throats were roaring. A thousand trumpets played.

  Surely now the Emperor would arrive, arrive and put a stop to all this madness. Surely I had suffered enough. I clenched my hands into fists, feeling Valka’s ring tighten. I was not afraid. My first death had put the fear of Death out of me. Perhaps the powers that had delivered me in Kharn Sagara’s Garden would deliver me again.

  Or perhaps I would deliver myself.

  Irshan had forgotten something.

  He had forgotten my knife.

  With my free left hand I pulled the parrying dagger loose from my belt and slammed it point first through the top of the man’s foot. I felt the thud of impact as the point dug into the false wood of the platform’s top, and heard Irshan howl with pain. His grip slackened on my arm—just for a moment, just enough. I surged to my feet, caught the Maeskolos by the wrist with both hands as he lashed down in fury. In my haste to block his attack, I’d left my knife in his foot, and he stumbled, momentarily pinned.

  There followed a brief struggle, two bleeding men alone in the Grand Colosseum, wrestling over a sword. The blade came free, and seizing it with both my hands I stumbled back. There was no time for questions, no time for hesitancy. Even wounded and lame, the Maeskolos was dangerous. Too dangerous to be kept alive. I swung my blade—his blade—for the kill. Dimly, I recalled another man struck down by his own sword.

  Moments repeat. Moments recur.

  But not always.

  Irshan did not try to block. He did not even fade.

  He reached into the pocket of his jacket.

  A blue-white light flashed, sprouted . . . shone the color of moonlight.

  The highmatter blade rose to parry, and sliced the ceramic scimitar in two. I hardly had time to think, hardly had time to understand what was happening.

  Highmatter was forbidden in Colosso.

  But this was not Colosso. Irshan was not an opponent.

  Irshan was an assassin. But whose?

  It happened so fast, happened in less than half a second, happened before my broken sword’s point could strike the floor.

  The Emperor had not appeared.

  The Swordmaster’s unstoppable sword flashed toward my eyes.

  I raised my hand in a doomed and desperate attempt to save my life.

  My left hand.

  The crowd screamed.

  Irshan froze.

  The highmatter cut through my vambrace, parted skin and flesh and sinew like air, and stopped . . . stopped when it encountered Kharn Sagara’s false bones. The prosthesis was adamant, the same stuff of which starship hulls were made. Starship hulls and the body armor of the Exalted. Confusion ruled the stands. Highmatter on the field? Had Marlowe’s armor stopped it?

  Then they saw the blood spilling from my wounded arm, gushing from where the Maeskolos had severed veins. And they screamed.

  “Halfmortal!” The cry went up, repeated. “Halfmortal! Halfmortal!”

  Irshan’s shock lasted only a moment. Stumbling with his hobbled foot, he lashed out again, and again I blocked him with my left arm. The thunder of the crowd shook the world and set the gulls that roosted in the hanging towers above to flight. Irshan thrust his weapon toward me, and I caught it. Caught it as he had caught my spear. The liquid metal flexed beneath my fingers, and I felt the muscle sever and weep blood. Armorweave tightened, trying to spare me. I stepped forward, still holding the impossibly sharp blade in my fist. The Jaddian’s eyes bulged.

  The broken ceramic sword was still in my hand. I did not hesitate. I did not consult the Empress for her judgment. I thrust its broken point down through the opening at the base of my enemy’s neck. The highmatter blade evaporated the moment Irshan dropped it from his grasp, and he fell toward me. I could not support his weight, and he fell to the ground, broken weapon still lodged in his shoulder. Blood ran everywhere.

  I pressed my knee into his sternum, his highmatter sword unkindled in my hand.

  “Whom do you serve?” I asked. He didn’t answer. “Tell me and I’ll end it now.”

  The Martians were coming. The static fields had opened and figures were coming up the ramps. I needed to get away. Back to the shuttle. Back to the Tamerlane. Back to safety. Placing an assassin in the Colosseum was a bold move, and whoever had done it, even the Empress, would need to move quickly in these moments of fallout.

  “Was it the Empress?” I asked, pressing my knee harder.

  Irshan did not speak. Blood ran from his shoulder, from his mouth. Too much blood. The sword in his shoulder should have stanched the flow, not sped it. Something was happening.

  “Was it the Empress?” I asked again. “Whom do you serve?”

