CHAPTER 8
BIRDS OF A FEATHER
“I had a look at the quarters they’d set aside for you on the bigger ship, master,” said Neema, removing a stack of white shirts from one of the crates he’d carried up from the Ascalon’s hold. “They are much finer than these.” He looked round at the relatively cramped captain’s cabin, with its brushed-metal cabinetry and scrubby black carpet, its narrow closet and small washroom and the row of tiny portholes above the bed that let in the red light of the ventral docking bay on the Troglita into which the Ascalon had nestled like a remora against the belly of a shark.
I looked up from my work stowing a stack of the folios which contained my artwork and the records of my life in a glass-fronted cabinet. “Yes, but what’s the point? In two days we’ll be at warp, and shortly thereafter, we’ll be on the ice.”
“You are a knight, domi, and a great lord. It follows that you should be quartered like one.”
“I lived on this ship for nearly thirty years, Neema,” I said, catching sight of myself—gray-streaked and careworn—reflected in the washroom mirror. Abruptly I recalled Valka’s image reflected there, her mouth smeared with black lipstick. I shut my eyes. “It’s enough.”
Neema had gone silent and still as stone, as he always did when he had something to say.
“Out with it, Neema.”
“It is a matter of prestige, domi. You must consider how it looks to the Imperials, denying their hospitality and the image taking their best rooms would project.”
“I do not have an image, my good man,” I said. “Not anymore.” I did not add that I did not trust the Imperials, did not say that any rooms they were sure to offer us would be bugged. Albé—A2—and his team were certain to have bugged the Ascalon as well, when they had done their preflight checks prior to takeoff on Jadd, but I knew every corner of the ship. I would find whatever they’d hidden in due course. “Besides,” I said, “if we’re to oversee an excavation on this . . . Sabratha, I will want the Ascalon on the ground to serve us for a camp.” Our doing so would permit us to leave at any time, should we desire it.
“I understand that, domi, but . . . ”
“But Neema,” I raised a hand for quiet, “if the ship is to serve us for a camp, it should retain all of mine and Cassandra’s effects.”
The Nemrut homunculus only blinked at me. “But . . . ”
A knock sounded at the door. “Enter!” I called, eager to break the loop Neema had found himself caught in.
The door slid aside with a faint chime, and revealed Edouard Albé. His unmarked black officer’s coat had vanished, and in its place he wore only the white shirt of a common soldier, unfastened at the left side of the throat. He still wore the jodhpurs and high boots of his ilk, and I caught the flash of silver at his throat where some medallion—no larger than a kaspum—hung about his neck.
“Is it time?” I asked. “Did Oberlin send you?”
“No, Captain Clavan,” he said. “We’re passing Taiph, leaving Jadd local space. She thought you and your daughter would like to see the moon up close.”
Taiph was the largest of Jadd’s three companions, and the only one irrigated and terraformed for human life—its every surface under cultivation. I had visited it on a handful of occasions as a guest of Prince Aldia—but that had been well before Cassandra was born. Well I remembered the terraced hills of the tea plantations of Al-Lat Terra, and fondly did I recall the paradise gardens of the Satrap of Taiph, despite the singing groves whose flowers opened like the wings of butterflies.
“We’d like that, yes,” I said. “Neema, will you fetch her from upstairs?”
The manservant bowed at once and shuffled from the room.
In the uneven silence that followed, I said, “Special Agent, is it?”
The young man laughed through his nose. “I apologize for the slight deception, lordship. The Jaddians are good fellows—as a rule—and our allies, but not even our allies can be trusted with the sort of knowledge you and I possess.”
“And what knowledge is that?”
“About the Monumentals, of course,” he said. “About Nairi and Echidna, and the rest.”
“Have you ever seen one?” I asked. “A Watcher?”
Edouard shook his head. “Only archive footage from Atropos. Have you?”
“You read the reports I gave the Emperor?”
“I have,” he said, “but they were very guarded on the subject.”
“Were they?” I frowned, struggling to remember. Had I omitted the nature of the temple at Akterumu from my account? I had always been careful to elide reference to the Quiet and the Watchers from all Imperial documentation, and yet I must have described the temple in my reports. A vast dome fashioned from the stony skull of a colossal being easily a thousand feet across and accessed by its solitary great eye.
Miudanar, the Dreamer. Chief god of the Cielcin.
“All right then, keep your secrets,” young Albé said, the Delian polish of his accent seeming to lend the words a particular shine.
Perhaps his accent was what drove me to speak, some nativist impulse desiring to trust him—whatever the Emperor’s words. Perhaps it was only my eagerness to arrive at anything like information in that veritable desert. A part of me—the oldest, most ragged part—still wondered why I had come at all.
