The Encoded Heart

by Peter J Evans

  The elevator that took them down to the common strata was one of dozens that ringed the citadel's outer walls. To get to it, they had to walk almost exactly the same route that Red had taken on her ill-fated escape bid. In fact, she noted sourly, she had nearly made it. In her exhaustion, she never realised how close she had come.

  They went masked as soon as they left the villa. Losen's was a full-face creation of gold leaf and diamonds, while Red's was more discreetly feminine. It was a black domino mask, satin and chased with silver. As soon as she put it to her face it clung there, conforming instantly to her features with a grip that was firm but gentle.

  For all their pseudo-historical finery, the Magadani were possessed of some fiercely advanced technology. Not for the first time, Red wondered how this place had escaped the gaze of the Iconoclasts.

  They began to join other masked couples on the stratum bridge. Losen greeted some politely, some warmly, while others were pointedly blanked. The same kinds of reactions were directed, in turn, back at Losen himself with equal mix. Red noticed that he didn't appear particularly upset, no matter what was thrown back in his face, and neither was anyone else. They would take note of what was said, and change their own behaviour in turn - a reflexive verbal dance, following rules Red couldn't begin to follow but which Losen and his peers seemed born to.

  It was a kind of ritual, she realised. An elaborate game based on social standing, on manners and decorum. And though he appeared to be merely walking and swapping choice comments with his fellow Magadani, Saleph Losen was playing it for all he was worth.

  The doors were already open, held aside by uniformed flunkies. As their little procession passed through - Losen, Red at his side, a small cadre of sylphs behind them - one of the flunkies raised himself to full height and bellowed that the Lord and Lady Nightshade had entered the Masque.

  There was a smattering of polite applause, to which Losen bowed as though receiving an award. Red gave him a sideways look. "Nightshade?"

  "I felt it suited the mood. Besides, I could think of nothing more deadly."

  There was something about those words that gave Red a fleeting moment of puzzlement, but it passed very quickly. For the crowd in front of her had parted, and she now could see the Masque.

  "Bloody snecking hell," she said.

  The Masque's venue was easily as big as any sports stadium Red had ever seen, and rose about her in much the same way. Instead of benches full of howling spectators, though, these rising tiers were wide enough for tables, hundreds of them, both open and enclosed in private booths. Above the highest step was a ring of pillared arches that must have stretched a kilometre before coming full circle, and behind it the walls shimmered with a holographic trompe l'oeil, a simulated panorama of sea and sky glittering beneath a golden sunset. It was as if the entire stadium had been set on its own island, surrounded by a tropical ocean.

  None of which was half as stunning, to Red's eyes, as the people who crowded it.

  Hundreds of Magadani were on the paved field of this blinding place, a solid wall of colour. More crowded the tiers, seated in couples or groups, or stood watching the crowds with tiny pairs of opera glasses, conducting the continuous business of social manoeuvre.

  Each of them, from those closest to her to the farthest groups, was dressed in finery so outlandish as to beggar the imagination. She had thought Saleph Losen to be ornate, but compared to some of these people he was almost minimalist.

  And there were sylphs, too. Armies of them. She first spotted those in the pale green uniform of Trawden, but those from the other citadels were there too; in midnight blue, in purple, in pale orange and silver grey. Almost all of the sylphs were in motion; a very few stood in attendance by their masters, but the vast majority were walking between the chattering cliques, carrying drinks, drugs, messages.

  Orchestras sat up on the highest tier, playing in fractured counterpoint.

  "The blue sylphs," Losen murmured to her, "are Cadosi. Be careful around them. And if they offer you something to drink, don't accept it."

  "You and Cados don't get on, eh?"

  "Stay a while. In all likelihood you'll find out."

  She would have asked what he meant, but he was already moving into the first of his social sparring matches. At first Red did her best to follow the conversation between Losen and the pair of domini he had cornered, but she quickly lost interest in his with, and instead wandered further onto the paved field, her metal heels clicking on the polished floor. The crowds around her moved with an odd, liquid precision, a constant motion that enabled everyone to keep a slight but significant space between their fellows, no matter how expansive their costume. Red was able to walk freely through the mass, because everyone reflexively passed around her as she did so.

