CHAPTER 48
THE SAME ANIMALS
The next several months of our journey passed but slowly. One could sense the queasy tension in the bellies of all Ghoshal’s men, could see it in the way they peered out the Gadelica’s portholes, in the uneasy way they stood at guard. Our Sollans feared their Extrasolarian hosts—and more—they feared the ship outside.
Lorian’s Mistwalker.
That fear and loathing ran both ways. On each occasion when I left our ships to meet with Lorian or simply to walk the greater vessel, I found the Extras peering in at us with the same ill trust. Neither side was without reason, the Empire and Extrasolarians each had been the other’s predator since the God Emperor crowned himself in the ruins of Rome.
I discovered that 2Maeve was not—as I had at first suspected—Lorian’s second-in-command. His first officer was an Exalted called Amatorre, a towering, skeletally thin man who seemed to me all machine below the neck. He wore the Latarran falcon uniform, but the hands that emerged from his tailored sleeves were of jointed ceramic the color of bone. His face was totally bloodless, reminding me of the prophet, Jari, and a knurl of black iron projected from the back of his skull, allowing various fibers and cables to be socketed into it.
I gathered that the everyday operation of the Mistwalker was his, and that Lorian’s role was more akin to my own aboard the Tamerlane than to Corvo’s. The rest of Lorian’s officer corps were a strange collection of men and women, and of creatures that were neither men nor women—or had been one or the other once. There was a dryad woman called Orchis, and a diminutive creature called Neru who oversaw the ship’s engineering department. The ship’s navigator was a hermaphrodite—not a Lothrian, but like one—who called itself Anat and spoke always of itself as someone else, saying always Anat this or Anat that. The head of the ship’s infantry was an old former Sollan officer called Camillus Elffire, a palatine from some obscure family.
Then there was 2Maeve of the Interfaced, Lorian’s chief of security. Her people formed the backbone of the ship’s vanguard, Lorian’s elite troopers. There were three thousand of them on board—a tenth of the Mistwalker’s total complement—a full third of whom were aquilarii, each capable of operating their own space-to-surface lightercraft. The rest of the soldiery were either ground troopers, men like our legionnaires under Elffire’s command, or artillery men, the crews and maintenance teams whose job it was to maintain the small army of colossi the great ship could deploy at need.
So vast was that mighty vessel that it seemed almost uninhabited at times. Well I remember standing on the gantries above the slumbering war machines—great tripods and iron scarabs topped with gun castles the size of cottages—where it seemed Lorian and I were the only men in all the world.
“We can’t match the Empire, troop for troop,” Lorian said, banging his cane against the iron rail. “But we have the hardware.”
The launch bay lay at the bottom of the great ship, several levels below the central hold with its great ray of false sun, right up against the outer hull. We were standing on one of the bay’s many catwalks, a hundred feet from the huge bay doors designed to open on the void and deploy the dropships and heavy artillery nestled in cradles above us.
We had but recently passed the hulking shapes of tanks, huge battle platforms of the sort we had deployed in the defense of Deira on Berenike.
Lorian’s ship had twelve, and that was just in the one hold. For all I knew, there were other holds like this one distributed about the great ship’s circumference.
But we had moved on, and found ourselves beneath what seemed to me a thicket of metal stalactites.
“What are these?” I asked, following Lorian’s cane to the bristling machinery above our heads. “They look like suits of armor.” The stalactites were dangling limbs, arms and legs, their bodies hunched like those of marionettes waiting above an unlit stage.
Lorian grinned. “They’re lighters,” he said. “Interfaced design. They call them Armored Mobile Platforms, AMPs, for short. The pilot fits in the torso, upright, controls the thing with his neural lace. Weapons systems are in the arms and shoulders—some in the chest unit. The whole thing reconfigures for flight, tips the pilot prone. They’re small enough to bypass most radar.”
“How big are they?” I asked.
“Four meters,” he said, using the Extrasolarian measure.
“A little more than eight cubits,” I said. “About a dozen feet.”
“A little more than that,” Lorian said. “But they get the job done. You should see them in action.”
“Maybe I will,” I said. “If we fight together.”
The little man smiled up at me in his lupine way, all teeth.
“Maybe we will,” he said.
I turned away from him, looked up at the hanging AMPs. They had no heads, and their broad shoulders—which housed weapons and engines and the delicate machinery of furled wings—made me think of the Dullahan, the headless knight that Sir Gawain faced in the old legends, and of the cephalophores, the martyrs one saw sometimes depicted on the walls of Chantry sanctums. But what need had such a system for a head, when the human pilot—its brain, in truth—lay safe in its armored core?