“It was dead,” I said. “But not as you or I understand it. The Watchers retain some spark of vitality, even in death. It spoke to me, when the Cielcin brought me into its skull.”
“Into its skull?” Albé’s eyes widened behind his spectacles. “Dear God.” He looked as if he might be ill. “What did it say to you?”
“Abba!” Cassandra’s voice issued from down the hall, and young Albé stepped aside. “Neema said the captain wants us on the bridge?”
I did my best to smile. “Yes, we’re going to slingshot around Taiph to boost our way out-system. The captain thought we might appreciate the view.”
“Have you spoken to Lord Oberlin yet?”
“No, not yet,” I said, and smiled past her to Neema, who was returning in her train. “Will you see to the rest of the clothes, Neema? We’ll be back within the hour, I expect.”
* * *
In the end, it took us nearer two hours to watch the green moon slide by. The Troglita’s primary sublight engines kicked in as we reached the far side of the moon, and we watched as Taiph went from a field of green and marbled white, its canals and waterways like fine veins, to a retreating disc, to a coin that disappeared behind the black and green of Jadd herself.
The Troglita had no tram system like the Tamerlane once had, being only about two miles from bowsprit to stern cluster. In the weeks ahead, I would walk each of her twenty-three decks, familiarizing myself with the place before the long sleep to Sabratha. Had I still been a young man, I might have taken a year or two in solitude aboard the ship, and to familiarize myself with the officers and crew. In the end, I think I only stayed awake for a fortnight.
Edouard accompanied Cassandra and me on the long walk back to the Ascalon from the bridge, which required that we descend some seventeen levels by one of the rear lifts and along a short length of hallway to the stairs that would bring us forward and down to the receiving hall and the umbilical access where we’d first arrived.
We exited the lift into the lower hall and proceeded along it—bootheels ringing in that world of gunmetal and brass—when from up ahead I heard a strange, ululating cry. I threw a hand across Cassandra to bar her progress, and froze. Young Edouard kept walking a pace, and turned back.
“What’s that?” I asked. The noise of it was familiar, like something out of a half-forgotten dream. I had heard it before, or something nearly like it. It had had a high, screeching quality that at once put me in mind of tearing metal and of swooping hawks.
“What’s what?” Albé asked.
It sounded again, and with it the unmistakable clangor of steel on steel.
The agent’s eyes widened, and he smiled. “Oh! That! That would be our auxilium. Captain had a few of them thawed when it became apparent we’d be stuck at anchor for some years. I think it’s the officer corps that’s out of the ice at present. We brought a thousand of them—at the Emperor’s own urging, as I understand it.”
But I had recognized the sound on second exposure, and was already hurrying past Edouard to the door ahead on my right.
“Abba?” I could hear Cassandra hurrying after me, but I did not stop to explain myself. The lowest five decks of the Troglita were each nearly a hundred feet high, and while they did not run the full length of the great vessel, they were fashioned thus to accommodate the landing bays and great holds—as well as the two-dozen Peregrine-class lighters of Manticore Flight. Most of these holds were kept in vacuum, but the one ahead stood open, and the bright ring of steel issued from within.
Another cry—more piercing than the last—filled the hall as I reached the portal, followed by a throaty quark that might have been a command.
For the first time since I’d boarded the vessel—perhaps for the first time since I’d called young Albé to accept the Emperor’s mission—a true smile lit my face.
For there they were: two dozen or so figures in the dun khaki of Imperial auxiliaries—squat, slim shouldered, claw footed, and beaked.
“Ia!” called one, a black-feathered fellow with green at the fringes of his long, winged arms. The soldiers before him took a step forward, each swinging his overlong cutlass in a rising arc from right to left. “Iya!” They slashed blades flatly left to right. “Zwa!” They slashed right to left in diagonal, blades starting above the right shoulder, sweeping through so that they finished beneath the left hip, points still forward. “Yoh!” They thrust.
The black-feathered officer, a centurion or chiliarch—I could not quite tell—turned and paced to his left, studying the block of his subordinates as they drilled with the sharp eyes of a predator. He repeated himself: “Ia! Iya! Zwa! Yoh!” And with each order his soldiers repeated the basic drill, clawed feet scraping the steel decking as they advanced. “Yoo atoh!” he said, and again: “Ia! Iya! Zwa! Yoh!” Only this time the soldiers retreated with each blow.
“God of Fire!” Cassandra breathed, coming up close behind me. “Are they . . . ?”
“Irchtani,” I said, and took an unthinking step into the hold. “You said there were a thousand of them?”
The HAPSIS agent replied, “The Emperor insisted, and Director Oberlin seemed to think they’d make a good fit. Too few of them speak the standard, so they’re unlikely to talk about the work we do.”