  This isn't something learned, she thought. This is what rich people do, as natural as breathing. It was in their bones.

  Somewhere behind her she heard Losen's laugh rise above the general hubbub, but he sounded distant. She turned back, and as she did so someone leaned close and whispered in her ear: "Perhaps, lady, you shouldn't stray too far from your companion. It would be easy to get lost in these crowds."

  "I've been lost for a long time, pal." She looked around, into the face of a golden wolf.

  The man who had spoken was quite tall, perhaps Red's height, although the carved mane of the wolf's head made it difficult to tell. His costume was mainly black and gold, with a few telling touches in midnight blue. Cadosi, thought Red. A rival of Losen's.

  This, she decided, could be interesting.

  He bowed slightly, although his eyes, glittering behind the mask, never left hers. "The Lord Vulpus," he said. "At your service."

  Red grinned widely. "Lady Nightshade, I guess. So tell me, wolf-boy, where does a lady have to go to get a drink around here?"

  9. BAD WOLF

  The edges of the Masque's floor area were more sparsely populated than the centre, but only just. Vulpus led her through the crowds to the base of the first tier, where long tables stood covered in elaborately woven cloths. Each was piled high with delicacies: candies and sweetmeats, glasses of wine and tiny ampoules of coloured fluid. Sylphs stood behind the tables, handing out refreshment to anyone who drew close. It really wasn't a place Red wanted to be anymore, but she was starting to think that Losen could be useful. With the correct persuasion, of course. "It's noisy here," she told him, leaning a little closer. "Don't you think it's noisy?"

  "Maybe a little lively for my taste, lady."

  "You know," she breathed, getting very close, "Losen told me to watch out for you people. He thinks you're dangerous."

  Vulpus raised his mask slightly to take a sip of his own drink. "The Cadosi, you mean? Well, yes, he would say something like that."

  "Why? Are you dangerous?" She ran her tongue, quite slowly, along the rim of her glass. "Should I be careful?"

  "You have nothing to fear from me, my lady."

  "Pity." She stepped away, back towards the refreshment tables.

  Behind them, set into the wall of the first tier, was a tall, arched opening. Red had spotted it earlier, when Vulpus had been leading her here. "Where does that go?"

  "The arch?" Vulpus seemed momentarily confused. "It, ah, leads to quieter places."

  "Really?" Red grinned. "Sounds interesting."

  "Hardly. When I say quieter, my lady, I mean more dull. Courts of silence, meeting halls, galleries. Rooms for those tired of the Masque to rest, nothing more. Nowhere private."

  "Chill out rooms? Great." Red moved quickly away from him, between the tables and into the archway. "Come on."

  She walked away, steel boots clicking on the hard floor. Through the arch was a short corridor, ending in a tall, polished wooden door. Red headed directly for it. She didn't need to look around and make sure Vulpus was following her; the hallway was already quieter than the Masque hall itself, and she could hear his footfalls.

  As she drew close the door opened, and a trio of M
agadani stepped through it. They were smiling, talking in relaxed tones about some rival or another, and more followed, brushing past Red with polite nods. Vulpus had been right about the spaces beyond the arch not being private, but that was fine with her. If her new companion thought she was planning anything untoward here, he was going to be sorely disappointed.

  Just to keep his hopes up she threw a seductive glance over her shoulder as she opened the door and went through.

  It closed behind Vulpus, and the noise of the Masque fell away completely. Red found herself in a long, wide hallway, its walls and vaulted roof carved from creamy stone, the floor dark granite burnished to a mirror shine. There were no windows, but big paintings, each wider than Red was tall and set into gilded frames, ranged along both long walls.

  At first it was the sheer scale of the pictures that stopped Red in her tracks, but as she gazed up at them something about the subject matter seemed to hold her fast. She hadn't gone far into the hall before her pace faltered, just enough to bring her level with the first painting.

