“We’d only need one shuttle.”
“We’d still have a hell of a time explaining to those lovely Jaddians why it is we’re walking off with one of their prisoners.” Hands still in her hair, she slung her leg down and propped herself against the table. “Why am I even listening to this? I should be prepping my people for fugue and the jump out-system . . .” Her words trailed off, and she looked wistfully away past where Valka stood, as if through some window only she could see. “Find honest work to do. Sure there’s got to be some little colony that wants protecting, times like they are. A nice security gig, a bit of guard duty.”
“You don’t mean that,” I chided, attempting a smile. “Guard duty? Orbital defense? You’d be bored inside a fortnight.”
Otavia snorted, crossed her arms. “Might do. But tell me this, Empire-man. How is it you’re expecting to pay for all this? I know where my payout was coming from, and it’s not you.”
It was all I could do not to bite my lip. The money had come from the Legion coffers, dispensed to our Norman auxiliaries via Bassander’s signifer. I had nothing. Whatever assets had been mine as a scion of House Marlowe were gone, stripped from me by my father when he dowered me to House Mataro. Whatever entitlements I’d possessed were either stripped or granted the Count of Emesh as my future father-in-law. I never bothered to discover which it was. In any case . . .
“You’re right,” I said honestly. Leaning in, I flattened one hand against the tabletop. “I’m not the money, but I’m not asking you to take me to Vorgossos. Just as far as backspace. To March Station or wherever we’re going.”
“And to storm an Imperial destroyer for some hare-brained heist that’s sure to get us killed.”
“No one said anything about storming anything,” I said. “I was thinking infiltrate. I’m at home on the Balmung, Switch is there. Send me with Siran and Crim—a couple others—I’ll be in and out with Tanaran before Jinan even notices.”
“What about the others?” Otavia asked, and there was a note of kindness in her voice I did not expect.
“What?”
“Old Pallino and the others you brought with you from Emesh.”
The words choked off before I could find them. And like I’d done with Jinan already, I let them go in my heart. “They’ll be happier on some other road,” I said, more to assuage the guilt in my heart than out of any felt truth, though I would prove right in the end. “They can stay with Bassander. The worst he’ll do is cut them loose, leave them on Coritani or some world along the way.”
The Norman woman eyed me from under furrowed brows. “You’re good with that?”
I bobbed my head. “Switch is coming, and Siran’s here . . . a few of the others. Pallino deserves peace. He’s lived long enough.”
“I’m not sure he’d agree.”
That pulled a rough laugh from me, and I agreed. I did not mention that Switch had already gone to the trouble of getting those of my effects I would not be parted from off of the Pharaoh—his old lover Etienne had helped with that—and that they were even now sitting unlooked for in the Balmung’s docking bay among the ammunition and the ration bars and the spare seedstock for the hydroponics station.
I don’t like it, Switch had said on the Balmung. Leaving Jinan and the rest behind. Don’t feel right, Had. I hadn’t liked it either, and Switch only relented after I wore him down. Don’t feel right, he’d said again, turning on our folk.
“Hadrian?” Otavia asked. “Are you listening?”
“I’m sorry?”
“I asked how you planned on pulling off this miracle,” she repeated. “Those pods weigh a good half ton. You’re not going to get Switch to carry it for you, and I think someone will notice if you turn off the suppression fields and try to float it out.”
Valka took a half step forward, folded posture loosening slightly. “You’re going to wake it up.”
Otavia’s face blanched. “What?”
Innocent, I spread my hands. “We’ll move a lot faster.”
The Norman captain’s face contorted into a look of the utmost horror and disgust. “You want to wake up that . . . that thing? On my ship?” she spluttered, looking to Valka for support, but none was forthcoming, not from the xenologist. “For free?”
“I can’t promise money. Not right now,” I said. “But I need your help, Otavia. Please.” She looked away, and I could see the beads of an abacus flickering in deep eyes as she chewed the inside of her cheek. “Have we not been friends?”
