Demon in White

by Christopher Ruocchio

  The locals called it the Rock, for on the sides facing the other isles gray cliffs rose and shoals snarled and threatened to smash their fishing junks to flinders, but the far side—the inside—was gentle, the crescent’s arms wide and inviting. Groves of leafy trees alien to me stood green and yellowing on the shelves above the beach where rows of white buildings stood on stilts far back from the water’s edge. They’d been flown down from orbit by our people and set up, having been purchased from one of the Consortium carriers that had been in parking orbit at the time.

  “I’d rather have stayed in the city,” Alexander said. “At least there was civilization there . . . if you can call it that.”

  Pallino grunted from the row beside. “The fresh air will do you good, lad,” he said. “Me, I’m glad to see Elara again. Going on five months now since I was last on the Tamerlane. Long time for a man to go it alone. You should get you one of these local girls I hear tell of. Bet you none of them’s ever seen a prince before.”

  “A plebeian?” Alexander made a face like Pallino had suggested he bed a horse.

  “Aye, a plebeian,” the chiliarch said. “And what’s wrong with plebeians, lad? I was a plebeian.”

  Seeing a way out for himself, the prince replied, “Well, I wouldn’t touch you, either.”

  Doran and the others hooted. Pallino grinned. “Well done, lad! You’re learning!”

  Alexander was grinning too.

  * * *

  Our chamber, I remember, was small. The white walls and floor and ceiling recalled for me nothing so much as a ship’s medica. A small number of mine and Valka’s effects had been brought down from the Tamerlane. The bedclothes, the coffee table, a chaise and armchair—certain small articles of clothing. The contrast evinced by my antique taste clashing with the utilitarian whiteness put me in mind of Sir Elomas’s camp at Calagah. When I told Valka this she wrapped an arm around me.

  “Let’s hope it ends differently.”

  After a brief time together, we went down into the camp. With nothing to do in its parking orbit, the Tamerlane had been left in the hands of its secondary crew under Commander Roderick Halford—a good and reliable officer. I knew him only a little, but it had been he who saved us at Nagapur when pirates attacked the sleeping Tamerlane. He was more than capable of holding the ship in peaceful orbit around a heavily guarded planet.

  Thus free from her duties, Otavia Corvo greeted us as we made the journey downslope from the camp on its stone shelf to the beach below. Incredibly, she had abandoned her black uniform in favor of a white swimmer’s leotard that hugged every chiseled line and arc of her Amazonian form. Similar signs of relaxed discipline showed all over the camp. Men and women alike swam naked or lay thus in the sun. Still more sat drinking in a circle round a bonfire singing loudly, though the sun was still high. A half dozen sailing ships stood at anchor a ways out in the bay, and I saw faces I did not recognize in among the officers I knew: peasant girls in plain dresses—or none—their faces reddened or tan with exposure. And the Irchtani were present—Udax and Barda and a few dozen of their countrymen, there at my invitation.

  A subtle quiet formed around Valka and myself. Corvo may have been captain, but I was Lord Marlowe. That was something else entirely. And like a fool I still wore my boots and tunic and the glove that covered my mangled arm. I had abandoned my cape when we left Aea.

  There were at least three hundred of them, men and women and xenobites. I sensed the quiet spreading round me like a drop of blood in a glass of water. Did they expect me to say something? To order them to keep it together or to pack it all in? I looked round at them, my friends and officers. For some reason, my mind went to the Emperor’s arrival at the ball succeeding my triumph, all the pomp and circumstance of his entry to Far Beyond the Sun. His Radiance had said almost nothing, so I said almost nothing in turn. Being me, I was not quite so tight-lipped as the Emperor, but I tried. “Thank you all,” I said, raising my voice to carry across the beach, “for all you’ve done. For all you will do. This is only a small repayment, but enjoy yourselves to the full! You’ve earned it!” And with that I unclasped my belt and threw it on a chair that waited near at hand. I then drew my tunic up and over my head and the sleeveless shirt beneath it before working on the glove’s clasps. A cheer went up as I did this, for in doing it I proclaimed that I was one of them, and not above. I thought again of the table in the Emperor’s study surrounded by statues of the Cid Arthur’s knights. A round table, so that Caesar—like Arthur before him—would not sit above his counselors, would sit with them as equals. I do not think the Imperial table anything more than a symbol, but to me the ideal it represented was real.