  The scene it showed was deceptively simple: a man stood there, clad in thick, velvety green robes. In his right hands he cradled a human skull, while his left gripped the pommel of an ebony walking cane. His face was cruel and imperious, his hair long, his chin defined by a small, neat beard. Red could feel the intensity of his gaze, captured expertly by the artist, resting on her like a physical weight.

  The callousness in his expression, the lazy, indolent spite, was depicted so skilfully that it lit something within her, honed an edge of familiarity that she could feel, yet not name.

  From what Red could see, all the other pictures lining the walls of this gallery were the same in both subject and tone. "Who are they?"

  "Prior Magisters," he said, his voice low. "No one that would interest you."

  "Oh, I don't know. You'd be surprised what I find interesting..." This wasn't getting her anywhere. Red tore her attention away from the pictures and turned it back on Vulpus, giving him a predatory smile, a tiny flash of fang. "I like doing all sorts of things."

  "I'm sure you do."

  He moved towards her, but she slid out of his range, reaching up to strip away the domino mask. "There," she smiled. "Isn't that better?"

  "Oh, much." He reached up and unclasped his own disguise, shaking his long hair out from behind it.

  He was pale - Red had been expecting that - but not excessively so. There was little powder on his face, and only a hint of rouge at his lips. His eyes were as dark, his nose narrow and straight. The way his black hair was brushed back made his forehead look strikingly high.

  Even without the mask, Red decided, Lord Vulpus had something of the wolf to him.

  "Nice to finally put a face to the voice," she smiled. "I don't think you're as bad as Losen made out."

  "Losen's opinion of me is not high." He sounded almost sad. "The old rivalries, you see. He takes them all so personally."

  "Rivalries?" Red felt an itch at her left shoulder, and she rubbed it absently. "Sorry, Wolfie, but I don't follow you. What did you do? Criticise his curtains in a former life?"

  A strange expression passed across the Cadosi's face, as though he had suddenly remembered something. "Of course," he whispered. "The off-worlder!"

  "What, I've got a reputation already? News travels fast in this place!"

  "Sometimes, my lady, it's the only thing that does." He chuckled, and Red saw to her surprise that his canine teeth were quite long and pointed. Not up to the standard of her own fangs, of course, but certainly noticeable.

  Suddenly she wanted to be out of the gallery, and its lines of dead Magisters. Their stares were making her skull throb. Her shoulder felt as though someone had a hot needle in it, and beads of sweat were beginning to prick her brow. The good mood she had attained back in Losen's villa was starting to fade, leaving her feeling humid and ill.

  She turned her back on Vulpus and began to walk, quickly, towards the doorway at the far end of the hall. The Cadosi called out after her, once, but she ignored him, just ran to the door and tugged it open.

  Coolness, damp and delicious, washed over her from beyond.

  Beyond the gallery was a fountain court, a broad disc of blindingly white marble surrounded by a low wall. At its centre was a pool of bright, clear water, set rushing and leaping by the fountains within, and in the very heart of the place reared an immense golden statue.

  The place was exquisite, but its setting was ever more so. Beyond the pillared wall lay kilometres of open parkland.

  Red padded inside, eyes wide with wonder. She was not alone here - Magadani, plainly refugees from the Masque, sprawled about her on stone benches - but she ignored them, walking past the pool to the far edge of the circle, and leaning out over the wall. Below her, trees swayed in an artificial wind.

  "The flooring has been cut away in this area," said Vulpus quietly. He had stepped up behind her, his footfalls masked by the crystalline sound of the fountains. "All around this court, around the Masque hall, everywhere. The forests you see are maintained on the next stratum down, with no supporting pillar to mar the view. That has been built into the Masque hall itself."

  Red just stared down at it, feeling the breeze ruffling her hair, cooling the sweat on her brow. "Why? I don't understand, Vulpus. This is incredible, the amount of work to make this. Why not just go outside?"

  "The outside is toxic, my lady. Lethal. We all live here because it's the only we place we can live."

