“These aren’t him,” Valka said. “They’re his clients.”
I knew that she was wrong, but I did not have the stomach for argument. I knew where they kept the clients, a ways back behind us off the room with the obelisk and the bleeding statues. There were the dormitories and other facilities, for the clone children of the likes of Baron Song and the Duke of Milinda were raised as children and not kept waiting like cherries to be picked. I approached the nearest pod, and looking up beheld the face of a pale child—not yet an infant. How small it was! Its eyes were wide, unseeing, strangely gelatinous. Already I could see the black of them, the same black I had seen in the eyes of the demoniac Kharn. Among the ancient Victorians—a people for whom my own constellation was named—it was believed the eye could record the last image it saw, and that an optographer might extract that image and so divine the circumstances of the poor fellow’s death. I wondered what sort of image one might find in those eyes which had yet to see anything at all.
It was an absurd thought, made all the more absurd by the mounting sense of pressure I felt to be on our way. Whatever was happening to me—whatever had happened—we were still deep in the palace of the Undying. I turned from my examination of the gestating fetus above me and, gesturing to Valka, made to continue on. No sooner had I done so then I heard it, a low voice singing.
Wood and clay will wash away,
wash away, wash away,
Wood and clay will wash away,
my fair lady.
There was something strange about the words, and it took me a long, long moment to realize that they were sung in Classical English, the ancient language of the scholiasts and the Mericanii. “What is it?” Valka asked. I wasn’t sure if she knew the language, and put a finger to my lips before pointing my way across the room—past what looked like a parked industrial lifter the size of a tank.
Build it up with bricks and mortar,
bricks and mortar, bricks and mortar,
Build it up with bricks and mortar,
my fair lady.
“We don’t have far to go,” I whispered, relying on my vision. “If I’m right, it’s just ahead.” A good two hundred feet separated us from the exit, and I knew with a conviction I could not explain that I did not want to meet who or whatever was singing that ancient song.
Bricks and mortar will not stay,
will not stay, will not stay,
Bricks and mortar will not stay,
my fair lady.
Even as we moved to clear the floor, a piece of me paused, as if some other Hadrian turned back and frowned beneath the weight of my thoughts. It was a nursery rhyme, I realized. And why not? Grotesque as it was, we were in a nursery.
Build it up with iron and steel,
iron and steel, iron and steel,
Build it up with iron and steel,
my fair lady.
I cannot say why the children’s rhyme put such a holy terror in me, but I almost ran—such that it was only my desire to stay by Valka that kept me in my place beside her. We hurried past the parked bit of loading equipment—I noted the massive arm for retrieving the specimen pods from their storage place above our heads.
Iron and steel will bend and bow,
bend and bow, bend and bow,
Iron and steel will bend and bow,
my fair lady.
I froze—I swear—before the next words came. It was as if I were some ill-trained Eudoran actor anticipating his cue, for even as we crossed that ghastly hall I felt again the familiar sensation-of-eyes pressed against the back of my head.
“Oh! What’s this then?” The voice—deep as distant thunder—planted hooks deep in my back. “Intruders! Intruders in my Garden?”
I turned, thumbs hooked in the belt of my tunic so that each hand hung near to both sword and shield control. As I turned, I shifted my left foot so that I stood at an angle, forcing Valka behind me. If she objected she gave no sign.
There was no one there. The hall was empty but for the sleeping clone-children in their hanging pods and the parked lifter unit.
“Who’s there?” I demanded, shifting my hand to my sword.
“I should ask you the same, little man,” the voice replied. I felt my chest rattle, so deep was the sound of it. “Assassins, are you? Destroyers?”
To my horror, the lifter moved, and I saw it was no lifter at all. Eight black legs tall as I scuttled, the single massive boom arm rotating like the tail of a manticore I had once seen in the fighting pits on Monmara. Jets of steam issued from its sides as it rose.