  I hoped my people knew that.

  The awkward moment passed, I turned to a junior man and ordered him to carry my effects back to my chambers. “No, no,” Valka interjected, puting a hand on my arm. “I’ll go,” she said. I was about to protest, but she said, “ ’Twill give me the opportunity to change out of this.” She plucked at her wine-dark jacket, indicating her boots and jodhpurs, the full outfit she wore. “Give me your boots.” I watched her go, and when at last I turned away, I caught Otavia watching me, a smile on her lips.

  “What?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  It was the first of many days and many nights we spent at Thessa. Perhaps it is selfish that we took nearly a year’s repose upon an island at the margins of a world itself on the edge of civilization—as far from the fighting as any Imperial colony might be. Perhaps it was ungrateful, for while we lingered upon the margins of civilized space men fought and died even still. But have mercy, Reader, for my soldiers’ sake. For Captain Corvo and Commander Durand. For Aristedes and Koskinen, for White and Varro, Okoyo and Pherrine. Have mercy for Pallino, Elara, and Siran. For Crim and Ilex—who deserved a moment of happiness in their lives of violence. Have mercy on Valka, whose patience and long suffering by my side deserved the reward of the Library and this vacation.

  You need spare no mercy for me. I have had my repayment in the laughter and song of my friends and in that little space in time we carved for ourselves, stolen from an uncaring universe. Keep your condemnations to yourself, and trouble not their ghosts.

  Barefoot then I strode across black glass sand made pleasantly warm by the distant sun and joined Pallino and some of the other soldiers—Doran and Oro and Petros, captain of the Fifth Cohort—where they’d gathered with some of the enlisted men to watch the others fighting. Crim stood bare-chested in the ring, hands wrapped in gauze and ready.

  “Noyn jitat!” he swore, prodding a thin scratch on his shoulder. “I said no claws, man!”

  Udax clicked his beak. “You humans are so soft!”

  “Do you want me to pull a knife?” Crim said. “Because I can do that.” He grinned, all teeth. “Just say the word, my feathered friend!”

  Before the Irchtani could respond aye—as I felt certain he would—I raised my voice. “Let’s not be spilling blood on our first day, friends!”

  A chorus of groans went up from the men around, and Oro said, “For a man they call the devil, sir, you sure walk the straight and narrow.”

  “You want to lose an eye in sport, son, that’s your business,” I said. “But give it a day or two. The shuttles haven’t even dusted off yet!” Glancing up, I saw their raven-hunched shapes on the stony shelf above, watching like roosting gargoyles.

  Sotto voce, Pallino put in, “You don’t want to lose an eye, Oro.”

  “You joining in, lord?” asked one of the decurions, a woman whose name I no longer remember. “I’ve got two kaspum on the bird man.”

  “And bet against Crim?” I asked. “Not on your life, soldier.” I rolled my head on my shoulders. “But I’ll take next!” The groans of the crowd turned to surprised hooting.

  Next turned out to be another of the centurions, one of the newer recruits we’d picked up on our late
st return to Forum. Someone had found fighting wraps for my hands, and the fellow did his best awkward imitation of a bow. He did not stand for long. Though the man was a centurion, he was green as any of that higher rank might come—they were training them fast and sloppily in those days, desperate to replace the soldiers lost in the fighting. But that did not matter on that island in the sun.

  I raised a hand in triumph, and the men clapped and cheered. Turning, I caught sight of golden eyes twinkling in the crowd. Was Valka back? I doubled back to look, but she was gone. Bowing out gracefully—lingering just long enough to help the centurion to his feet and to pass him my cut of the betting as the winner—I pushed past Pallino and through the crowd.

  Where had she gone?

  “Valka?”

