The Lesser Devil

by Christopher Ruocchio

  “You don’t!” Crispin blurted out. “You don’t have her!” It was a flimsy lie, and he was sure he didn’t sound as though he believed it, but he had stalled the woman. Pale eyes watched him, and he could feel the tightness of her smile like a wire at his throat. He thought of all the people cowering in the caves and the catacombs behind the old church. Hundreds of people. Thousands, maybe.

  He forced a weak laugh, trying to sound braver than he felt. “What’s so amusing?”

  Of course the peasants did not matter so much to him as Sabine did. She was his sister. But he thought once more of Jean-Louis, of Jacqui and Léon, of the boy Edmond—who like as not had died with Kyra, and of all the men who had given their lives fighting in the village below. They had taken him and his people in at great risk and no benefit to themselves. Because the Lord God commands His children to help those in need, Jean-Louis had said.

  Could Crispin do any less now?

  “You called it a sanctum,” Crispin said. “You stupid bitch. Don’t you realize what you’ve done?” He wormed his way forwards until at last he sat on the edge of the great armchair, boots at last on the ground. Lyra Orin-Natali simply stood there, clearly never having been called such a thing before in her life and at a loss for how to respond. “These aren’t my plebeians you’ve been killing. And that isn’t a Chantry sanctum. It’s a pagan church. This is a village of adorators. Museum Catholics. They’re under Imperial protection. You’ve attacked His Radiance’s own plebeians.” Far gone as she was up the well of her own hatred, Lyra Orin-Natali had the good grace to look afraid. Crispin was right. He knew he was. Hadrian and Sabine both had always been the better students, but he knew this much: the adorator cults were allowed their antique gods and practices by Imperial decree, were granted special dispensation to practice their medieval faiths by the Solar Throne itself. Violating the safety of an adorator community was an offense punishable in the harshest terms.

  Crispin had one chance: one chance to put the fear of Mother Earth and Emperor into this woman. “You’ve already brought the Inquisition down on you, madame. You should run while you still can.”

  The grand dame made a strangled noise and closed the gap between herself and Crispin in a half dozen machine-assisted strides. “Maybe I will!” she hissed, fumbling with something in her robes. Ancient though she was, she was still palatine, so Crispin should not have been shocked when she whipped her weighted cane like a prefect’s nightstick and clubbed Crispin across the face. As it was, he never saw it coming. He fell back into the chair with a cry and clenched his jaw, nursing a bitten tongue. “Maybe I’ll settle for you after all. Tell me.” He heard a dry rasp, and looking up saw the woman brandishing a white ceramic knife, and Crispin guessed the bite of it would be nearly as keen as highmatter. “Which piece should I send your father first?”

  Crispin chewed his injured tongue as he looked up as his attacker. Her guards were still more than ten paces away. When he didn’t answer her idiot question, she lashed him once more with her cane. The shaft cracked him just above the knee, but he would not cry out. He would not give her the satisfaction. “Cut off the finger with my signet ring on it.” He almost growled the words, “It’s tradition.” He was sorry to say that stun-numbness was wearing off, and the new pain in his head and knees was joined by the dull complaint of his arms and shoulders. There was blood in his mouth from his tongue. Angry now and petulant, he mixed it with as much saliva as he could muster and spat on Lyra’s fine white robes.

  The woman howled and struck him again with her cane. The blow took Crispin in the head, and his vision blurred, stretched as he fell back into the chair. He heard a clattering as of metal and wood on stone tile, and guessed that Lyra had dropped her cane. He heard the whine and thump of her prosthesis carrying her forward. A hand seized him by the front of his shirt, and he was surprised at the strength that still remained in her withered limbs. Was that the gift of her good, palatine breeding? Or some side effect of the awful pact she’d made when she wedded her ailing flesh to the machine that sustained her?

  Crispin felt the knife press against his throat and felt the warm wellspring of blood there. Just a minor wound. A trickle. He winced.