I have stood on battlefields on half a hundred worlds, marched with our legions and beneath the tramping feet of their colossi. Those terrible engines, tall as houses, as hills marching into battle ahead of our hosts, seemed smaller to me than that creature of black steel, though they walked ten yards to a stride. Perhaps those giants of war were too large to be believed by some primitive mechanism of my being, or perhaps it was only that it seemed so large in that close chamber.
“You’ve come for the children!” The voice roared. Two arms extruded from the underside of the thorax—longer than any man’s—and lanced toward me. I lunged to one side, shouting for Valka to get out of the way. I did not thumb my shield, seeing no weapons its curtain might defend against. The thing’s hands closed on empty air, and I dove behind one of the columns that supported the unholy trees above our heads. I let my heavy coat slip from my shoulders, and took a moment to collect myself.
A memory forced itself on me, and I might have laughed. How often had I waited, just like so, behind a pillar in the Colosso ring on Emesh? How many dozen times?
“They’re fast,” the creature said, eight huge feet grinding on the polycarbide floor. “But rats are always fast.”
It knew where I was, and so there was no foolishness in shouting, “We only want to leave this place.”
“Leave it?” the thing repeated. “Leave it?” The huge boom arm came clattering around the pillar on my right. I dove left, skidding on the floor and twisting so that the machine would have to retract its arm before it could cross the floor to get to me. “You’ll leave by the rendering vats, little man. The children need to feed.”
Pivoting so that I stood facing the creature, I said, “Oh, I don’t think so.” In a single motion I drew Olorin’s sword, the hilt snapping clear from its magnetic clasp even as I extended the blade down and out to my side. Blue crystal flowed like water, shone like starlight on snow. Where was Valka?
The Exalted—for Exalted he must be—lurched toward me. It moved slowly, great legs almost punching the floor. I—who had faced azhdarchs and vampyromorphs in the Borosevo Colosso—stood resolute. The boom arm slammed down, and I checked forward so that its claws closed on air. I lunged with my blade, its point aimed at a protuberant spot on the beast’s black armor.
It bounced off.
The highmatter sword bounced off.
It was possible. I knew it was possible. Sharp as it was, highmatter could not sever atomic bonds, and the molecules in adamant and nanocarbon were so long and interwoven that I could not cut between them. I snarled, and knowing I could not go back, went forward, darting under and out between two of the Exalted’s massive legs. A moment after, too late, the beast dropped its weight, as if it meant to crush me. I struck one leg as I ran past, but the carapace there too was adamant and proof against my blade.
“Hadrian!”
A bolt of plasma—violet as my eyes—flashed past me. I could feel the air boil around me as it passed, see Valka standing legs apart and shoulders back, gun trained on the thing behind me.
The Exalted roared, “Fire! In my nursery?” The creature’s huge bulk shifted, rubberized peds thudding as it scuttled like an upset crab. I spun round just in time to block one grasping hand on the edge of my sword. Fingers harder
than steel and longer than even Tanaran’s closed about the highmatter blade. I saw it compress the exotic metal, the way a hand reshapes wet cement. I resisted, but for all my eugenic strength, I was not proof against hydraulics, against servos and pistons. The beast might have lifted me bodily from the floor, but it twisted its wrist, and I twisted with it, and would have fallen and dropped my sword had I not had a sudden flash of insight.
I turned off the blade.
Pale highmatter dissolved to smoke, and the arm hyperextended, revealing a ball-and-socket joint in the elbow between plates in the arm’s adamant carapace. Thinking of Sir Olorin, of the precise way he moved and the ease of it, I summoned forth the blade again—highmatter like a ray of moonlight on a night without a star—and clove downward in a vertical sweep that brought the pommel of my sword to my navel. It hit the inside of the creature’s forearm and slid along the adamant, slipping as if on glass, until the edge fell against the common material of the elbow joint.
Honest steel.
The arm clattered to the ground, and a jet of steam erupted from a vent on the creature’s back. Valka fired again, but the hydrogen plasma only left a smoking patch of darker black against the chimera’s skin. The chimera made an angry sound and retracted its damaged arm. A moment later the massive boom arm came sweeping around. It caught me in the side—how it didn’t shatter me I’ll never know—and I was knocked clean off my feet to skid twenty feet across the open floor.
