“No, you listen.” Dark eyes opened. Not releasing my wrist, she pressed on. “Bassander . . . Bassander is right. We should return to the fleet with our new intelligence. At the very least they may wish to send ships to all these Extrasolarian outposts. It will save the time of searching them all.”
“But we know it’s March Station,” I said, looking over my shoulder at the red markers drifting in the midst of the holograph.
“Based on the words of a criminal homunculus,” Bassander said. Without looking, I felt Ilex twitch. She hated the word homunculus the way a man might hate the word primate, though both were quite correct. “That link is tenuous at best, Marlowe. Give it up.”
My wrist still firmly in Jinan’s grasp, I rounded on Bassander. “Every second we delay, you make yourself more right,” I hissed. “Each day, the Cielcin grow closer to another world. Are you so desperate to be right you’ll let those worlds burn to prove me wrong? Let me go, Lin. Let me do my part, for Earth’s sake.”
“Hadrian,” Jinan said, “please.”
The breath came hard in me, and I felt my nostrils flare. It took every ounce of Gibson’s stoic philosophy to keep me from rounding on Jinan and screaming. No one spoke. I was at the focus of five pairs of eyes. I might as well have been the target for five lasers, so outgunned was I. Neither Otavia nor Ilex spoke, though they might have come to my aid. They had themselves to think of, and quiet now meant they might fly beneath Bassander’s notice for the moment and so come out of this advantaged. I did not blame them.
I was not angry. The emotion I felt as gorge in the back of my throat was something else entirely. Not anxiety. Some feeling at once overwhelming and eminently rational.
Disgust.
Teeth bare, I circled where I stood, taking them all in—unfairly; Ilex and Otavia had done nothing wrong. “Is this it?” I rounded on Bassander, tugging my hand free. “We’re to slink off to Coritani empty-handed and mourn our dead? The men whose lives we’ve wasted?”
“Captain,” Bassander Lin said shortly, turning to Prisca Greenlaw at his elbow. “Remove Lord Marlowe to his chambers. He’s in considerable distress.”
The blond lieutenant rounded the desk, raising one hand to guide me from the cabin. Bassander half-turned, dismissing me, and glanced at the bank of flickering security feeds on the wall behind him.
“Considerable distress?” I repeated, taking a step away from Greenlaw as she approached. “You’re destroying my company. Of course I’m distressed.”
Bassander turned back. “Your company? Yours? Need I remind you, Lord Marlowe, that this company is a fiction meant to aid us in barbarian lands? There is no company. Lieutenant!” He directed the last word to Greenlaw, who advanced again, murmuring something about coming along now in a tone that seemed oddly conciliatory, coming from her.
“Then, if there is no company,” Otavia Corvo said, speaking for the first time in a long moment, “I cannot have contracted with them.” Her words stalled Greenlaw a moment. The tall Norman crossed her arms. “I will take my ship and my people and go.”
“Your ship?” Lin repeated, rounding on her. “You are captain of the Mistral by my sufferance, Norman. The ship is Imperial property by right of conquest. You have no right . . .”
Otavia rode over him. “I will return those of your people aboard my ship to you at once, of course. And we will return those Norman personnel serving aboard the Balmung and the Pharaoh before you return to your fleet—provided they wish to leave your service. Which they will.”
“Return? Provided they . . . ?” Bassander said stupidly. Shaking his head, he gathered himself. “You would declare war on the Imperium? Commandeer one of her ships? This is not a battle you can win, Norman.”
Otavia’s hands drifted to her sides, very near to the phase disruptor she wore at her hip. “Call me Norman one more time, Empire-man, and I will show you what this Norman can do.”
“Enough!” Jinan snapped, moving between them. “We waste time! Bassander, let them take the ship. We lose nothing we did not have when we departed Emesh. Let the Normans decide if they will stay or go with Captain Corvo, but we cannot afford to fight one another.” Here she glanced at me, and even still I wonder if a part of my captain’s heart—which knew my own so well—knew what it was I intended, what I already had done. Greenlaw had forgotten me for a moment, distracted by the Norman Amazon’s words. “In this you and Hadrian are both right: every moment we delay we give advantage to the enemy. Whatever we do, we cannot do nothing, and we cannot afford to fight among ourselves.”