  “You’re lying!” Her breath smelled of stale wine. Sherry. Was she drunk? No. No, her grip was steady, and her eyes were clear and focused on his own. “You expect me to believe that? Adorators? Catholics?” Crispin did not challenge her. This time he was telling the truth, and once the truth is told, there is never anything more to say. Air hissed out from between teeth grayed by time. “If what you say is true … then I am a dead woman.” Her hand tightened in his shirt front.

  The point of the knife dug a little deeper, and Crispin groaned. He didn’t like his chances. Even if he could overpower the old woman without the use of his hands—possible, despite the knife at his throat—he had no way of besting her guards, no way of freeing his hands, no way of getting off the ship. He clenched his teeth. If this was to be the end, then so be it. Like as not he had saved his sister. That was enough. Sabine would make a better heir anyhow. She had the head for it.

  “Go on, then,” Crispin said, surprised at the acid in his voice. “Do it.”

  He could see the emotions playing out on the lines of Lyra Orin-Natali’s face. Her whole body shook, and the knife pressed against the soft place behind his chin. Eyes widened, then screwed tight as she adjusted the grip she had on his shirtfronts. The prosthesis on her chest whined, breathing for her, and the machine that buttressed her withered leg and held her steady groaned like a demon loosed from some pagan hell. Her fingernails bit into him like talons. Her breath rasped out her nose, nostrils stretched like those of a frightened horse.

  Frightened.

  Suddenly, Crispin did not see the old Orin woman at all. Neither a white witch nor a golden serpent held him in its jaws, and the talons that carved into his flesh were only fingernails. Whatever diabolic machinery she had permitted into her flesh, whatever sins against against Mother Earth and the children of Earth she had committed, here was only an old woman: desperate, angry, and alone.

  Crispin felt a twinge of pity for the grand dame, and his determined expression faltered. She was very close now, leaning over him, half-fallen, supported by the medical prosthetic. Her face was little more than a foot away from his own.

  There were tears in those pale eyes, and on that seamed face, and the lips of that mouth quivered.

  In the end—at the end—she was only an old woman. All that she was, all she might have been, all her rage and loss and love teetered on this final point, this final moment—as though her life was an upside-down pyramid, and now it threatened to fall.

  “What are you waiting for?” Crispin said. “If you’re going to do it, do it.” The hand that held his shirtfront tightened, the elbow locking in place. Lyra Orin-Natali bent a little closer, and the two of them regarded one another eye-to-eye. “You’re no killer,” he added, and turned his head. Lady Orin-Natali’s arm slackened, the knife dropped away from throat.

  She was still close.

  Crispin sat up sharply, tucking his chin so that when he headbutted Lady Orin-Natali, he did so with the top of his head. He felt something crunch, and was sure he’d broken her nose. Lyra howled, stumbling back. Crispin tried to stand, but his legs were still more stun-lame than he’d thought, and he fell to the floor, crushing his arms where they remained bound behind his back. Her guards came forward, and the physician who had checked her implants hurried to calm his mistress. Crispin saw blood—alarmingly red against the gray paleness of her skin, and he grinned viciously, watching her sway and swear, clutching her face with both hands. She had dropped the knife—where had it fallen? Not that it mattered; it was no good to him with his hands bound as they were.

  Adrenaline tightening the cords in his chest, Crispin could not guess just how long he lay there. Five seconds? Ten? It felt like thirty years.

  Get up. A voice urged him. Go again.

  How many
times had he heard those words before, sparring with Sir Felix when he had Hadrian were boys together? How many times had his older brother put him on the ground?

  Get up.

  He could remember lying on the floor in Hadrian’s room at Haspida, could remember the Summer Palace. Stay down! Hadrian had screamed. Stay down!

  Get up.

  A shadow fell across Crispin, a figure standing over him, dressed all in black.

  Get up, Crispin! He said in a voice that Crispin had not heard in more than thirty years. Hadrian stood above him, thin as a blade. His hands were in his pockets, in one of those long, black coats he always wore. Crispin had forgotten so much of what his brother had looked like: the knife-edged lines of his face; the pointed nose and chin; the slanting, saturnine eyebrows. Why was he here? Was this what the gladiators meant when they said they saw their lives flash before their eyes when Death came near? Were those Death’s feet coming towards him? Or only Lady Lyra’s guards? Hadrian looked down his nose at Crispin where he lay, but he smiled that crooked Marlowe smile. Get up, he said again. Fight, if you have something to fight for.