“It’s good to have you back, Lorian,” I said.
“I’m not back, Marlowe,” he said, and his use of my family name raised a wall between us.
“I only mean it’s good to see you,” I said, and the wind of some unseen ventilator high in the bay above us blew my overlong hair about my face. “I thought I never would again.”
“I never thought to see you, either,” Lorian said. “Virtues! I’m old! I know I don’t look it, Marlowe, but I’m pushing four hundred years active. And there’s no telling how long this goblin body of mine will last.”
I laughed. “You’ll outlast all of us, Lorian.”
“Look who’s talking,” said the Commandant General. “You look like you damn near started over. Where’s my reset button, eh?”
I dismissed this with a wave. “Surely the work you’ve had done must help.”
“Oh, it helps,” the little man said, “but none of us knows how much time he has. I only hope I live long enough to see what we’re building built.”
“We have to end the war for that,” I said.
“We do,” Lorian said. “I hope I live long enough to see that, too.”
* * *
Weeks passed, and I but little saw Cassandra, and almost always from afar. From time to time I would see her in the general mess, on the rare occasion I took food there—with Edouard—and did not eat in the cenacle aboard the Ascalon. Once, I spied her returning to the Gadelica. She and certain of the junior officers had risked a venture into the Mistwalker’s sunlit hold for a taste of something like fresh air. She lingered only for a moment, her eyes on mine. Then she turned away.
“You should go to her,” said Princess Selene, who had joined me for my own walk out under the long, false sun.
But I could only shake my head.
I could not blame her for her doubts, I could only love her despite them, and wait.
* * *
“This whole ship is a powder keg,” said Edouard, prompting me to wonder how he knew what a powder keg was. “It’s only a matter of time before one of Ghoshal’s men cracks and shoots at the Extras on watch.” The HAPSIS man frowned, peering down a side passage as we returned toward the ventral hold and the Ascalon. “Why did they set a watch? I thought we were supposed to be on the same side.”
“They’re afraid of you,” I said. “Our peoples have been at one another’s throats since the dawn of time.” I did not break stride, forcing the fellow to hurry to catch up. “It will be one of Henric’s men that shoots first, you can depend on that.”
“You?” Edouard asked.
I did stop then. “What?”
“Afraid of you, you said,” Edouard said, frown creasing his face. “Don’t you mean afraid of us?”
“You know what I mean,” I said, but the man was right. I had unwittingly counted myself apart from—above—Ghoshal and Albé and the rest. When Edouard did not respond, I said, “I used to think that peace with the Cielcin was possible. I worked very hard to secure something like an embassy with one of their princes, but when I’d finally brought them to the table, it was our side who struck first.
“I know now that such an embassy was doomed to failure. The Cielcin don’t have allies. Trading partners. Only masters and slaves. But at the time, I wasn’t sure which of us were the real monsters.” I shook myself out of cold memory. “I don’t want history to repeat itself here.”
“History only repeats itself because human nature never changes,” Edouard said. “We think we’ve come so far, but all the miles we’ve walked since we left the Garden are as inches measured against the light-years we have to go.”
I smiled at this. Had I not thought much the same a thousand times before?
“We’re the same animals we always were,” I said. “Not even the Extras can really change that. They just destroy themselves trying to become something else.”
“I’ve thought about that a lot since coming here,” Edouard said. “How many of these people aren’t the people they were born anymore? How many of them destroyed their souls chasing their dreams of perfection?”
“A lesson for us all in that,” I said. “But Henric needs to talk to his men. We’ve years before we reach Latarra, and the last thing any of us needs is some nervous legionnaire taking a shot at one of Lorian’s dragoons. Only he won’t listen to me.”
“He’ll listen to me,” Edouard said. He was quiet then for as long as it took to walk another dozen paces. “You’re right. It’ll be one of ours, if it’s anybody.”
“Ghoshal’s men are soft as clay,” I said. “I’d warrant not a one of them’s seen any action but for Sabratha, and most of them were in the air.” The Gadelica had engaged with Muzugara’s worldship, but to my knowledge it had not been boarded, and none of its troopers had been deployed to the surface of the Cielcin moon.
We’d reached the lift meant to carry us down to the level of the hold where the Ascalon slumbered, a black metal door in the black metal hall. Abruptly I was aware of our dim reflections in it. Shadows and ghosts.
“They’ll be fired soon enough,” Albé said, keying the lift.
“How many will crack, I wonder?”
Edouard made a noncommittal gesture, not quite a shrug. “We’ve what remains of Clavan’s men. And the Irchtani. And you.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “You’re surely worth an army in yourself.”