Bassander and Otavia glowered at one another. The captain still held Whent’s highmatter sword, the blade stowed. Opposite Otavia’s sidearm, I did not like his chances, but if he could thumb his shield-belt before she could draw . . . I liked hers less.
At long last, Bassander nodded. The captain—Commodore Lin—fingered the corner of his desk, looking like the portrait of some lord long dead hung upon the wall of some dusty archive, stained by firelight. In a done voice he said, “Go then.”
Jinan spoke again. “It will take a day or two to survey all the active crew about their decisions.”
“Any still in fugue should be shuttled to the Mistral immediately,” Corvo said.
“Agreed.” Jinan spoke before Bassander could gainsay her. “Anything else?”
Otavia bared her teeth. Very like a Cielcin smile, that expression. Her face fixed on Bassander Lin, and I wondered what she’d say. Compensation? Severance pay, perhaps? Some other artifact taken from Whent and Bordelon’s men—they had been her compatriots, after all.
“An apology.”
CHAPTER 13
OBEDIENCE
I FELT LIKE A man balancing on a wire. The smallest failure in any direction but forward was set to plunge me down Bassander’s path: back to the war and some squalid end I could not see. I knew this: it would not be to retirement and a quiet life with Jinan on Ubar, and even if the captain kept his word and kept me from a kept life on Emesh, it would be to some poorer purpose than I envisioned for myself.
Was it greed then that motivated me? Pride? To be accounted a great hero of man, to be feted and honored by the Emperor as he who brought peace to the galaxy? Or was it—as I then claimed—a thing done out of compassion? Compassion not only for human life, but for all? I cannot say. In part because it has been so long—almost fifteen hundred years of Earth since I stood in my cabin aboard the Pharaoh and weighed my chances—but because also there were parts of me that were alien to my waking mind. Ancient parts, parts we humans hold in common with the ape and the whale and lobster, which are older than our words. Than all words. I knew them not and so cannot speculate as to the depth of my motivations, or their source.
Suffice it to say I felt a tragic need to do something, and to define that doing for myself. I had a talent: I could speak with the enemy. And I had a chance to use that talent. And I had legitimized that chance—if tenuously—in speaking with Raine.
Politics is a dangerous game, and I played it once before to my great peril and benefit. On Emesh, with Valka’s help, I had escaped an arranged marriage and trouble with the Chantry and won my way offworld. I attribute this less to any particular genius on my part and more to a blind and scrambling pragmatism. House Mataro, the Jaddians, the Chantry, the Cielcin, the Legions. I had threaded a tight and winding way between them and emerged only somewhat burned.
As I sat on the edge of my bed in that starkly lit little room, I ran long fingers over the sparse pockmarked scars that stippled my left arm. Uvanari tried to kill me in the end, after its torment. Drops of molten lead had struck me from one of the torture implements the Chantry cathars had left to hand for use against their alien prisoner. The scars shone like slick craters in my pale skin. Like stars.
The price I’d paid for my cleverness.
With what would I pay this second time? Was it worth the price?
>
I had spoken to Raine Smythe, exchanged texts via telegraph from the Mistral, where Bassander was least likely to intercept. She’d offered me a paper shield. No comfort in extremis. She could not gainsay Bassander, whose orders came from Titus Hauptmann, himself her superior, but she might order me to disobedience all the same.
I ordered you to find Vorgossos, her message said. If I order you to ignore Hauptmann’s recall and obey me, it’s me they’ll court martial.
But I’ll have followed criminal orders, I replied.
That won’t matter if you succeed.
“Hadrian,” Gibson’s voice echoed out of time. “Name for me the Eight Forms of Obedience.”