  My knee fell inward. Irshan’s ribs collapsed. Blood began streaming from his eyes, the corners of his mouth, and where it ran it boiled. His face bubbled and ran like wax, great lesions opening in his neck. My knee now smeared with gore, I stood and clambered back. His arms flailed against the decking, whole sheets of skin sloughing off like the papery sheath of an onion, blood and bits of melting muscle smeared on the planks.

  Not the Empress, I remember thinking, turning shocked as the Martians pounded across the platform, shaking us all where we floated on the water. Not the Empress. I staggered past the guards, waving them away. The ramp lay ahead of me, water rising to either side. I practically slid down it, but only after tarrying a moment to look back at Irshan’s body.

  At what was left of it.

  The man had melted. A slurry of red and yellow fluid soaked those bright clothes, crowned his black hair. No bones were left, no skin, no sinew. Only an empty armorweave suit, striped pantaloons, and green slippers soaked brown.

  Poison. A vicious poison.

  Dispholide.

  I had only ever heard of it—had never seen it used. A few grains of dispholide would dissolve a full-grown man. A few more could kill an azhdarch. It went by many names: the Drowner, the Green Death, the Mermaid’s Kiss, the Priest’s Poison. The Priest’s Poison because it was an instrument of the Holy Terran Chantry, devised by the Choir—their shadowy research division—in the deeps of time, molded from the venom of an ancient serpent long vanished from the galaxy, tempered and strengthened by eons of refinement.

  The Chantry again.

  No one stopped me as I stumbled bleeding back into the hypogeum. I made it all the way to the rear gates before anyone tried. But I bullied the two Martians down and thrust the unkindled blade in their faces, and they stood down. Irshan’s face kept melting behind my eyes, and the memory of the way in which his chest had caved in beneath my weight replayed until I thought I must vomit.

  The poison must have been in him. Suspended in nano-scale capsules awash in his blood, awaiting some remote command to dissolve and kill him if he failed.

  I needed to get to the shuttle. I’d lost too much blood myself, and the thought of that dreadful venom on my armor forced numb panic into my brain. Was I going into shock? Gibson’s aphorisms rattled in my ears like the chimes off Cielcin spears, and I tried to still my ragged breathing. Not far now, not far.

  The wind pushed me on as I staggered down the strand. I’ve no memory of the walk there, the ride on the lift up to the shuttle platforms. I held my mangled left arm twisted against my chest. My scalp was still throbbing, and my knee ached. My right hand—the hand I had originally lost—held the weapon that had nearly killed me. A dim thought occurred to me as I
limped along, leaning on the rail. Had it been my right arm that Kharn replaced—had the Quiet not intervened and traded my lost right arm for my left—I would be dead.

  Cries of Halfmortal! Halfmortal! Halfmortal! resounded in my ears, borne up by the wind and the clamor of the Colosseum behind me. And another cry, words shouted from within and behind.

  This must be.

  The words shouted from my past, and at the sound of them I tried to clench my false-boned hand. The hand the Quiet had changed. Realization glued me to a stop, and swaying I leaned against the rail. Was I mad? Or did I understand another piece of what had happened to me?

  Had the Quiet seen this moment . . . and changed the arm I’d lost to save my life?

  The shuttle crouched before me, black beetle shape with wings tucked and hatch opened. Siran was aboard, she and my pilot officer and my paltry guard the Martians had ordered remain. I resumed walking toward them. “Siran!” I cried out. “Siran!”

  But no one came.

  How had I slipped away? There should have been more guards. The Martians should have stopped me. And where was Siran? I mounted the ramp, calling out, clutching my wounded arm to my chest.

  No one was there.

  Siran would never leave me. Not Siran. Something was wrong. She would not have abandoned her post, and certainly not without leaving at least one man behind.

  Everything clicked at once, even in my addled mind. I’d been allowed to retreat here. Panic gripped me, but I pried back its fingers. “Siran!” I peered into cockpit, and saw the pilot officer.

  Dead.

  I turned and ran as fast as I could, fumbling for the shield catch on a belt that was not there.

  I ran just fast enough.

  The shuttle exploded behind me. I felt both eardrums rupture as I was lifted bodily from my feet and hurled ten yards down the runway. How I managed to avoid falling off into the bottomless sky I’ll never know.