AND WE WERE SO close. The words rattled in my head, turning over as they had half a million times since I had first heard the Cielcin captain speak them. Uje ekurimi su keta. So close to what? They are not here . . . I could have broken my hands on the tabletop in frustration, would have given my left arm for a chance to speak with Uvanari again, to wring an answer from it if I could. No, not wring. I had wrung enough. I glanced across the petrified wood of the council table to where Sir Olorin Milta sat beside his satrap, not looking my way. He had not spoken of my interrogation of the Cielcin in the tunnels of Calagah, and I was not about to mention it.
They are not here.
They.
Did Uvanari mean the Quiet? Was that even possible?
“. . . should be ready in a week or so,” Knight-Tribune Smythe was
saying, her blunt-featured face turned down in intense concentration. The subject had just turned from the frequent brownouts in castle power and surveillance to the Cielcin. To my surprise, Centurion Vriell’s pronouncement that the hard-edged Legion officer was running things in
Borosevo seemed to be true, though I could not have said whether that was by some Imperial fiat or simply because the count had stepped aside. Balian Mataro sat in the high seat on a dais above the council table, chin propped on one fist like an image of bored Zeus done in black marble. “The
creature’s wounds are healing nicely, my medics tell me.”
“And the others?” asked High Chancellor Ogir, steepling her hands before her. “Have we started on them?”
The subtext beneath those words dragged my eyes to the one personage at the table whom I’d most struggled to avoid. Ligeia Vas wore her
customary black robes. Her face was powdered, drawing further attention to her offworld pallor, and her white hair was in its customary double coil
about her thin shoulders. Worst of all, her icy eyes found mine, sharp as knife-missiles—she had been staring at me. They did not stray from my face as she answered, “We have not, per the request of our Jaddian
emissary.” At last she turned, glancing briefly at Lady Kalima di Sayyiph. “They requested we suspend operations pending this meeting, a suspension we granted out of respect for our visitors and for their assistance in
apprehending the xenobites.” From the way she said the word respect, I gathered that respect only stretched so far.
I studied the almost celestial Jaddian satrap from my lonely place at the end of the table, a lonely spot of color in a cloud of gray-suited logothetes. Rubies glinted at her throat and from her ears, and so much gold jewelry hung about her neck and from her hair that I was astonished she did not bend from the weight of it. Sir Olorin Milta stood just behind her, hand toying with the three highmatter sword hilts strapped to his thigh, eyes fixed somewhere far away, on a point out to sea through the broad arc of
alumglass that made up the opposite wall of the council chamber. I had the sudden sense that the Jaddians really were on my side, willing to try and
speak with the captives. To make peace.
“In any event,” the knight-tribune said, drumming her square knuckles on the tabletop, rippling the water in the glass at her elbow, “thanks to Lieutenant Lin, we find ourselves in possession of ten Cielcin prisoners.”
“Captives.” I couldn’t help myself. “They surrendered to us. If the
ichakta were human, we’d be trying to ransom it back to its liege.”
The grand prior slapped a hand on the table, demanding attention. “The beast is not human, heretic.”
“That beast is an enemy officer,” I said, addressing myself to Raine Smythe. The knight-tribune pressed her lips together, but she seemed
willing for the moment to hear me out. “There’s no procedure in place for dealing with inhuman officers, is there? Should we not treat it honorably?” I did not add my private suspicion, that Tanaran might be something other than an officer. Whatever it was, the younger Cielcin was no soldier. It was certainly not dressed as one. Nor, for that matter, did I share Uvanari’s implied connection between its people and the Quiet. I would save that little bit of information for Valka when she returned to Borosevo within the
week, all activity at the dig site having been suspended in the wake of the
attack as the recovery teams worked hard to salvage the wreck of Uvanari’s ship.
The chancellor looked like she’d been fed a tablespoon of lemon extract.
She licked her teeth, ashen face darkening and pinching as she spat, “Inmane! I remind you, Lord Marlowe, that you are here on sufferance.”
“He is here, Chancellor, because he alone has spoken to the prisoners and can offer insight,” Sir Olorin interjected. I looked to him, bowed my head in thanks. He returned my nod, dislodging a tangle of dark hair.
The surgical scars that marked Chancellor Ogir as patrician whitened as her lips compressed. “When I want your input, lictor, I will invite it.”
“Enough, Liada,” Lord Balian said. “That’s quite enough. The Jaddians are our guests.” Somewhat mollified, the reedy little chancellor backed down, seeming to find something entirely fascinating about the pattern of angry veins on the back of her leathery hands. It surprised me then that the satrap did not leap to her servant’s defense herself. It surprises me more now.