As I had done years ago, again I recited, speaking to myself in the dark of my cabin. “Obedience out of fear of pain. Obedience out of fear of the other. Obedience out of love for the person of the hierarch. Obedience out of loyalty to the office of the hierarch. Obedience out of respect for the laws of men and of heaven. Obedience out of piety. Obedience out of compassion. Obedience out of devotion.” I said them over and over.
Which is highest? His rough voice turned within me. Which do you obey?
Obey, I thought, and thought in my father’s voice, and the word was like the howling of air from a shattered castle on a broken moon. My father, Lord Alistair Marlowe, the Butcher of Linon. There are two sorts of men. One hears an order from his better and obeys. The other sees order in himself and obeys that. All men obey something, even if it is only themselves.
I was not sure he was right, but I knew one thing: Bassander was only that first sort. He was a soldier, not a lord.
What motivated Bassander? Compassion? There was not a compassionate bone in the Mandari soldier’s body. Piety? Perhaps, though what passes for religion in our Imperium is—I have learned—a small and specious thing. In any case, I did not then believe that Bassander was pious, taking him for the sort of wind-up man preferred by the admiralty in their officers. It was loyalty, of course. Loyalty not to the person of his commanders, but to their ranks. Bassander required order more deeply than I knew. He depended on it to hold back the chaos in his own spirit, for there were demons there, as dwell within us all. In the Legion there was structure, order, law. His loyalty was a function of this dependence, this need. He obeyed the office of the hierarch, the structure of his legion. His captain, his tribune, the First Strategos.
To whom did I answer? What did I obey?
CHAPTER 14
CONSPIRACY
THUS THE BREAKING OF our company was set in motion, and between the three ships went shuttle after shuttle as Norman mercenaries were separated from Imperial legionnaires and Jaddian aljanhi alike. Between the distances and the time required for the unloading of gear and baggage the whole process was projected to take more than two days.
I made discreet effort to spirit away those of my possessions I would not be parted with: my clothes and combat armor, the red glasses that had survived all the way out of Emesh, the dinted myrmidon’s helmet, and the washing basin Jinan had given me. And my journals, of course. There were five by then, ranging in size from a folio more than a cubit high to a pocketbook no larger than the palm of my hand. Other leaves there were stuffed between their pages, depicting charcoal sketches and ink of men and cities and other things I’d drawn. They were my proudest possessions, save perhaps only my sword.
But I had no guarantee that there was a place for them on the Mistral, and so under the pretense of an inspection of the exchange I rode in the back of a shuttle carrying some dozen of the frozen mercenaries over from the Pharaoh to their new berths on the smaller Uhran-built ship.
I went alone, leaving Switch to other devices, and once the flight officers had cleared our docking I climbed up the umbilicus and followed the hall past the gallery where I’d met with Siran. The hall beyond was round as the tubes of the Quiet ruins on Emesh, though white where that strange place was black, with padded rings every few feet and brackets to assist in the event the suppression fields were turned off. I had to push past boxes left stacked in the hall, and acknowledged those as stopped to greet me. But I did not stay.
I’d foregone the crimson Red Company uniform—judging it a mistake in that moment, for my purposes, though I kept the high black boots. The rest of my kit was black, such as I had worn down to the planet, and I wore my shield-belt and Olorin’s sword openly about my hips above the short tunic. My old coat I wore over all. Very dark gray it was, a gift from the household of Count Mataro when I’d left their capital after my disastrous duel. It trailed after me, flapping about my calves as I went.
“Ho, boss!” Crim’s voice called from a side passage.
Stopping, I turned and saw the foederatus emerge from a room behind me. The shadow of weariness darkened the pits of his eyes, but he smiled and smoothed his unruly hair as best he could. In a quiet voice he asked, “Why are you here?”
I’d no reason to lie, not here. “I’m looking for the captain.”
“She’s in the ready room with Doctor Onderra,” Crim said at once. “Is it true we’re parting ways? You’ve been recalled?”
I ignored the question, asking instead, “Valka is here?”