The Emperor insisted . . . Albé’s words rattled in my mind. Trust no one, the Emperor had said in his letter, but here he had provided me a corps of Irchtani fighters.
They hadn’t seen us yet.
“I had an Irchtani corps in the Red Company,” I said. “They saved my life on Berenike, and many times before.”
“I know,” Albé said. “The War Office considered yours something of a pilot project. They started recruiting off Judecca en masse. Oberlin was telling me there’s something like a million birdos serving in the auxiliary now. They’re useless in high-gee environs, but if you find yourself on a world where they can fly . . . ”
“They’re a warrior culture,” I said.
“Just so.”
A shrill cry sounded, wordless to my human ears. The drilling soldiers halted, and nestled their long-handled cutlasses against their shoulders. The black-feathered Irchtani made a whistling sound—opening his hooked beak, and croaked, “Bashan Iseni u dwaara!”
The soldiers went to sharp attention, and turned as a block to face inward, creating an aisle by which their black-clad commander could pass for the door. The Irchtani officer clasped his clawed hands together, tucking his wings until they seemed almost loose sleeves, and bowed as best he could, bending awkwardly at the waist. In croaking and thickly accented standard, he asked, “You are Marlowe?”
I returned the bow, and marking the stars on his shoulder that said he was chiliarch of the entire auxiliary, I said, “I am, kithuun.”
The bird man cocked his head. “You know our words? I see that much of the legend is true.”
I could only shake my head. “Only a little,” I said, speaking haltingly in the coloni’s own tongue. No human could properly speak the language of the Ishaan Irchtani, with its clicking and croaking music, though the xenobites could well mimic the phonemes of human speech.
“I am Annaz,” he said, “Kithuun, chiliarch of these.” He spread one wing to indicate his men.
A lump formed in my throat. His were almost precisely the words old Barda had used to introduce himself on Gododdin all those years ago. And why should they not be? They were of a kind, and like to use our words in the same way. “I asked for this,” he said, bowing again. “We all ask. I am child of House of Yazgan. My sire seven times removed was Irrul, son of Yazgan, whose brother was Udax Vaanshakril.”
“Udax?” This Irchtani was Udax’s nephew, seven generations removed. “You’re of Udax’s clan?”
“My House—that is your word? My House Yazgan grew great because Udax Vaanshakril died for you. Made us great. We send many warriors to fight in great war. To fight for Bashandani, for your god-king. I, Annaz, am but latest. My sons will follow, when they have sired. They will follow, and they will fight. Fight for you, and for Udax, who opened doors beyond sky.”
I was momentarily lost for words. This Irchtani warrior spoke of Udax, my friend and would-be assassin, as one speaks of the characters in scripture and fable. Udax’s new name, Vaanshakril, I would later learn, was Demonslayer, for it had been at his hand that the vayadan-general Bahudde of the White Hand had been destroyed, and by his hand, too, and mine, that Iubalu had been bested. What a legend that must have been on Judecca so far away! I could imagine little Irchtani hatchlings playing at the tale, fighting as Udax and Lord Marlowe as I had played at Simeon the Red when I was just a boy.
It was my turn to bow a second time. “I am honored to meet one of Udax’s tribe, Kithuun Annaz. He was . . . a good friend.” Throwing all cautions then to the wind I said, “Do you know why we are here? What it is we’ve come to do?”
The Irchtani captain shook his head, “Bashan Iseni say we are to fight with Marlowe. We do not question. We come to fight.”
“We’re hunting,” I said, peering one-eyed at Cassandra.
Edouard interposed himself, saying, “It is perhaps better not to speak of such things just now, my lord.”
I ignored him. “We go to hunt a creature the Cielcin worship as a god,” I said. “A beast that can swim between the stars as a fish swims in water, a creature of terrible power. A weapon the Cielcin mean to use against our kind and yours. Does that frighten you?”
Annaz and several of the others croaked. Many hopped sidewise on clawed feet, or peered at me with one beady eye. Annaz himself seemed to think about this, and almost I wondered if he believed I was japing with him. “Udax Vaanshakril fought for you,” he said. “You led him to glory.”
“I led him to his death,” I said.
“Right death is glory, bashanda,” Annaz said. “Udax Vaanshakril brought glory to Immuz, to the Ishaan Irchtani. We can do no less. We will do no less.” It extended one scaled and taloned hand. The hands of the Irchtani lay at the apex of their wings, like the claws the ancient saurian things that plied the airs of Earth in the Age of Dragons, such that their great feathers extended from their wrists like the sleeves of some irremovable robe. They had but three fingers and a hooked thumb whence a cruelly barbed talon grew.