That stirred her, and she raised her eyebrows. “Oh, we’re friends, Marlowe, but I can’t fuel the Mistral with friendship.”
“I know,” I said. “I know. When we were in council you said it was your worlds that were taking the brunt of this war. Norman worlds. I still think I can stop it, but I need that xenobite on the Balmung, and I need a ship, and right now you’re the one who can give me that.” The captain thought this over, face downcast, fingers picking at some spot on the console I could not see. It was my turn to jog a response from her. “Would you do it for me?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Are you calling in our debt?”
I did not like to phrase it that way.
“I told you,” I replied, “after Bordelon. You don’t owe me anything. I am asking for your help. If you can’t give it, I understand.” I was entitled to nothing. I’d learned that in Borosevo. Everything we receive is a kind of gift, if we do not take it for ourselves. I had rid Captain Corvo of her monstrous commander and spared her life at Pharos. Were I still the boy I’d been, I would have said she owed me for my mercy. But mercy that expects repayment is no mercy at all, nor is a friendship truly a friendship that stands on debt and gratitude.
So I hoped, and ignored the stoic whispering in my soul: Hope is a cloud.
It is well that the human mind sees only a little of the world, and better that it is bounded by our petty senses. Had Otavia known the weight and number of the souls that hung on her words—truly hung on them—she might have bitten off her own tongue. Had I known what I asked, I would have done. Yet there were but the three of us in the close space, and so she took a deep breath. “All right. Who do you need?”
“From here? Siran, Crim—Ilex if you can spare her.”
“Both of my lieutenants?”
“Just the first two, then. Them and a pilot officer and this ship ready to go the minute our shuttle clamps in. I don’t think Bassander’d use the Pharaoh’s artillery but I’m not going to risk it any longer than I have to.” I called a hand to my forehead. “And a medtech. I think I can run a thaw on the pod but I want to be sure. Has Okoyo transferred over here?”
“No.” But Otavia was nodding, chewing on her cheek again. “You have to wait until my people are all secure on the Mistral.”
“If we do, we’ll lose any benefit the chaos might give us.”
“I don’t care,” she said, “I’m not stranding anyone with that stiff-necked cockatrice of a captain.”
Ducking my head, I said I understood.
“And I don’t like letting that . . . that alien aboard.”
“You haven’t met it,” I said, defensive. Otavia didn’t look convinced. “If we have to confine it to a cabin, we will.”
She made a small noise of assent, and I did not press her further.
It had gone as well as I’d hoped. Now I had to see it through. We agreed on a time, set forth some few details. We would launch with the last wave of shuttles from the Mistral, arriving with those few Legion and Jaddian troops transferring back to their proper ships before those same shuttles took the last few frozen Normans back to the Mistral. Thence I would make for the cubiculum and with Okoyo’s help thaw out the Cielcin, Tanaran. I could see it in my mind’s eye already: the violet suspension fluid running out, the black blood and life restored to the Pale creature amid the frost and the dimness.
“
You’ve overlooked the cameras,” Valka said. I almost jumped clean out of my skin. She’d gone so quiet I’d almost forgotten she was there. Noticing this, she smiled, baring her teeth in that wicked way she had. “Ship’s security will be on you in minutes once they see what you’re up to.”
“That’s why I wanted Ilex,” I said, “but Crim will be a bit more use if it comes to blows, so . . .”
Valka brushed her fringe back behind her ear and said, “I’ll go.” I froze, caught as a moving image is between frames. Valka was a difficulty, a spot in the human universe that lensed my effort and perception as a star bends light, by which I mean I was afraid to ask her—so afraid I’d not even considered the possibility that I might ask her. “I can knock out the cameras from the shuttle, I think.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. The doctor’s face drew into the makings of a scowl. She made an unconscious gesture for the implanted micro-computer hidden at the base of her skull, and I raised a defensive hand. “I’m not questioning your abilities, I’m just . . . I thought you were leaving?” I gestured at the room around us, indicating her presence aboard the Mistral and not on either of the ships bound for the fleet.