“Oh, you are fun.” The Exalted made a hissing sound, turning its slow bulk one massive leg at a time. “Maybe I won’t take you to the rendering vats,” it said, advancing. “Maybe the Master will let me keep you. I could use a new pet.” It had no face I could see; the turret that passed for a head was featureless, an oblate lozenge perched to the fore of its mighty thorax. Yet I knew what expression went with that tone of voice. The leering, the tongue flitting over pointed teeth. I shook myself and tried to rise, pain blossoming beneath my left ribs. Dull, not sharp.
Nothing broken.
“Khun!” Valka shouted, slipping into her native Panthai. There was a burst of violet flame as a shot connected with the creature’s faceless turret. A full three seconds of irritable silence. Slowly, slowly, the Exalted swiveled its head.
“A matched set, is it?” it said, as if to itself. “Two . . . two two two . . . oh, this will be a joy.” Its one silvery hand flexed obscenely. “Think I’ll keep you both. The Master won’t mind.”
Valka shot it again. The behemoth did not even flinch.
Exhaling jets of steam from valves along its spine—sighing, almost—the Exalted swiveled its attention back to me. “Think I’ll carve out your prefrontal cortex, little man. Make an ape of you.” It pointed a threatening finger at me. “Turn you both naked in the Garden,” and here it rounded on Valka, “see how long you last.”
My vision went red a moment, and it took every ounce of strength and Gibson’s training to calm myself. Rage is blindness, I thought.
“Hadrian, get up!”
I got up.
With both hands I held my sword before me like a Nipponese kendoka, raised it like a Cathar at the executioner’s block. I expected the thing to charge at me, and recalling the legends I had heard of such unholy machines I expected that when it did it would move faster than my merely human eyes could track. But it advanced slowly, step after precise step, like a spider on a line. “I am so going to enjoy this,” it said.
“Hey!” Valka shouted, shooting the Exalted in its head-turret again. Hydrogen plasma cooled from violet to red invisibility, vanishing in the air like mist.
It did not break stride, the long, pincer-like fingers of its one remaining hand flexing as though they ached for something to seize. From the corner of my eye, I saw Valka raise her gun above her head. The Exalted ignored her—and why not? Her handgun had proved itself completely ineffectual. One of the machine’s legs slipped out from underneath it, and it stumbled.
“Get out of my head, woman!” It half-turned, and for a moment I feared it would rush at her.
Valka fired.
The Exalted screamed.
Glass melted. Shattered. Fell like rain. A child fell with it, white-limbed and red-haired, as unlike Kharn Sagara as any in the tree above. It smashed on the hard floor, broke like a china doll, like a melon.
The massive crab-demon machine forgot me entirely in that instant, rounded on the Tavrosi sorceress like a wounded bull. Turning, I saw a coldness in Valka’s face, as though the blood that ran in her like water were transmuted to nitrogen, and her eyes were like distant stars.
“Destroyers!” the Exalted flailed, trying to right itself as another of its legs flailed. “Murderers and usurpers!” Valka said nothing, but took aim again and fired. Another of the glowing pink bell jars above us shattered, and a girl-child—this one nearly full-grown—fell like a stone. She caught on the tangle of tubes and wires that threaded her flesh, hung by the hair like an abandoned marionette, dripping amniotic fluid to the unfeeling floor.
For a moment—only a moment—I saw Valka standing there unmoved. She was . . . like a statue of Justice Vengeant—of Death herself. She smiled a skull’s smile, all teeth. It was a grimace really. And then she was gone, diving away behind the nearest pillar and down the hall, eager to put distance between herself and the black metal behemoth.