“She means to stay with us,” Crim said, his smile widening just a little. “Something about being done with barbarians and . . . I’m not going to try and repeat her words, sir.”
“Valka’s leaving?” I said, stunned. It made sense. She was no soldier and had no love for the Empire, and had only held on for the promise of a meeting with the xenobites and an answer to her mysteries. An odd pit like an ulcer grew at once in my stomach, and I nodded my slow understanding. A moment later it was gone, banished by need and the next thought. “Where did you say they were?”
“Ready room, lord.”
“Very good.” And so I hurried off without another word.
The ready room lay just off an annex that accessed the bridge and the primary airlock far to the bow. It opened at my handprint and I stepped through the circular door to a small, low-ceilinged room whose roof arced away with the curve of the hull. Valka and the captain turned as I entered, and I took it as a compliment when both their eyes widened in surprise. Before either of them could speak, I said, “Captain, I wish to hire you.”
Otavia Corvo—dressed only in exercise gear, her golden hair pulled back from her teak face—frowned darkly as she said, “What?”
I waited for the heavy bulkhead door to hiss shut behind me before I said, “I want to go to March Station.”
The silence that followed might have out-sat eternity if Valka had not said, “What about Bassander’s orders?”
“Damn the orders. Damn Bassander,” I spat back, feeling hot all at once. I planted my legs apart and faced Otavia square across the low metal console table. “And damn the Empire if they get in my way.” Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw Valka compress her lips and nod ever so slightly.
But I focused on Otavia, who settled into a low armchair bolted to the floor opposite me. As I myself was wont to do she tossed a leg over the arm of that chair, emanating a casual strength from every Olympian curve. She watched me a long moment, eyes gone narrow. At last she asked, “What else?”
Valka laughed, and I said, “I’m sorry?”
“What else do you need?” Otavia asked, brushing a crooked strand of her bleached hair from her face. “Not just a taxi service, I’m sure.”
I spoke without hesitation. “I need help taking the Cielcin from the Balmung. Today.”
“Today?” the captain repeated, incredulous. “Are you insane? We’d never get on board.”
I shook my head, took the seat opposite her with a sidelong glance at Valka, who remained standing by the far wall, arms crossed, as if deep in thought. “There are shuttles passing between all three ships right now, if we sent three of the larger ones over to the Balmung, we might be able to come away with
. . . six? Seven of the fugue units? You have hookups in the hold here. There’s room.”
“And how do you expect to carry out six of those fugue pods without your girl noticing?” Otavia asked. Stopping, she raised her eyebrows. “Come to think on it, why aren’t you having this conversation with Jinan?”
A part of me crumpled then as if Otavia had taken an ax to it. I averted my eyes. “You heard her at the meeting. Do you really think she’d listen to me?” I’d turned the wrong way. Valka was staring at me. Those relentless gold eyes peeled the skin from me. I looked away again. “I tried speaking to her. Many times. She won’t listen.” Something dry and hairy crouched at the back of my mouth, and I swallowed. “Jinan and I are done. She’ll have to return to her people when we return to the fleet.”
“Done?” Valka said, speaking up. “Does Jinan know this?”
“Jinan did this,” I said, surprised by the venom in my voice. I did not have to look at her to see the sad smile on Valka’s face, the concern for a friend in pain.
Otavia offered no condolence or commiseration. “It won’t work. Even if I could get three cargo shuttles over to the Balmung without putting your girl’s hackles up or alerting that cocksucking Mandari friend of yours, there’s no way we could make off with those huge pods. Not if we had two shifts and a guarantee of privacy.”
“One then,” I said at once. I’d planned for this, but had wanted to start big. “Just the nobile, Tanaran.”
A thin line formed between Otavia’s brows, and, irritable, she ran fingers through her floating hair. “That might do . . .” I could have grinned. I’d counted on her refusing to make off with multiple Cielcin. I’d started big, needed her to think she’d talked me down. I knew the way she thought. Otavia might have looked like a champion weightlifter, but she had a mind like a Rothsbank logothete and a Legion signifer all at once.
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