Olorin’s interjection served a secondary function, as was revealed in the next moment when Raine Smythe said, “Lord Marlowe’s done the Empire a service; that cannot be denied. And his consideration is a goodly one. If we seek to negotiate using the captured Pale as hostages, we must consider their treatment.” Feeling I had scored a point, I smiled at the grand prior, but the witch-priestess did not deign to look my way. The knight-tribune drummed her knuckles on the tabletop again. “But we have an opportunity here to extract real tactical information. Why did the Cielcin come here to Emesh? Why now?”
There followed a moment of pregnant silence punctuated by the drumming of those knuckles and of the nervous sounds of the logothetes at each extreme of the arc of the speckled rose-green table. All of us knew
what we were really discussing. Perhaps that was why the count was silent, preferring to let the military and the clergy take the reins. I peered down at my lap, at the hands folded tightly there, recalling the way they’d shaken in the tunnels, recalling the fear that had edged up into panic.
“The prisoners must be questioned,” said Ligeia Vas into that pregnant silence, lacing her hands on the tabletop, her stillness counterpoint to the knight-tribune’s nervous movement.
“The prisoners—the captives—must be made to give us something, aye.” Raine Smythe bent her ear to listen to a whispered word from Sir
William Crossflane, the white-haired first officer at her side, then shut her eyes a moment.
“The location of their fleet?” suggested the Jaddian satrap, eyes still locked on the city far below.
Undaunted by this benign interruption, Raine Smythe continued in her rough contralto, “Perforce what remains is to decide what manner of information we believe we can extract.”
“Without jeopardizing the creatures’ value as hostages,” said one of the count’s ministers, earning a glare from the chancellor.
“And so,” said the scholiast Tor Vladimir, speaking up from his place near the count at the center of the semicircular table, “we must weigh the value of our prisoners as diplomatic assets against their strategic value.” The man’s soft words, utterly without inflection, filled the room like a kind of sleeping gas.
I still couldn’t believe we were even having this conversation, and I blurted, “You’re talking about torturing them.”
“They would do no differently in our place, son,” the elderly first officer beside the knight-tribune said. “This is war. We—” Dame Raine put a hand on his arm, quieting him. He blustered a moment, lips working between massive, bushy sideburns like those of a gasping fish. “They launched two attacks against us in the past few months. Who’s to say they won’t launch a third?”
Ever the antagonist, Sir Olorin said, “I was under the impression that the first attackers were only . . . what is the word? Outriders? Scouts for the
second attack. That it was all one battle fleet.”
“Was it?” the grand prior demanded, twisting in her high-backed chair to face the Jaddian swordmaster. “For a human, Maeskolos, you seem to be intimately familiar with the plans and intentions of our enemy. Perhaps Lord Marlowe’s heresy is catching.”
“Lord Marlowe’s dedication to the faith is not the issue up for discussion at the moment, Your Reverence,” the knight-tribune interjected, gazing
sidelong at Ligeia Vas but not turning her head. “Please, if we could stow the piety long enough to come to some decision?” She hid her face in her hands, massaged her eyes with short, hard fingers. Everything about the woman was blunt: her features, her manner, her movements. But she was
one used to power—not the comparatively small power of a landed nobile, but the fist of the Imperial Legions. Her authority was the authority of the
Imperium, of the Presence and the Solar Throne itself, and it did not tiptoe around the priors of provincial chantries. She took a deep breath, expelled it. “While I see the case for preserving the captives for ransom, I believe that they—particularly their captain—are of far greater interest to the Imperium for the information they hold regarding Cielcin fleet movements.”
The gross incandescence of Ligeia’s smile curdled every fluid in me, and I clenched my teeth so hard that I fancied they cracked. No. No, no. Still I had to respect the play for what it was. Raine Smythe had played the grand prior right into her hand in a matter of moments by first chastising her, then giving her what she wanted to silence her, ensuring that the last word on the subject subordinated the priestess to the tribune’s will. The politician I might have been applauded within me even as my spirit choked on the
sound of screaming.
Whatever happened, there would be blood. I saw that then. Always blood. Blood is not the foundation of civilization—ours or any other’s—but it suffuses its mortar at every level, drips from its walls. Despite the glass
and airy light of that room, I felt hemmed in, as though I cowered in some catacomb of the mind, dank and musty and lost. When we think of War and her atrocities, we imagine that the unforgivable is prosecuted on the battlefield, in the heat and fire. It is not. Atrocity is writ by quiet men in
council chambers over crystal glasses of cool water. Strange little men with ashes in their hearts. Sans passion, sans hope . . . sans everything.
