Demon in White (The Sun Eater, #3)

by Christopher Ruocchio

I saw the oceans of Delos boiled away and lightning strike the towers of Devil’s Rest. A girl with black hair and violet eyes stood upon the highest walks of the Great Keep and watched the black ships descending, unfurling their banners across the sky as cannons rained fire. The sister I’d never met, perhaps.

We met her in Lesser Devil.

I know the number now. They recited it to me at my trial. One hundred twenty-seven legions. Three million, one hundred seventy-five thousand men. And that was without counting the various logothetes, the courtiers and nobiles who had sailed with our Radiant Emperor to witness his last and final victory over the barbarian xenobites.

These thoughts were driven from my mind a moment after, for that other Hadrian’s eyes met mine. Coincidence? One corner of his mouth twisted up in that familiar half-smile. “Do what must be done,” he said—I said—and turned his back on me. “Fire at will.” The vision broadened, blurred, and skipped ahead. I saw the sun split open like a bloated whale and spew its fire forth. Fleets burned and the planet with it . . . and all those lives. “No!” I screamed. “No!” The pain flared once more behind my eyes, and all went white as that murdered sun.

The Suneater.

It was still agony to stand, but I could still see the breadth of time stretching to either side, could still choose my moment, as they had chosen for me when they delivered me from my death on the Demiurge, selecting another Hadrian—a potential Hadrian—from one of those failed narratives. They had traded the Hadrian who died for another Hadrian. For one still living. For one identical to the man who’d died in all but one respect: I had lost the other arm. For me.

Is not then every point the center of the universe, surrounded on all sides by infinite space? Copernicus was as wrong as he was right. The Earth of old was as much the center of the universe as the sun she circled. So too were Mars, and Jupiter beyond. So too Delos and Emesh, Vorgossos and Annica. Berenike and Gododdin. Every place is the center of the universe. Everything matters. Every one of our actions, every decision, every sacrifice. Nothing is without meaning, because nothing is without consequence.

The object sprang apart in my hands, as if some magnet had been undone. She took the half with my initials on it and—holding it palm up herself—said, “We don’t marry in Tavros.” “I know.” She hushed me. “ ’Tis a phylactery . . . my phylactery.” I almost dropped it. It was a sample of her genetic material, a crystallized blood sample and a digital copy laser-etched in quartz. A piece of her, preserved forever. “At home we . . . give them to one another. When one of us amasses enough social credit to . . . to have a child.” “But . . . we can’t,” I said, and had to shut my eyes to stop the tears from welling up. “I’m palatine. The High College . . .” Valka spoke over me, “I know we can’t. I still don’t . . . don’t want that anyway. But I thought . . . well . . .” She held the other half up, showing my initials etched on its face. “Among the clans, ’tis forbidden to exchange them, back and forth. I thought . . . I thought it a fitting compromise.” And with that she closed my fingers over her phylactery. “A symbol.” “A symbol!”

flowered from its shoulder and studded the

I am not certain if a hell awaits the unjust hereafter, but I know there are hells in this life.

Great quote!

We had expanded too far, brushed against the borders of infinity. Infinity had pushed back.

The herald raised its staff toward the Storm Wall once more, and once more the vast army of the Pale shrieked from the shadows of their landing craft. And then something terrible happened, something I could not have predicted. Night fell in mid-morning, as though some god-like hand had blotted out the sun.

There are endings, Reader, and there in the dark of the ruined starport there were many endings. Pale faces shone in the dark at the end of that hall, lit by the ruddy light, their swords like fingers of bone, silver serpents writhing in their fists. I raised my sword in answer, in salute.

But for once in all my life, I’d managed to keep my sword.

LOL.

The commander drew back, breath hissing past glass teeth. “Numeu ti-Shiomu, yukajji!” it said. You belong to the Prophet, vermin.

As above, so below.

Love that saying.

On we ran, and with every step I expected to see the crimson shine of the targeting laser and feel the cold white flash of light come down and end it all. It never did.

I'm betting it uses a ton of power so has a long charge time.

Eyes like twin pits surveyed the land below, and a sucking dread moved in me, for it was a face I’d seen before, the same sepulchral visage I had witnessed in dreams and in visions of times unrealized. The Prince of Princes and Prophet of the Cielcin, anointed of the Watchers who dream beneath the stars. Aeta ba-Aetane and Shiomu. The Scourge of Earth. The thing that would be king. Syriani Dorayaica.

“Because you belong to it,” the Prophet answered. “It is an abomination. You are an abomination. You call it Quiet, but it is no such thing. Its word has been heard across the stars, its challenge to the very gods.” I was silent, not knowing what to say to this pronouncement. Syriani knew of the Quiet. Of course it did. Had not Iubalu said it had spoken with the Watchers themselves? That it had visions, same as me? “You know of what I speak, kinsman,” it said.

There are endings, Reader, and this is one: a victory . . . and a defeat. A victory because we turned back the Scourge of Earth and its army. A defeat because no victory—no change—comes without loss. A defeat because so many thousands lay dead in the city of Deira and in the skies above it and beneath its Wall. A defeat because thousands more were taken to serve and fodder the Pale armies of the enemy. And a defeat because it cost me my secrecy. As I stood in the shadow of that cyclopean gate, I knew . . . . . . there was no going back.