In Dark Service

by Stephen Hunt

  ‘Slowly,’ said the doctor. ‘I am having issues with superfluids and their tunnel barrier limits.’

  ‘As I said you would. But there are ways to overcome your difficulties…’

  ‘Suggestions from your other researchers?’

  ‘Is that jealousy I detect, Doctor? Our future glories are far too bright to share with a single house,’ said Apolleon. ‘Even one with the great Yair Horvak ensconced within its citadel.’ He waved perfunc­torily towards the others in the room. Their time here was at an end. The two guards stepped forward, expecting the young lady and her retinue to comply immediately. The cook left first, abandoning his cart and the room a little too eagerly.

  Duncan glanced back towards the laboratory as they exited. ‘Is the doctor safe in there? Those two are not house troops.’

  ‘No,’ said Paetro, ‘but that is rather the point. Apolleon’s guards are hoodsmen – officers of the secret police.’

  ‘He’s not just another princeling, then?’

  Cassandra sniggered at the notion. ‘Ha! He’s far beyond that. Apolleon is chief of the secret service and the house’s most valuable ally. When my grandfather dies, the secret police’s support will be pivotal in deciding which of the emperor’s children shall ascend to the diamond throne.’

  Duncan thought of asking if Cassandra’s mother would seek that position for herself, but he bit down the question. He might as well have asked if a fish sought water to swim in. ‘I’d have expected him to be older.’

  ‘Apolleon’s rise has been the very definition of meteoric, lad,’ said Paetro. ‘As counsel to the emperor, his guidance is more valuable than anything your sweat ever dislodged from the sky mines. His advice is gold and that’s the truth.’

  Duncan gazed curiously back towards the now locked door. So what in the world’s he doing back there? Giving scientific counsel to one of the supposed greatest philosophers of the age?

  TWELVE

  PUNISHMENT DUTY

  Carter was surprised to discover that facing the disdain of most of the labourers on the station could lower his servitude even further. Carter might have wriggled out of being executed, but everyone on the station knew that he was as guilty of trying to escape as the workers who had died in the attempt. Now, he had been ostracised within the sky mines for having dared attempt an act everyone else was too cowardly and timid to try. Banished into internal exile for having brought collective punishment down on his barracks; he was a walking, living reminder of their cravenness. At times, it was only the slow smouldering hatred Carter felt for the people who had betrayed him that kept him alive. He was watched like a hawk now, in case he should attempt to escape again. He felt eyes on him constantly. Especially the supervisors among the old hands, the ones who had the most to suffer from losing face in front of the Vandians. The people for whom his persistence and ornery courage was the biggest slap in the face; a living rejoinder to their base survival in the mines for so long. And hiding among those ranks, Carter reckoned, were his traitors. They must suspect Carter knew his escape attempt had been betrayed. Maybe they were making their own plans to settle with him before he got around to taking his revenge. Carter grew careful, paranoid even. Trusting in no one, confiding in no one. He tasted his canteen for poison before he swigged his water. He swapped his bowl in the food hall with others when nobody was watching. He opened the blasting caps that were passed to him, checking they hadn’t been overcharged to ensure a nasty tunnelling accident. Sometimes, it was only the kindness of Kerge and Willow that gave him the strength to continue. The gask still examined walls and searched chambers for listening devices; machines that Carter knew he would never find. Betrayal in the sky mines walked on two legs, mouthing platitudes about sticking together and seeing the job done as best they could while they lived. No more trips to the surface to check the seismic sensors for Carter. He served his time at the dirty, dangerous end of mining work – blasting fresh tunnels and digging passages, praying cave-ins wouldn’t bury him. When Carter wasn’t putting his life on the line, he was given a grim new burden to fill his time. If there had been a caste lower than slave, his new duties would’ve been perfect for that status. Carter was ordered to retrieve dead miners’ bodies where they were killed, mangled, buried, blown up, or sometimes just dropped dead of sheer exhaustion – all hope bled from their existence. After their remains had been recovered, Carter wrapped the corpses for burial and then rolled them off the station’s roof, their bodies sent flapping towards the mist-covered ground below. Sometimes the dead had barrack mates who would attend, holding a simple, quick ceremony. More often than not, the slaves had nobody, and Carter would drag the shrouds to a rocky ramp raised on the roof for the express purpose of launching the dead into the fiery, smoke-filled void below. It felt to Carter as though he was consigning corpses to hell, but he knew that nothing that came after this could be as base and meaningless as the existence they’d endured prior to their deaths. A deliveryman for devils and stealers. That was what his life had become. One morning he arrived at the fever room to remove a body, a woman who had passed in the night. She had already been wrapped in the simple hemp sack flannelling the station’s grain was delivered in. Carter didn’t recognise her ancient withered face, staring lifelessly out from a circle of cloth. An old hand. Not one of the Weylanders. There was one other occupied bunk in the chamber; a wiry, thin man, his tattered slave’s tunic repaired so often that it was hard to tell where the original fabric began and the patching ended. He had been here the last few times Carter had visited; not getting better any time soon. He rose like a ghost, helping Carter lift the corpse by her wrapped legs.