Everything but fear. For themselves, for their own lives, for some imagined future. And in the name of safety, security, piety, they labor to found future heaven on present horror. But their kingdom of heaven is in the mind, in the future that will never be, and their present horrors are real.
“You cannot be serious, knight-tribune,” said Lady Kalima. Her
attention flickered to the tribune’s face. “Surely the prisoners are of more use to us, ah . . . unmolested.”
Raine Smythe glanced briefly at the count in his high seat before leaning in to address the Jaddian noblewoman. “If you’ve an alternate suggestion,
satrap, I would love to hear it. But this planet is under threat. I know it’s not one of your planets, but it is in the Imperial interest that Emesh remain,
ah . . . unmolested.” She mimicked the satrap’s cadence, if not her accent, on the final word. Olorin’s hand tightened briefly about the wine-red grip of one of his three swords, prepared to unclip it from his belt. For a moment I
thought we were about to have another duel in Borosevo, but the tall
swordmaster released his weapon without comment, face composed as that of a scholiast by the next moment.
“They weren’t an invading force.” All eyes turned to look my way, even the satrap’s. I could not figure out why for a good moment, and then it
clicked. I’d opened my fool mouth again. Forced now to explain, I said,
“They were looking for something. Sir Olorin, sir, you were there. You’re the soldier, Knight-Tribune—you have the reports. Is the design of the ship shot down over Anshar consistent at all with the design of a military vessel?” When no one answered I looked round, spread my hands. “No, really. Is it? I’m no expert in ship design. Anyone?”
One of the minor logothetes, a thickset plebeian man with graying hair
and a drooping face, cleared his throat and tapped his stylus on the petrified wood surface of the table. “There were no ship-to-ship armaments found on the wreckage of the xenobite craft. It would appear that—”
I raised my eyebrows. “No ship-to-ship armaments, eh?” I imitated the knight-tribune’s knuckle-rapping gesture and surveyed the lords of two nations, the Chantry prior who wanted me dead, the high officers of the Imperial Legion, and the crowd of logothetes before continuing, “Perhaps there is no third wave. Perhaps our Cielcin friends knew there was no hope of rescue. Perhaps their retreat into Calagah represented a last desperate
stand? The ichakta—their captain—only surrendered when I promised medical aid.” That was not strictly true, as you have seen, but the only persons capable of corroborating that story besides Uvanari and myself
were Bassander Lin and the Cielcin Tanaran, neither of whom were present or spoke the other’s language.
“Get to the point, please,” said Chancellor Liada Ogir.
“Our Cielcin friends?” the grand prior repeated, blood darkening her whitened cheeks.
“A figure of speech,” murmured Tor Vladimir, his sleepy voice coming to my aid.
I let the prior’s tangent die down, again affecting the knight-tribune’s knuckle-rapping gesture. “Look. I’d wager that the ships you destroyed in orbit were an escort sent to cover the crashed vessel’s approach. They
weren’t kitted for an invasion.”
“Then what were they after?” First Officer Crossflane croaked from beside Raine Smythe, a frown tugging on his chops. “Are they spies?”
Mouth open, I stared at the man. I had a suspicion, of course. The ichakta’s words still echoed in my skull: They are not here. I needed Valka, needed to talk to Valka. She would understand, could help me make sense of things. She would know. That the grand prior was sitting right there, a vulture in black robes, malice wafting from her like perfume, did nothing to help my burgeoning courage. Balian Mataro sat watching me, head no longer propped on his fist. His black eyes glittered like beetles, like the black stone of Calagah, and his lips were pressed shut. My patron. My
sponsor. My jailer. A mad smile threatened to steal its way onto my face, and I drowned it. Joy is a wind. With every word I dug myself into more danger with the Chantry, but it wasn’t the Chantry I was playing for.
Thinking of Anaïs, of the marriage pact that hung informal between us, I thought, Let’s see you keep your claws in me, you bastard.
“Spies?” I said. “I’m not sure how that would be possible, sir.” From the quartered shield plaque on the breast of his black uniform, I knew the man was a knight, though his name was a mystery to me. I leaned forward,
addressing myself wholly to Knight-Tribune Smythe. “But if you were to allow me time with the captives—with their captain especially—I’m sure I could get something more out of them.” There was more I could have
added. I could have mentioned the Cielcin’s association with the Quiet, only that it would have meant something only to Ligeia Vas, who for all I knew might torture me for my trouble.