  There! I spied a scarlet parasol moving among the rocks on the rugged path that ran back toward the shelf above and our encampment. Though I did not see her, I knew the parasol must belong to Valka. Who else would so hide from the sun? But why was she leaving again? Had the fighting upset her? She could be so unpredictable. A lump formed in my throat, and I hurried on, chasing her up the slope. Always the red parasol bobbed ahead and above, just out of sight.

  “Valka!”

  She’d gone around the bend, following a path I’d not seen before that ran along the cliff’s edge above the shore below to where gray stone and red thrust out like a finger over the sea.

  And there she was—standing, by pure chance—on the very spot where this story ends. A cairn stands there now, a pile built of black stone hauled from Thessa’s higher climes.

  I built it brick by brick.

  But where now is only silence, wind, and the cry of gulls, then there was laughter.

  Valka wore naught but sandals and a swimsuit of black edged with a red dark as old wine. It matched her hair. The parasol I had never seen before—had she bought it in Aea? It had a Nipponese quality to it, ribbed and painted with a scattering of white cherry blossoms. Her hair was up in its customary knot upon her crown, loose strands playing about her ears.

  “You caught me!” she said, and gestured at the cliff’s point around us. “I wanted to show you this! I found it when I climbed back up. ’Tis beautiful, is it not?”

  Looking at her and not the sea unrolled like a carpet beneath us, I said, “It is.”

  She smiled knowingly, winged eyebrows rising. “You’re not looking?”

  “At what?” I kissed her.

  Above our heads, Atlas turned his mottled face, embarrassed, his more distant moons hurtling their slow procession across the sky. One even then clipped the edge of the golden sun and spread its shadow on the day.

  “The light is strange here,” Valka said, leaning against me, her parasol forming a little shield above our heads, a little space made just for us. From our height, I saw the behemoth shapes of other islands crouched on the horizon, and spied the odd ship plying between them. None came to Thessa. “Thank you for bringing me here,” she said at last. “The Library . . . ’twas worth the wait.” Her breath was warm against my chest.

  We did not speak then for what seemed a long time, only stood there, half-embraced. How strange a pair were we! The palatine and the Tavrosi. The reluctant soldier and the xenologist, each a barbarian to the other.

  “We could stay, you know?” I said, taking the parasol from her and holding it for a time. “We could stay on this moon forever.”

  “No we can’t,” she said. “But we can’t leave, either. We don’t have what we came for.” Her fingers found the white shell I wore about my neck. She plucked at it—so small a gesture to lift so large a mystery. I had pulled it from a dream, and yet it was real, tangible as the hand that held it. “I never thought—when I left Edda—that ’twould be like this. I’m a scientist, Hadrian. Not a . . .”

  “A witch?”

  She thumped me, but laughed. “Precisely.”

  The faint taste of mint glowed on her tongue as she pushed it into my mouth and pushed out a hundred years of care. The world narrowed until its horizon was bounded by the edge of that parasol, and there was nothing but us. Nothing but her. How rare and precious are such moments measured against the length and horror of life! Such moments as make the rest of it worth enduring.

  “Is this a private party, or can anybody join?”

  Otavia Corvo stood arms crossed about twenty paces away, hair floating in the breeze.

  Valka pulled away, almost, almost embarrassed. I caught her hand, returned her parasol. There was a strange expression on the tall captain’s face, but it gave way to wry bemusement as she said, “So are you two just going to ignore the rest of us this whole stay? You’ve been up here about an hour. I’m surprised you’re still dressed.”

  “Otavia!” Valka said.

  The captain laughed. “Siran’s back with the fishermen! She took some of the lads out for food. Fire’s going, and I just got a wave from Halford, sun’ll be down soon.” She turned her back and shrugged her massive shoulders. “Hate to see you both tumble off the cliff rolling around up here.”

  I had not known it was still possible for me to blush at that age, but there it was. I was glad neither woman saw.

  * * *

  The food was excellent. And so much of it! The fishing ships, it turned out, had not come to carry the islands’ daughters to us, but had been chartered by the governor-general to see our men were fed. The seas of Colchis were rich, and the waters off Thessa and the other Sevrasts were richer still, and teemed with cod and seabass and snapper. Thus we feasted each night.