That drew a rough laugh from me. “We’ll see.”
“Men don’t return from the dead without reason,” Edouard said. “Much less twice.”
When we reached the Ascalon, it was with the intention of continuing our discussion privately over a game of labyrinth chess.
But our game was not to be.
Neema met us in the hall, summoned by the sound of our voices. The manservant’s olive face was drawn, his lips compressed, his brows contracted. “Domi!” he said, “Master, master! She’s . . . upstairs.”
I left Edouard’s side and gripped my servant’s arm. “Cassandra?”
“Yes, my lord!” Neema said. “The girl is back. Arrived about an hour ago. I said you were out with Agent Albé. Hello, Agent Albé!”
Edouard bowed slightly.
“She’s up in the cenacle, you must have passed her,” Neema said, patting my wrist to encourage me to release him.
I did so. Looking to Edouard, I said, “If you’ll excuse me.” The doors to the cenacle had been closed, Edouard and I had gone down to the lower deck where I had my cabin to retrieve the druaja board.
The Museum Catholic bowed a second time. “Tomorrow, perhaps?”
“Tomorrow,” I said, but I was already moving. I mounted the stairs where once Alexander’s Urslic assassin had tried to murder Valka and myself, and taking the steps two at a time returned to the level of the mess and bridge. Turning right, I followed the hall to the rear of the little ship and opened the door.
She was seated precisely where Captain Ghoshal had sat, her head on the table. She looked up as I entered, and I knew at once that she’d been drinking. Her eyes were slow to focus, and her face grew strangely solemn in that way drunks do when they attempt to ape sobriety. If these were not clues enough, there was the bottle itself. Clear glass with the red-and-black label of a Jaddian distiller.
Zvanya. Where had that come from?
“You!” she pointed a finger at me. “They all think you’re him.”
“I am me, Cassandra,” I said, taking a pair of cautious steps into the room. Too well I sensed the tension coiling like smoke upon the air, more tightly than any fear Ghoshal’s men might feel for their Extrasolarian watchdogs. Any wrong move—any errant word—might spell disaster.
The girl hissed. “Then prove it!”
Her eyes were red. I felt that I should go to her, should take her in my arms and hold her to myself. Not for comfort, but to assure the girl that I was real, and solid, and myself.
But I did not, sensing that to do so—particularly with Cassandra in her current state—would only serve to drive her from me.
I felt as a man must feel barefoot on a stone floor surrounded by broken glass. I did not dare to move. All the joy I’d felt at Neema’s tidings had gone stone cold. My daughter was a serpent then, and I the untrained serpent charmer.
“How should I prove myself?” I asked, half raising my hands as though she held a gun to me.
“You tell me,” she said. “These people can . . . copy memories, right? They could make you just like him if they wanted.”
“If that’s what they wanted, why did they make me like this?” I asked her, spreading my arms.
It was the same argument I’d used on Ghoshal, but here it had greater effect. Cassandra sat a little straighter, grabbed her zvanya bottle with one hand and dragged it across the table to herself. “I don’t know,” she said, and drank. “None of this makes any sense.” She was quiet then a long moment, her eyes sliding from focus and my face to some indeterminate spot on the table.
How many arguments had Valka and I had . . . just like this?
We’re the same animals we always were . . .
At once Cassandra’s shoulders shook, and she hunched, but no sound broke from her.
“I saw it, you know?” she said, voice flat and dry as a flower pressed between leaves. “What was left of you. You were just a puddle on the floor. Blood everywhere. Everywhere. I stepped in it.” She choked.
It was you now, not him, I noticed, but did not call her on it.
“I’m sorry, Anaryan,” I said, taking another step nearer her. “I’m sorry you had to see—”
“Don’t!” Her voice shot up, and she stood so quickly her chair clattered to the floor. “Don’t call me that! You are not him. You’re not!”
I’d reached the corner of the table by then, and halted, teetering on the decision to circle round it and go to her.
“Anaryan . . . ”
“I said don’t!” The bottle was still open in her hand, its cinnamon contents sloshing as she raised her hands like a boxer. “Get away from me.”
“You came to me,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“You did!” she said. “You died!”
“Cassandra . . . ”
She hurled the bottle at me. I hadn’t expected that. The zvanya filled the air with the heady aroma of cinnamon and strong alcohol. I raised a hand to fend it off, winced as hard glass found bone. It struck the edge of the table as it fell, sending a spider’s web of hairline fractures through the ebon glass. Incredibly, the bottle itself did not shatter, but bounced off the floor at my feet.
“Stay away!” Cassandra lashed out at me. Her blow turned my head.