  Get up? Crispin thought. That wasn’t right. Hadrian had said Stay down!

  Get up! Hadrian snapped, and spurned the lesser devil with his toe. Crispin felt pain flower from his ribs, and Crispin realized that it wasn’t Hadrian standing over him at all, but one of Orin-Natali’s guards, black-clad and armored: more polished than the ragged, gray men who had attacked the village.

  Crispin rolled against the legs of his chair to escape a second kick.

  Get up!

  Crispin got up. With his hands still shackled behind his back, he launched himself at the Durantine guardsman, caught the man with his shoulder just beneath the fellow’s chin. Being plebeian, the other man was smaller, weaker. Crispin outmassed him by a good stone at least, and pushed him back and off his feet. He hit one of the decorative columns supporting the vaulted ceiling, and Crispin followed after, throwing a knee kick that caught the fellow in the soft matter of his stomach, knocking the wind from him. He slumped and slid down the pillar to the floor. Crispin stomped down on the man's groin, hoping the pain might knock him out.

  He did not see the stunner bolt that struck him.

  Chapter 16

  The Devil and the Fury

  He awoke to the noise of thunder and a clear sky. They had left him where he lay—and Crispin guessed that he had not been out long, for the man he had stomped out still slumped at the foot of the column to his right. Crispin was glad the other man had not awakened first. Tricky things, stunners. It was hard to predict whether one would be out for hours or minutes. Crispin tried to look round, but he could not find the Lady Orin-Natali or her physician. He could not even see one of the other guards.

  What was going on?

  Again the distant thunder spoke, and the ship beneath Crispin shook. An earthquake? Crispin sat up, sneering at himself. He was in a ship hundreds of feet above the ground. It wasn’t any sort of earthquake. He could not feel his legs, but he saw them move. He strained against his manacles. No joy. They wouldn’t budge. He lay there another long moment, flexing the muscles of his legs. There had to be some way to get free.

  The ship shook again. Were they preparing to take off? Was that sound the noise of the ship’s primary drives flaring up? Earth and Emperor, the heat of a fusion torch would be nearly as bad for the village and valley as any plasma bombardment, and the shockwave of those engines firing … the noise alone might kill everything within two miles. He had to get free. He had to. The others might come back at any moment—and why had they left him in the first place?

  The guard. The unconscious guard. He might have a key, or maybe the remote that controlled his bindings. It was better than nothing, and better still that Crispin make sure the fellow was down for good and all. Rather than risk standing in his hobbled state, Crispin pushed himself across the floor, skidding like a worm—like a snake himself—closer and closer to the downed man. His fingers were fat and stupid as he searched the man’s belt. Spare heatsinks for an absent plasma burner rolled away on the floor, and when the man groaned, Crispin reared up on his knees and headbutted the Durantine until he was quiet once again. Nothing in the belt. Pockets? Only some chewing candy and a tube of beeswax—not at all what he’d expected to find on such a man.

  “Black Earth take me,” he swore, and stopped a moment to give his aching wrists a rest.

  His fingers trailed against something cold and plastic. It was the man’s vambrace, the gauntlet bracketing his left arm. Crispin twisted to look down at it. The man’s terminal was working. Operating the thing upside down and behind his back was no easy task, but Crispin opened the thing’s menu and step by painful step checked through its various pages until … there!

  An icon like an antique key. They must not have intended any prisoners to get close enough to one of the guards and for long enough to use the terminal, because the icon was not locked. Crispin tapped the holograph with one finger, and at once his wrists sprang apart. There must have been an electromagnet in the binders keeping them together. Holding the man’s arm properly this time, Crispin found the command that loosed the individual manacles from his wrists.

  The ship shook again, and again Crispin heard the noise of thunder. “No,” he realized a moment later. “No no no!”