  “Folk think the best fish is the freshest!” said Lem, the patrician eolderman of the fishers and cooks who had been hired to serve us at Thessa. He was turning a rack of whole trout over smoking coals as he spoke. “But the Nipponese like to age it a few days in the icebox. Me, I can’t tell!”

  Pallino hovered round each night, discussing cookery with the local men and the women who came with them, arguing more often than not. Nearly each day Siran went with the fishers, taking various of her soldiers with her. She was never far from the eolderman, and I wondered at that. “It’s like home,” she said, speaking of Emesh. “Only the weather’s better! And the sky! Hadrian, the sky!”

  It was good to see my people—my friends—so happy. They deserved it. I recall one night I sat about the fire, listening to Pallino tell his story about his lost eye and tramway security—laughing though I knew it well. Lorian Aristedes had sat nearby, muttering with some plebeian girl. Then the two went off into the dark, and when they reappeared—much later and much disheveled—one soldier pressed a beer into the young officer’s hands.

  They deserved peace. Deserved more than I could give.

  But none of us gets what we deserve, good or ill. Such has been my blessing—and their curse. I have been to Thessa recently. The buildings are still there. Those prefabricated structures—wrought of plastic and alumglass—were made to out-sit the centuries. They have not been moved. Wandering there, I was a lonely ghost, recalling the echoes of whoops and laughter, of cries and song. But they are gone now.

  They are gone.

  CHAPTER 60

  THE LIBRARY AGAIN

  “THIS CAN’T BE ALL there is . . .” Valka said for the hundred thousandth time. We’d been back at Nov Belgaer for months, and though I had been slow to return to the dusty archive, Valka had taken to it with her usual fervor, sifting through records and filing cabinets with mechanical abandon. “So much of this . . . ’tis meaningless now. Colony surveys, shipping manifests, tax records . . . do we need genetics records for every human embryo shipped to the Atlanta colony in . . .” she squinted at the shipping manifest, “. . . 2964 CE? What was that? A thousand years before the Advent?”

  “Give or take,” I said, though I thought it was nearer eight hundred. Things moved slower in those days, before mankind broke the speed of light on lonely Avalon as iron darkness clo
sed in all around.

  “Why classify this? Why bury it in a sealed vault beneath a library on the edge of nowhere? This is not worth classifying!” She brandished the ancient document like an accusation, crystal paper flexing. “Everyone knows the Mericanii were the first to use embryo banks for colonies. The Consortium still does! ’Tis not a secret!” She broke off, pinching her nose with one cotton-gloved hand. “I do not understand you anaryoch. Do you simply see Mericanii and seal it away? I thought these people were supposed to be scientists! Science means to know, not to close your fucking eyes! These are records! Nothing is going to get out!”

  We were alone, which was well. I did not fancy sitting through another long debate between Valka and Tor Imlarros, nor one of Valka and Gibson’s Socratic back-and-forths. I was tired, and I shared Valka’s frustration with the turning of events. We had been on Colchis for nearly six years.

  “This can’t be all there is . . .” Valka said again. “Was Gabriel stupid? Did he not know what he had? Why would anyone build something this far underground to hide tax receipts from an empire that no longer exists?” She glared at me. “Are you people so damned paranoid?”

  I held her gaze a moment, shrugged. “You know what they were, Valka. You saw Brethren.”

  “Brethren . . .” She made the word a curse before cursing some more in an argot of Nordei and her native Panthai. “We could use it right now. At least it seemed to answer your questions. Instead we’ve got miles of shipping manifests to dig through.”

  “It’s not like we’ve learned nothing,” I said, trying to be encouraging. I wasn’t wrong. We’d learned much of the Golden Age that I had never heard before. Felsenburgh had taken power promising to end the Mericanii war with the powers of Eurasia and the East. He’d united his fragmented country until its dominion stretched from pole to Earth’s pole and across the face of her moon. He’d freed Europe from subjugation—though her kings in exile on the moons of Jupiter did not return, but fled beyond the circles of the Sun for worlds like Avalon. They called him Liberator, though he was the first lord of the Mericanii not to abdicate his throne in their White Palace when his time was done. He held power until his death when—breaking with four hundred years of tradition—he named his successor to the throne.