The contact stopped her dead. Our eyes met. Emerald and violet. I saw something in them, a recognition, an understanding. A hope, perhaps. She had never hit me before—unless it was in practice, in our sparring sessions at the Cave of Fishes and on Jadd.
Not ever.
I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could get so much as a word out, she struck at me, aiming a jab at my head. In a flash, I slipped her blow, retreating to stand clear of the dropped bottle and the puddle of fragrant zvanya spreading on the floor. Cassandra followed me, snapping a kick at my right flank. Once more I turned aside, finding then that I was faster than she, faster than I had ever been. Her foot found nothing but air. Recovering, she launched into an overhand right that should have struck me on the cheek. I slapped it aside, but while I might have returned the shot in kind, I held back.
I thought I understood, understood why she had waited so long to come to me, why she had been sitting in this room in the dark, and had not emerged when Edouard and I first arrived. Understood why she had been drinking.
She had been trying to prepare herself for this, had been working herself up to this.
Again and again she struck at me. Again and again I turned her blows aside. She was fast! And strong as only the looms of Jadd could make her, but try as she might—I would not strike her.
I caught her fist in my open palm, caught it and held it fast.
“Fight me!” she almost cried, and tried to pull her fist away. When I would not let her, she tried to cuff me with her other hand. I let her go, let the new blow fall short. A space had formed between us. Two paces. Three. Her chest was heaving, her fists up and ready. There was sweat beading her pale brow, and her breath came hard. “Fight me, damn you!”
“No,” I said.
Hissing, Cassandra reached for her belt, and in a single, fluid motion, snapped one of her twin swords free.
“Is this what you want?” I asked.
“If you really are him,” she said, brandishing the unkindled blade, “prove it.”
“How?”
The blade lanced forward, would have pierced me had I not twisted aside. It sliced toward me, and I danced back a step.
Did she mean to kill me? Truly? Was that why she had come? Why she had had to drink herself half-insensate?
I ducked a wild slash. The girl was not herself, was not remotely like herself. She had always been an aggressive fighter, confident and courageous. But here she was uncorked, frenzied, furious. There were tears shining in her eyes, raw and wild as she.
Still, her blade found only air.
We had circled round, and abruptly I felt the table at my back. It was all I could do to hurl myself over it, black hair tangling about my face as I struck the deck on its far side.
“Fight me, damn you!” she said, falling back into her native Jaddian. “Panathetto!”
“I won’t fight you, Cassandra,” I said, and once more spread my hands.
“Whatever you are,” she said, gasping. “Devil or djinn—whatever! You are not him. You may have fooled the others, but you will not fool me.”
Hands still raised and empty, I said, “I am your father.”
“Kadhabi!” she cried. Liar.
Utannashi.
The noise of our battle and of Cassandra’s cries must surely have reached good Neema by then, and Edouard with him. If we were to finish this alone, it had to end swiftly.
But I would not draw my sword.
Cassandra had to break left or right to circle the table and reach me. She did neither. Instead, she brought her sword through a rising arc that cut the table clean in two, and stepped into the breach made as the two halves fell apart. I should have expected something of the kind, but so sudden was her move and so violent her ferocity that I was caught by surprise. I should have dodged to one side.
I stepped back instead, and so did not escape her redoubled assault.
Cassandra splintered, refracted as through a prism, her blade a shining ray of light aimed at my heart. I saw it pass across an infinite sea of potential. It seemed to shimmer as it drew near. For an instant, the blade appeared to pass me both to left and right, then to pierce my chest.
I closed my grip on Cassandra’s wrist and on the pommel of the blade she held, the emitter pressed against my sternum. Our eyes met an instant. The look of savage triumph on her face giving way to absolute grief.
But the vision still shimmered about me, the world—my place in it—unresolved. To my left and right, I saw the two of us repeated in countless iterations, Cassandra’s blade buried to the hilt in my heart, my hands on hers.
She did not dare to move.
Slowly—so, so slowly—my thumb found the emitter, switched off the blade. Cassandra’s sword fell from nerveless fingers, clattered to the floor. There was no blood. No wound. Not a stitch of my black tunic jacket was torn.
I was entirely unharmed.
Fear shone in Cassandra’s eyes. Tears. Her lips parted, and she shook like a storm-bothered leaf.
Before she could pull away, or fall, or run, I embraced her, dragging her by the hand that had but recently tried to take my life. I gathered her in my arms, and held her fast. For a moment, she tried to pull away, but I was still as stone. Cassandra was as ice, unyielding, utterly frozen.
The ice cracked. “Abba?” The word was small as atoms.
“It really is me, Anaryan.”