  ‘You don’t have to do that.’

  ‘I knew her,’ he said, simply. ‘Nobody else left to stand for her here, now, apart from me.’

  ‘I can do the job,’ said Carter. ‘I’m used to it.’

  ‘One more thing,’ said the man, wheezing as they manoeuvred the shroud through the fever room’s door. ‘There’s always one more thing in the sky mines.’

  Carter knew how he felt, so he resigned himself to having company for what would pass for a funeral up top. It was strange, but he preferred ceremonies where it was just him and the body. Being alone seemed peaceful, almost as if he had known the deceased. As though the corpses were his friends. Wasn’t there one of the ethreaal who was meant to attend to souls as they passed from the mortal world to heaven? He couldn’t remember the angel’s name. His father’s sermons were lost in another time. Maybe Carter had missed his true calling back home? He should have been an undertaker’s apprentice, rather than buried out in the library hold.

  ‘Haven’t you heard?’ said Carter. ‘I’m the reason why half the station is on short rations. They say I tried to escape.’

  ‘You did? Well, good for you. But you went around it all wrong.’ He brushed the falling ash off the shroud. ‘This is the surest way to escape the sky mines.’

  They climbed the steep stairs to the station roof. ‘Nobody ever made it out then, the other way?’

  ‘Not in my time. Too few of us, too many Vandians in the miles between here and freedom.’

  ‘So how would you do this back home… burial, a cremation?’

  The man rested the body for a second and scratched his face; as though it had been so long it was hard for him to remember. ‘Sometimes a cremation. More often than not, if you knew it was your time, you just left your village and walked off into the winter wilds to lie down. What you left behind was a gift for the trees and the grass and the creatures that forage among them.’

  ‘That sounds lonely.’

  ‘No. It’s travelling. It’s how you arrive in the world and it’s how you leave.’

  That almost made sense to Carter. Just travelling.

  ‘You know how you can tell you’ve been in the sky mines too long?’ said the man.

  Carter stepped outside into the heat. Ash was falling, a thin layer of it kicking up with every step of his sandals, hot against his
toes. Marker flags flapped in the wind. ‘How do you tell?’

  ‘You last just long enough to see a different country being raided to fill your station with slaves. It was Persdad the skels used to attack, once upon a time. Our land’s north of the league by a few decades, along the caravan routes. Everyone in this station used to be Persdadian. But we were the last of them. Her and me. Just me, now.’

  They carried the body over the stone burial ramp. It was flat on top, a steep incline down to the rocky edge of the station. A metal plate to hold the body in place until it was time to commit the corpse into the sky. ‘Why did the skels stop raiding you?’

  ‘Started getting organised, I heard, from the last slaves to be taken. People watching out for skel carriers in the sky. Alert beacons positioned every fifty miles. Setting up ballistae in the big towns, manned day and night. I think the skels are leaving Persdad fallow, now, like a farmer sets aside a field. We had an empire too; at least, we obeyed our emperor’s couriers when they rode in. Just chariots and carts and spears. Nothing like Vandia here. They really do have an empire worthy of the name, don’t they?’