She settled herself into one of the chairs between Otavia and myself, her sharp face breaking into a bloody smile. “What was it you said? Damn the Empire? Besides,” and here she folded her hands upon the tabletop, “’twill get me my time with the Cielcin. So I’m in.”
I drew in a long, ramifying breath and felt myself strengthened by each atom of it. “Right!” I exclaimed, clapping my hands. “This is going to be fun!” I had to smile, to try to make myself feel something other than the quiet, crashing panic of the necessity for action.
The faces of both women darkened, and the captain said, “You call this fun?”
“Hadrian has a strange idea of fun,” Valka put in, and from the way her eyes narrowed, I wondered if she was remembering my duel in Borosevo, or when she had helped me with Uvanari and the Cielcin.
Setting my jaw, I forced myself to smile. “Oh no,” I said, “it’s going to be fun.”
CHAPTER 15
THE FIRST TREASON
SWITCH MET US AS we landed in the bustling cargo bay. About us, the final trio of shuttles were making ready to depart with the last of the Norman auxiliaries, supervised by Bassander’s legionnaires—bald-headed and in black fatigues. I wore my long coat slung over my shoulders, and beneath it fingered the catch that would activate my body shield.
“These mine?” I asked, indicating a footlocker and a couple of bags stacked against the fueling console for one of the Sparrowhawk lighters bracketed into the ceiling above. Without waiting for an answer, I added, “And did you find that mantle?”
The red-haired lictor seized the smallest packet from the pile and tossed it to me without looking. “Yeah.” I turned the cloak over in my hands. Far from a perfect disguise, but it might save us an odd glance or two when we returned this way with the towering xenobite in tow.
That loading bay crouched at the rear of the Balmung, beneath the primary drive cluster, and its massive doors opened out the rear. It stretched for nearly two hundred yards, and was nearly fifty deep, with a full wing of lightercraft accessible by gantries above, and room enough for several shuttles to alight upon the gleaming black deck.
Turning to the young pilot officer and gesturing at the crates Switch had left upon a depowered float palette, I said, “You get these on board.” I glanced round at my companions. At Valka, cold and comfortable—her strange eyes far away; at Crim and Siran in matching Red Company fatigues; at Doctor Okoyo fidgeting with her medical kit; at the two other soldiers Captain Corvo had given me, brimming with nervous tension. “You”—I pointed to one of them, a pale girl with a heavy jaw and serious eyes—“stay with the pilot, keep the engines primed. Get everything loaded.” I turned my eyes on the other. “You go with Siran and the lieutenant.” And to Siran and Crim I asked, “Know where you’re going?”
“Way ahead of you,” Siran replied.
“Go on then,” then more loudly, to be sure those nearby heard, “get the rest of what’s going with the Normans and get it on board.” Siran saluted and she and the others hurried toward the square door and the open airlock that led into the longitudinal hall.
Valka stepped forward and, placing a hand on my arm, said, “I’m going to get what’s left of my things from my cabin.” And she moved off, following Siran and Crim into the hall, leaving me with Switch and the doctor. What Valka was doing she could do from anywhere, with that Tavrosi computer lurking at the bottom of her skull. Better to split up, divide attention, dilute suspicion. We were all friends here.
“Beware Greeks bearing gifts,” I said to myself in the Classical English, thinking of my mother’s family.
“What?” Switch asked.
“Nothing,” I replied shortly. “Careful with that!” I called to the pilot officer, making a show of our presence so as not to be too quiet.
The woman blurted an apology, and I smiled to soften the words.
The dock master, a gray plebeian with thinning hair, hurried over. “Lord Marlowe! What’s all this?” He gestured at the crates containing my effects, eyes darting from myself to Switch. “You’re not going with the Normans, to be sure?”
“To be sure, officer,” I said, clapping the man jovially on the shoulder. “I’m returning my effects to the Pharaoh before we make the jump to Coritani. Just making a stop over on the Mistral; some of my myrmidons are leaving us.”