  Not thunder. Gunfire.

  They were shelling the village. “Sabine!” Crispin yelled. He tried to stand. His legs went out from under him as he rose, and he was glad his knees were still numb from the stunner blast. He stood again, fell against the bannister at the base of the graceful stair. He held it a moment, willing the blood and nerves in his legs to function. Cursing himself, cursing House Orin, cursing his own father, Crispin staggered towards the great window. Twice more he nearly fell, and the press of the window glass against his hands was a great relief.

  The village was still there, the wheat fields and the church unburned. The black vessel shook again beneath his feet, and peering out and down the lofty side of the starcraft, Crispin saw a phalanx of black shapes moving against the wind; and where they passed he heard once more the noise of thunder. This time he saw the lightnings, too: plasma fire peppering the Orin ship’s shields. They were moving. The dark tower was rising, not under full fusion burn, but on its massive repulsors, climbing steadily into the upper airs.

  But too late.

  House Marlowe had come.

  Seeing this, Crispin pounded the glass and let out a yell. He raised his fist, exultant, the first and final fingers extended. He slapped the glass again, and as he watched, the Marlowe lighters swooped round, their single great wings tacking like sails; high and proud and tall against the afternoon sky, drive glows burning like coals. They were trying to deplete the Orin ship’s shields, he realized, doubtless planning to get a boarding craft limpeted to the hull. They would want to take the vessel intact rather than risk something so large and so volatile being destroyed so close to the surface. The main fusion drive blowing would be bad enough at this altitude, but Crispin was sure the ship had an antimatter reservoir aboard to fuel the warp drive. That much antimatter might blow a crater in the face of the world larger than the entire St. Maximus vale.

  But the ship was rising away from the vale. Beyond it was nothing but empty badlands and mountain forest for miles and miles. And above? Above there was only space. Did they know he was aboard? How could they know?

  He needed to leave.

  His legs were a bit steadier as he left the window, passing the chair and the unconscious man on the floor. The door was locked. Earth only knew how many inches of bulkhead and elegant wood paneling separated Crispin from the hall. The control panel beside it was locked, too, holographs flashing red denial at him. No wonder they hadn’t bothered to tie him up. Sumptuous though these chambers were, they were a cell as good as any other. He went back to the unconscious guard, searched his terminal for anything that might help. Nothing.

  Nothing. />
  The man had no weapons, either. Crispin hated himself for not having checked sooner. What if the bastard had come round while his back was turned? He banged on the door, shouting, “Hey! Hey!” in the hopes that someone outside might come looking. The ship rocked again, and Crispin yelled all the louder. After a few minutes of trying, he hurried back, climbing the stairs two at a time—glad to find his legs working again—and ran along the upper level, keeping one hand on the inward rail to steady himself. There was no second door, but he stopped a moment, and grinned.

  A suit of antique medieval-style armor stood beneath an oil painting of naked angels circling a bright star. The armor was a recreation, surely—an original Golden Age set such as this must be worth the price of a planet. But it had a shield … and a mace. Crispin hefted the antique weapon, gauged the balance. It might prove useless against the Durantines’ armor, but it was better than nothing. He returned to the door with it. If it was only wood, it might be just the thing.

  He swung.

  Wood paneling splinted, chips flying free. Crispin swung again.

  The wood was heavier than he thought: more than an inch thick, maybe more than two. He howled in frustration as the mace hit steel, and he knew he was trapped. He smashed the weapon down against an elegant bloodwood table. For a moment, he contemplated caving in the skull of the fellow still dozing at the far end of the room. He settled for beating the door again, for smashing the holograph plate beside it that controlled the door as the ship rattled once more.

  Then a miracle happened.

  Crispin did not believe in miracles.

  The blue-white point of sword thrust slowly through the surface of the door. Probing. Careful. It slipped upwards, then carved an arch and descended again, highmatter chewing through wood and metal alike without effort, the hydrogen-fine edge of the blade sliding neatly between molecules, paring one from another. Crispin leaped back, hefting his mace, ready for violence should violence come.