  Carter lifted the body to the top of the burial ramp. ‘They’re human, same as us. They can bleed and die.’

  ‘You’ll see, one day. There’ll be just a handful of Weylanders left. And then a Vandian slave ship will show up with a hold full of fresh meat; green workers brushing dust off their robes from a nation on the other side of Pellas you’ll be lucky you’ve even heard of. That’s how you’ll know you’ve overstayed your welcome in our floating paradise.’

  ‘Based on how many enemies I’ve made so far on the station, I doubt if I’ll be around that long,’ said Carter.

  ‘You’re a good man. I’ve seen how well you treat the bodies. Not like the others, just like rubbish to be tossed over the side. It’s a pity nobody will remember that, when the time of your reckoning comes. Our memories have already faded in the people we left behind. One day our family will pass, too, and the dark time when the skels raided will wane into legend. Eventually, even those legends will vanish. All into dust, all of it.’

  ‘I’m not a good man,’ said Carter. ‘People die around me.’

  ‘Open your eyes,’ said the man. ‘That’s what we’re in the sky mines for. That’s why we were taken. To give our lives to make the imperium eternal. To die in place of the Vandians who would have otherwise worked the mines. None of this is on you. What happens here would have happened with or without your personal misery swirling in the mix.’

  Carter made sure the shroud was tightly wrapped around the body. ‘What was her name?’

  ‘Jicole. You should have seen her back home. Quite a beauty. Cleverer than me, tougher too, in her way. She was going to be a harpist at the music academy. To hear her play was to think you had gone to heaven. I used to compose for her, on and off, and she would surprise me every time. Never was so much talent wasted in our sky-borne hell as the gifts of this woman.’

  ‘You got any words for her?’

  ‘Those will do.’

  Carter gripped the lever to lower the piece of iron at the top of the ramp. ‘Goodbye, then, Jicole. You’re well out of here, now.’

  He released the barrier and the body went tumbling down, propelled off the side, white smoke billowing around her, and then she was gone from sight.

  ‘She’s travelling, now,’ said the old man. ‘Travelling again.’

  Carter’s head began to throb, another of the cursed hallucinations that had been plaguing him since he’d escaped the stratovolcano. Mad, impossible visions of Vandia’s distant past flashed through his mind. Was he going crazy, or was this a mixture of hunger, overwork, and too long exposed to the strange, rare gases of the volcano? Perhaps I’m going insane? Could anyone blame me? He removed his hands from his forehead. A pair of rings had been left behind on the burial platform, simple wedding bands. The old man was gone. Carter looked over the side of the station’s edge; but billowing clouds had claimed the second body as readily as they had the first. There were no more of his people in the sky mines, now. Only Weylanders.

  Carter slumped by the burial ramp, gripping the rings tight enough in his palm to draw blood. The pain was real; reminding him he was still alive and this wasn’t a nightmare. He began to cry. Just travelling. That’s all. Just travelling.

  Jacob felt sick and guilty in equal measure, watching the massive cats tear into Sariel’s broken body, the bard’s corpse played with as if he was no more than a rag doll. From the grand duke’s viewing platform there came the sound of polite applause, as though the old vagrant had just finished one of his tall tales, rather than been savaged for the predators’ feast. The big cat which had ripped off Sariel’s arm discarded it in the sand, pacing restlessly while it growled towards the wooden palisade holding the prisoners. Well-fed, the creatures were all too similar to their human masters. This pride killed for amusement, not food.

  ‘I think the leather-skin can go next,’ called Major Alock from his chair beside the ruler. ‘With his poison spines, he might make more of a fight of it. Although I believe most gasks tend towards a pacifist disposition. What do you think, pastor, will your leather-skin friend give us a contest worthy of the name, or have you taught him to be a good little God-botherer? Is he going to turn the other cheek for you?’