“Something more?” The first officer sneered, turning with incredulous rage to his younger superior. “Raine, this boy can’t be serious.”
“Let me try! Hold local space for . . . a week. Blockade the planet if it helps you relax. Give me a chance. Their captain will speak to me, I’m sure of it. I’m sure I can—”
“Enough, Marlowe.” The count did not shout. He did not even raise his voice. He was just like Father. Exactly like Father. He just . . . said it. Shook his head. In his high-backed seat raised above the level of his guests and
councilors, Balian Mataro shifted, squaring his bull shoulders. “I concur with the knight-tribune and Grand Prior Vas. The enemy shall be questioned. I’ll hear no more about this.”
Exactly like Father. I opened my mouth to respond, eyes fixed on the tribune and officer, both in uniforms black as funeral shrouds. I had to
convince them, to prove I could be of use. If I could persuade them to take me, they could recruit me right out from under Balian Mataro’s nose. I
glowered at the man. “Your Excellency . . .” I stood, bowing low over the dappled jade pink of the table surface. “Forgive me. I have pressed overmuch. I apologize.” The tip of my long nose scraped the surface of the table, and I jerked my chin up and looked at the dais. Briefly I considered making a farce of the whole thing: throwing myself on the floor, beating my breast, and begging forgiveness. It wouldn’t have helped, but the mockery would have made me feel better.
Must everything you say sound like it’s straight out of a Eudoran melodrama?
Yes, Gibson, I thought. It does.
“Take your seat, Lord Marlowe. We are not done with you yet.”
I retook my seat, eyes downcast. Something in the way the count spoke those words twisted knives in my belly, but in my distraction I did not reflect on their meaning overlong. I was hearing Gibson’s old lessons again. Obedience out of loyalty to the office of the hierarch. True enough—my obedience certainly wasn’t out of love for his person. Not that I hated the
count, for he was at his foundations a decent man. Rather I resented what I was to him. I felt as I imagined a particularly adroit princess might have felt in one of Mother’s fantasies of Old Earth: not only lowered to the level of a breeding animal but dismissed as a person, as an intellect.
Knight-Tribune Smythe resumed control of the conversation as if there had been no interruption. “I propose this: the bulk of the prisoners will be kept in the bastille and treated gently. Meanwhile we will isolate the captain and give him to the Chantry for interrogation. Agreed?” A murmur went
around the table, and she continued, “We are agreed, then. The”—she looked at me—“ichakta will be given over to the Chantry for interrogation. The Jaddians will sit in, as they are party to this affair already and all intelligence is to be shared between our parties.” With the sweep of a hand she took in Lord Balian, Lady Kalima, and herself.
Behind my eyes every degradation of the body and spirit practiced by the cathars of the Chantry ran like video reels played at a hundred times natural speed. The cutting and burning, broken bones and peeled skin, foreheads branded, noses slit, the disembowelments, decapitations, and rapes. The screams I imagined echoing out of Vesperad, out of steel-walled prison cells, blossomed and withered and blossomed again like flowers
season after season. And these men and women sat in sunlight and in
warmth, not smiling but still contented as Ligeia outlined the next phase in the operation.
And I was made a liar. I had promised the Cielcin they would not be harmed, had given my word as palatine. By the Great Charter, my word was a kind of law, and they were asking me to break it. More than that, it was a personal blow, an affront to my sense of self, to who I was on this new
world of mine: Marlowe again, but not of Meidua.
“. . . must be present, of course. We’ll need a translator.”
Translator. The word—its special associations, its affinity with myself— stuck out of the morass of failure that remained of that meeting. Translator. And then it hit me, sunk in like an arrow shaft, like a blade. “No!” I almost stood again. “No, I won’t!”
Ligeia Vas was smiling. It was a moral victory for her, if not one ending in my death. “You have no choice. As you say, it seems there is none better suited to the task.”
“No!” I did stand then, startling the two logothetes I sat between. I turned wild eyes on Raine. “You mean to tell me you don’t have a translator on that ship of yours?” The Obdurate, up in orbit, was a supercarrier
containing dozens of smaller frigates, thousands of crew. “Not one?” “Not many scholiasts aboard Legion vessels, lad,” Sir William
Crossflane replied.
Desperate, I turned to Lord Balian. “Your Excellency, please. You must forbid this.”
“You wanted to talk to the demons, boy,” the prior said, answering for the lord she nominally served. Her white face glowed the same hue as my family’s funeral masks, and those blue eyes might have been violet but for a trick of the light. They glittered, and then they were only the blue of
Gilliam’s eye, sightless, staring, fixed beyond sight. “Talk to them.”