  She snapped around on him, aghast. "You mean the air's poisonous?"

  Vulpus smiled grimly. "If only it were something that easily overcome. But no, my lady, the surface of Magadan is tainted, in the foulest way."

  "I don't-"

  "Disease, my dear. Plague. The ground is seething with it, the air a drifting sea of spores. Only the Prime himself knows how the first of us survived here, but the only way we can live now is by sealing ourselves away in the Keep. Anyone who walks outside must do so in protective clothing, and then undergo weeks of decontamination upon their return."

  Red shuddered, feeling unholy itches crawl up and down her spine. All the time she had spent trying to get away from this place, not knowing that the world outside those vast windows was boiling with hungry bacteria. "Bloody hell, Wolfie! That's awful! Has it always been like that?"

  "As far as anyone knows." Vulpus pointed up at the statue, waiting until Red had turned back to it to continue. "You see him? That is the man we call the Father, the Prime Magister. He brought us here, over a thousand years ago; found the richest planet in the galaxy and gave it to us as a gift." He snorted derisively. "His great bequest to us was a poisoned chalice - he trapped us on a plague world. The greater part of our heritage is wondering what it was our ancestors did to upset him so much."

  Red remembered the row of paintings back in the gallery, the parade of long-dead Magisters. Each of them had been holding a human skull. The gift of death.

  The golden form rearing above her was in the same stance, one hand gripping a walking cane, the other a jawless skull. It wore a flowing frock coat and ruffed shirt, and instead of a beard a drooping moustache outlined a full, slightly sneering mouth. The hair was long and straight, framing a gaunt, angular face.

  Red squinted up at the carved man. Once again, some weird recognition was tickling the back of her mind, just as it had done when she gazed up at those painted despots.

  Or in fact at Vulpus. What was it that these people reminded her of?

  It was a distracting, worrying feeling, drawing her attention away from the reason she had led Vulpus on this dance. She shook herself. "You could leave. You've got starships, Wolfie. That's how I got here, remember?"

  "Perhaps we could, but the Magister controls all space travel, and he fears the universe. Even the domini are not free in the Keep. The terror of disease holds us here, in our citadels, unless the Magister or the Board of Arch-Domini sanction it."

  Red could well understand that. Sealed a
way for hundreds of years, the Magadani would be a prime target for disease. An alien infection could run riot in a place like this. "So there's no other settlements at all?"

  "There are none. Why would there be? Everything we need is here."

  Red gazed out over verdant grass and swaying treetops, and could only agree. The Magadani had built themselves a world inside these towers.

  She turned away from the wall, and gazed back up at the statue. As she did the tickling behind her eyes came back, that sudden, dislocating sense of recognition. It was the same as she had felt back in the gallery, from the prior Magisters. But now she could see that she had recognised them only because they had fashioned themselves after the Prime, the Father.

  She tried to imagine this man as he would have been in his lifetime, a thousand years ago. His hair dark, his gaze bright and cruel. A knot of tension began to form behind her sternum.

  "Vulpus?" she asked quietly. "This Prime bloke - what was his name?"

  "His name was Simeon," said Saleph Losen, striding towards her across the marble floor. He had a trio of sylphs with him, one wearing a breastplate very much like Red's. A guard. "Sire Simeon of Isis, Prime Magister of Magadan, and a damned fool."

  There were gasps at that, from the Magadani ranged around the fountain court, but Red barely heard them. She was staring at Losen, her heart bouncing inside her chest like a maddened animal. "Isis," she whispered.

  "You whelp," Vulpus was sneering. "Still running errands for that old pederast Brakkeri?"

  "And speaking of damned fools, here's Vaide Sorrelier. What are you up to this time, Vaide? Testing your pathetic powers of seduction one more time, or just tasting the fruit before you start juicing it?"

  Vulpus spat back some threat or insult, but Red didn't even notice what the man was saying. She was still staring up at the statue, at the chiselled, golden face of Sire Simeon of Isis.

  Or, as he had called himself when Durham Red knew him, Simon D'Isis, the Gothking.