The man’s watery eyes widened, and to Switch he said, “Not you, William? Or the old centurion?” I was always startled to hear Switch’s right name, but the officers all used it. Only those of us who came out of the Colosso on Emesh—and a few latter-day friends—yet called him Switch.
Switch shook his head. “Not me, Brux. And you’d have to throw Pallino out the airlock to get him to quit again.”
“That’s good, then,” the junior officer said. “Did Captain Azhar sign off on the manifest? I’ll need to approve it before I can clear you for departure.”
Over the man’s shoulder, I could see a group of black-garbed legionnaires helping a group of more wildly dressed Normans load the next shuttle over. How quickly the Red Company uniforms had vanished, as if the whole thing had been some dream. A holiday. And now it was over, the costumes and decorations packed away as if they had never been. Still, they laughed with one another, trading the hollow jokes that friends share at their final parting.
“Not yet,” I said, shaking myself. “But it’s me, so I’m doing things a little out of order. I’m off to see Jinan now, to . . . to say goodnight.”
“That how it is,” Brux said with a sly grin. “I hear you, Lord. I do. On your way, then.”
If he recognized the good doctor at my elbow, he said nothing, and went about his business. So we went about ours. Leaving the pilot officer with her guard, the three of us left by the starboard door and hurried along the hall, past the odd legionnaire going about her duties or the technician at his work. I kept the heavy mantle bundled under my arm, beneath my coat. Switch and Okoyo followed hard on my heels, so that I felt myself the leader of a phalanx—an effect amplified by the rattle of our bootheels, though they were not in step.
The outer wall angled in slightly, supported by ribs of black metal. Camera eyes lurked between them, and I had to trust that Valka had done her job. She must have done, for Crim and Siran certainly had made it to the cubiculum by that time, and nothing I saw in the faces of our fellow soldiers suggested that there was any trouble. The cubiculum itself was not far from the docking bay, though it was up several floors by way of a tight lift which might fit a dozen or so men without discomfort. It hummed gently as we ascended, and the curved doors hissed open.
The Balmung was smaller than the Pharaoh, a mere sixteen hundred meters to the flagship’s more than two-mile length. We had only to proceed
along a quarter of that length, and so pass the alcove where I had spoken to Valka so recently after my own awakening. But for a pair of turnings that would take us from this distal hall toward the center of the ship, it was as straight a shot as could be managed. I could feel the tension in my companions the way a minstrel knows his strings, for I felt it in myself. Not the sickness one feels before a trial, but a sensation like the veins in me had gone to hard plastic or to glass, or else were stretched wide as the nostrils are by effort—and my blood would not slow down. Still, I held myself to calm, invoking Gibson’s teachings.
Fear is a poison.
It was like the old bastard was there, walking beside me.
Both in fighting and in everyday life you should be determined, though calm. Who was it said that? It drifted to me then, and I mastered my breathing, rounding with my companions the last corner that would bring us to the cubiculum.
“Hadrian!”
No bullet could have pierced me so strongly as my name did then, and in that voice of all voices. I had, like the jilting lover of so many bad Eudoran masques, planned to leave without seeing her. She would never agree to come with me, would try to stop me if she could. Love her though I did, I could trust her no more.
Turning, I bowed my head and caught Switch by the arm. “You and the doctor go on,” I murmured, and stepping past him said, “Jinan! Hello!”
“Back from the Mistral?” she asked, referring to a conversation I’d had with her that morning—before I’d gone to see Otavia. “Did you convince Siran to stay with us?” She was still in her Red Company uniform: the belted tunic jacket, flared trousers, and high boots.
Wordless, I shook my head, and glancing over my shoulder saw Switch and Okoyo vanish around the bend. “No. After Ghen, she . . .” I trailed off, made a weak gesture with my left hand. The right stayed firmly beneath my coat, bundled round the mantle meant for Tanaran. I tried to quiet my suddenly galloping heart, but all of Gibson’s stoic aphorisms were useless in that moment, for she was not alone.
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