I took the offered hand, and Annaz gripped my own roughly and shook it. It was dry, and cold, and despite the strength of the warrior’s grip I could sense the lightness in his bones, which were hollow like the bones of terranic birds—like the bones of my own left hand. Bloody-Handed Evolution had compensated for this intrinsic weakness by weaving iron into the bones. Not a lot, not enough to offset the weight shed by the hollowness in the first place, but enough that a man might not crush the fingers of the Irchtani in his grasp.
Annaz pulled me closer and, placing his beak near my ear, he whispered—such as he could, “It is for you we have come. We wish to fight for you. For Marlowe.” He released me, and drew back, saying, “Udax slew demons for you. We will slay false gods.”
* * *
“What was all that?” Cassandra started once we were both safely back aboard the Ascalon, sliding into Jaddian. “The xenobites acted as if they knew you.”
We’d come to a halt just inside the forward airlock. It was dark within. The open doors of the bridge lay at my right, and the light of muted consoles—red and blue—lit Cassandra’s face from far off.
“They do. In a sense,” I said, glancing back at the airlock. “They mentioned my friend, Udax—I’ve told you about him.” She nodded. “It would seem he has become a martyr to them, and a hero. Almost a prophet. Because of him, their people have risen in the estimation of the Empire, and through him, they stand to advance their station.”
“By fighting in our wars?” Cassandra’s brows contracted.
I could not help but smile. “You are every inch your mother’s daughter,” I said, resting a hand on her shoulder. “But yes. Perhaps in time there will be Irchtani nobiles. Irchtani consuls. Captains. Scholiasts. As for me . . . ” I grew quiet then. “I opened the door. You heard young Albé. Udax and his brothers . . . all those years ago . . . paved the way for them today. So for them to serve with me would be . . . would be as if you were to serve with Prince Katanes.”
Again she nodded. “You said we were going to hunt a god.” When I did not speak at once, she pressed, “Back on Jadd, you said it was a weapon. Abba, when are you going to tell me what is going on?”
“I don’t know what’s going on!” I almost hissed the words, half-afraid that Albé or some other agent of the Imperium was listening at the airlock door. “Not exactly . . . but . . . ”
She will suffer . . . if you do not go.
Somewhere in the limitless universe, a star burned out.
“You asked me about the Monumentals . . . the Watchers, as the Cielcin call them. Do you remember what I taught you about the Chain of Being?”
It was an ancient idea, a conceptualization of the hierarchy of all life, set down by the ancients, who believed the uncreated gods were fixed at its high end, the anchor whence the great chain hung, and that below them were the lesser spirits, angels and demons and the like. Man was at the center, and beneath him were the beasts, beneath them the plants, beneath them the insects and animalcules that proliferate in the waters and spread disease.
“When the ancients, our ancestors, first discovered extraterranic life, much was made of the question of whether that life were more or less advanced than our own.” The ancients of that time had long ago ceased to ask the question of what life was advancing toward, but that is a matter for another time. “Certain kinds of xenobite are lower than ourselves, in capacity if not in dignity. The Umandh of Emesh, for instance, and perhaps the Irchtani. The Watchers are higher.”
Cassandra absorbed all this with the rapt attention I had seen her so often give Hydarnes when he walked through some fencing form.
“They are truly colossal beings, Cassandra. On one of my adventures . . . I saw the body of one. The Cielcin had built a temple in its skull. It was so large that more than a thousand of their princes could stand in its brainpan with room to spare.” Cassandra’s eyes were wide. “The Cielcin worship them, and there was a time when they commanded armies across the galaxy. Long before our people took to the stars.” I did not tell her all I knew, not then. I said nothing of the Quiet, of the last war and the unkindling of the stars. Let her think the legends of Hadrian Halfmortal were just that—if only a little longer. “This is the greatest secret in our universe, Anaryan. Not even our friend, Aldia, knows, I think.”
Often as a young man, I had imagined our Empire some perverse species of zoo. An animal myself—a raven perhaps, or some stalking panther—I had hated the Empire because it was my cage. I saw it more clearly then, saw it for what it was—what all nations are.
A preserve.
What I had taken as a boy for bars were only the mountains and forests that verged the green pastures of our home. The men I had thought gaolers, wardens, and rangers. If the Cielcin, then, were wolves, then the Watchers were like plagues. Famines.
Death itself.
Humanity little knew it, but all its kings and emperors, all its joys and sufferings, every conqueror and hero, every warrior and poet, every sinner, scholar, and saint—indeed all its violent history—had taken place within the walls of a garden that every man from Menes had mistaken for the wild wood.
Outside, it was very dark.
“And the Emperor wants you to kill one?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She absorbed that word as though it might encompass millions. When she had finished, she asked, “But . . . why you?”
It was a long while before I answered her.
“Because . . . ” I said at last, “I may be the only person who can.”