She had bought me time and a distraction, and for her mettle and fire I loved her then, as I had not loved her in a long count of years. I did not shout as I charged, my Jaddian sword blazing like cold fire in my fist. The beast was distracted, and did not see me coming. I swept my sword down in a flat arc, the blue-white blade shearing through the other silver arm at the wrist. Infuriated, the Exalted lashed out with that arm, but I turned the blow on the edge of my blade. Ye Gods! The force of it! The bones of my arm rang with the impact, and I dodged forward. This time I sank the point of my blade as deep into the joint at the base of one of the creature’s massive arms. I twisted, and with my free hand swung about the leg to escape from beneath the beast before it tried again to crush me.
As I did, the leg flexed outward, skidding on the polished floor as the hip joint began to tear, leaking lubricant the color and consistency of warm milk. Where was Valka? I had lost her in the chaos and in the confusion of the fighting. The hulking machine struggled to turn, its lamed ped impeding its movement. Still, its massive boom arm circled round, whistling as it shocked the very air. I missed it only by the width of a hand, and only because I threw myself flat on the ground, my sword carving a deep notch into the floor.
I heard Valka shout something, but could not stop to reflect. I had the presence of mind to squeeze the twin triggers on my sword to banish the gleaming blade as I rolled away—just in time to avoid the smash of two of the chimera’s massive feet. Once I was out of the reach of the boom, I sprang to my feet, sword flashing once more to life, ready for the next attack.
It never came.
The huge beast had curled up its legs once more and crouched—knelt?—like a cataphract in the presence of the Emperor. Valka was still nowhere to be seen.
“Father Calvert, what is the meaning of this?” The voice was clear and cool. A woman’s voice, yet touched by the flush of girlhood. “Who are these people?”
“Intruders, dear child,” the Exalted said. “They murdered two of your siblings in their sleep. Methinks they mean to kill them all and yourselves.”
Footsteps sounded off to my left, and a young woman appeared from among the pillars, leading a child by the hand. Both had black hair, both bronze skin, both with the high cheekbones and almond eyes that marked them as Mandari or Nipponese. I did not lower my sword even as the children approached, stopped within spitting distance of the body of the dead child on the floor. The girl spoke. “Intruders? In Father’s Garden? That is not possible. They would not allow it!” I wondered who she meant, but kept careful watch, half-expect
ing Valka to appear from the shadows, gun raised.
As she spoke, the little boy looked round, and his eyes widened to see me, though he did not speak. He could not have been more than eight years old. Seeing those eyes I knew it was he I had seen by the tree in the Garden. These two explained the teapot, the two swords and board game. He tugged on his sister’s sleeve, and the girl looked round. How she had not seen me standing there bold as brass and armed I cannot say. Her eyes widened, and proud as any princess of the Star Victoria, she thrust out her chin. “Who are you?”
“Hadrian,” I said, not lowering my sword. “And who are you to ask for my name?”
The girl drew the young boy closer, placed an arm protectively on his shoulder, and said, “I’m Kharn Sagara.”
CHAPTER 42
THE CHILDREN OF SATURN
“NO, YOU’RE NOT,” I said, and pointed my blade at the two of them.
“Not what?”
“Not him.”
The girl stood proud as any queen. “How did you get into the Garden?”
The boy buried his face in his sister’s skirts and would not look at me. The massive chimera—Calvert, was it?—did not move. With a bravery she did not look capable of, the girl moved to stand between the small boy and myself, though I might have felled both with a single stroke of my sword. She wore a Nipponese dress of pale, cornflower blue, which lent the wide red sash cinched about her form the terrifying quality fresh blood has when it appears without warning.
“I ask you again,” she said, imperious. “Who are you and how did you get in here?”
“He’s a knight, Suzuha,” the boy said, voice higher than his sister’s. He peered out from around one narrow hip, looking for all the world like he had peering out from behind the great tree. “Aren’t you, sir?”
The girl pressed her brother—her clone—back behind herself. Patting his shoulder with one hand, her eyes wandered to the smashed body at her feet, the broken, spindly limbs of that life that would never be. The other dead child yet hung from its wires like a man from a gibbet, amniotic fluid still dripping down its length to the floor.
Howling Dark (Sun Eater) Page 42