  The major looked like he might renew his taunting, but his voice dropped away. Below in the arena, Sariel picked himself up. The bard’s clothes were badly ripped by his mauling, the stump of his right arm pumping blood. But not nearly enough of it, given his terrible injury, and what little there was of it as white and thick as cream. If his miraculous resurrection provided an implausible sight, it was as nothing compared to what Jacob saw below his torn clothes. Two broken white stumps protruded from his spine, as though he had once possessed a pair of massive wings crudely amputated from his back.

  ‘They have no taste for me!’ called Sariel, swaying, as though he had merely been pelted by rotten fruit by another unreceptive audience. He stumbled towards his missing limb, and picking it up with his left hand, re-attached it to the broken stump, where his skin appeared to ripple and seal around the wounded limb. ‘I warned you hellhated popinjays! The prince of players’ delicate flesh makes for an unpleasant repast.’

  A fierce howling rose from behind the wooden palisade, the gad prisoners going wild in a way that Jacob had never seen before, wailing and shaking the barrier, flinging their bodies about and leaping into the air. But this reaction was as nothing to the grand duke’s. He leapt out of his seat, screaming and pushing his bodyguards forward from their formation behind his chair. He shoved them in front of the viewing gallery’s armoured glass as though he expected Sariel to vault up and assassinate him.

  ‘Take them away!’ yelled the grand duke. ‘Lock them up, all of them, before that mangy devil’s flesh poisons my beauties! Bring me the diviners from their cages. Bring them before me now. NOW!’

  ‘Kill them all!’ argued Major Alock. ‘I don’t care what twisted people that thieving scoundrel belongs to. A couple of volleys into his skull will finish him off.’

  ‘It is the prophecy!’ yelled the grand duke, pushing the officer away. ‘I need to consult with my diviners.’

  ‘Prophecy?’ The major looked shaken by the sudden turn of events.

  ‘You fool! That mangy devil is Jok, the fallen angel. Can you not see it? Blood of milk, and wings that have been hacked away by the Land Mother as punishment for leading his kin in their unholy rebellion.’ The grand duke’s hand jabbed down towards Sariel, who was busy collecting his staff and ignoring the storm his unexpected survival had created. ‘Your arrival is not my end. I tell you this! I am the house and the house is me.’

  ‘Listen to me,’ Alock barked at the panicked ruler and his entour­age. ‘Kill them now! If you value the supply of resources provided to your country…’

  ‘You understand nothing of my country, our history,’ shrieked the grand duke. ‘Vandia will n
ot send its skyguard to intervene directly here. What is the imperium here? Nothing but the voices on the end of a crackling radio relay. Only sorcery may protect against sorcery.’

  Out on the sand the predators were prodded back by lances in the direction of the wall’s opening. The creature that had removed Sariel’s arm was having problems complying, however. It groaned and rolled over on the ground, shaking and trembling, trying to stand, but failing to find the strength to re-join its pride in slinking away.

  A fresh wave of panic rippled through the ranks of the ruler’s attendants. ‘You see!’ bayed the grand duke, as if he blamed the major for everything that had gone wrong with the morning. ‘It is just as it is written… And his flesh shall be poison in the mouth of the basest animal.’

  The grand duke retreated, leaving Alock arguing in vain for the Weylanders’ immediate execution with the few bodyguards and courtiers who weren’t retreating after their master. The major was still yelling when soldiers forced Jacob and the rest of the prisoners at spear point back towards the searing dungeons. The grand duke’s soldiers had a hard job of containing the gads. They had boiled over into a state of frenzy that no amount of coercion short of murder would be able to suppress. Jacob’s trip down the passage to the cells was like being caught in a riot, shoved and jostled from every side, the soldiers’ yells and threats barely audible over the gads’ clamour.

  Sheplar pulled at Sariel’s torn clothing as he was caught up in the mob. ‘What manner of man are you – did you have wings?’

  ‘Of course my people possess wings,’ said Sariel, as though the mountain aviator was a dolt for not realising such an evident truth. His face turned ashen and uncharacteristically grim at what was left of his memory of those times. ‘Mine were offered back as a cruel gift to me by the skel raiders, bloody saws clutched in the cursed hands that had just finished strangling my beloved. My people heal uncommonly fast, but our wings and our hearts may be easily broken and never repaired.’