Ashes of Man (Sun Eater, #5)

by Christopher Ruocchio

The ugliness of the world does not fade, nor are fear and grief made less by time, nor is any suffering forgotten. We are only made stronger by its blows.

“I do owe you, Imrah. Your whole family. And Siran. For reminding me to be . . . human.”

“The highest place . . . the bottom of the world.” I looked up at the mountain, at the man buried beneath the earth there. One could hardly look lower than the grave.

“A punishment, I’m afraid. Ran into a spot of trouble rescuing Archduke Bierce’s daughter from some freeholder scum. Her ladyship was especially grateful, and not in a way that endeared her rescuer to her lord father.” Again he laughed—he laughed too easily. “She still telegraphs, not that I reply. Wouldn’t be proper.”

Doubtless you find this meeting strange. I did not. I did not then know the name of Sir Hector Oliva, Champion of the Battle of Taranis, captain of the Siren, commander of the last defense of Nessus, Hero of the Empire. The only man besides myself to stand in single combat against the Dark Lord of Dharan-Tun and live to tell the tale.

We have need of heroes, however broken, however terrible, however insufficient they may be. And we have need of more than one hero, for heroes do break, you know.

“One of these days you will have to accept that people love you, Hadrian. Gibson did. I do.”

“Am I a good man?”

“Do you not have your answer a hundred times over?” A brief tremor shook her arm, but she hid it behind her back and shook her head again. “Monsters don’t have doubts.”

Reformatting, they’d called it—they never called anything by its right name, like the Lothrians—always sanitized it, whited over horror as lime whitened the tombs of the patricians on the hills beyond Meidua.

“Girl in every port, then? Is that it?” “Not every port!” Oliva’s easy smile returned. “But not necessarily one per every port, either.”

Some ask nothing of us, and so we are nothing to them. But there are those women who ask all of us. Those are the ones worth giving all for.”

“I have fought in more than thirty battles on as many worlds. Spoken with gods, battled demons. I’ve broken bread with the Scourge of Earth itself, and treated with Kharn Sagara. I have served the Emperor loyally for more than three hundred years, and I have loved only three women.” I raised my three-fingered hand for emphasis, ticked the fingers down as I spoke. “One I lost, the second I betrayed, and the third . . .” I gestured to Valka’s creche, “is right there.”

“I would marry her, if I could.” I looked down, as if ashamed of my words or the feeling they conveyed. “But I have given her all.”

“We humans have lived so long in history, I think, we’ve forgotten that myth is the older, deeper tradition. Perhaps some part of us finds it uncomfortable when those two spheres overlap.”

“It is only that some obey the man, and others the throne he sits upon.”

One cannot step in the same river twice, and home is not home when you return, for you are not yourself. The man you were yesterday died yesterday, and is only a piece of the man of today, as you will be tomorrow.

But there is little right in all the universe, and none which we do not fight for and make for ourselves.

“You seriously think me one of their agents?” I snarled. “Me?” I held up my ruined hand. “Look at me, my lord!” I hissed, and when the Magnarch opened his mouth to reply I shouted him down. “Look at me! See these fingers? Dorayaica bit them off itself! And these!” I showed him the white stripes of scar on my fingers and arms. “Here is where they flayed me! And this!” I turned my head, fingers to my temple as I leaned to present the crescent scar that just barely vanished into my hair. “This is where they cut me so the blood would not pool in my head while they hanged me naked by my ankles!” I let my hand fall. “This is only a taste, Magnarch. Shall I remove my shirt?” Again he opened his mouth to reply, again I stepped over him. “Seven years! Seven years I was in their hands. Seven years I suffered, and would have died had not my Tavrosi woman,” I hurled the words back at him with all the contempt I could muster, “bent heaven and Earth herself to save me and to try and save the others!”

“Martyrs are better than heroes. It would have been better if you had died with your men.” “My men, Your Grace, had other opinions,”

“What is a god?” If a god were only something greater than the seeker, more developed than man, then the Quiet was a god beyond all doubt. But by that token, we men were gods to the Umandh, to the Cavaraad, and the other lesser races that dwelt among the stars. And what gods! Zeus and his debauched cabal of bloody-minded psychopaths could hardly be more degenerate. We were just as mortal as the others . . . only flesh and blood. But the Quiet? What is a god?

The Earth was just a lump of rock—our lump of rock, but a lump of rock all the same—

Though he slay me, I will trust in him,

“Without beginning,” I muttered, “or end. Sounds like a god to me.”

I wish that I could say I saw it in him then: the seed of the man he would become, the seed of greatness. Though I have seen the many futures and swum the waters of time, I do not know their currents. Who can see the tree written in the seed, or know its fruit? Only the Quiet one, whose hand did the writing, and whose eye sees all the universe as you or I apprehend the words on a page.

You have heard that story, heard how the Cielcin came to Nessus and set the hills ablaze. You have heard how it was that Lynch and Kartzinel organized the last defense, and how the great shipyards were burned and the city of Sananne was harvested and brought low, its men and towers threshed like grain. Some of you will have seen the footage, will have seen the great fleet commanded by the Grand Vayadan Vati Inamna, and seen the Grand Vayadan itself standing on the steps of the Magnarch’s palace as the black banners of its king snapped against the sky. You will have heard how a certain Captain Hector Oliva stood against the enemy when all was lost. And you will have heard, too, how when his Empire needed him most, Hadrian Marlowe did not appear.

Three will have to be enough.

The rain makes for a change. Perhaps I sensed that change coming, sensed something of the darkness present beneath the thin light of that autumn day. The year on Nessus was fading, falling toward winter—as do we all. It was as if some half-forgotten memory stirred, as if I saw by that sense other than sight the shadow that reached out for us, the shadow we were rushing to meet.

“Always forward!” I said, and thought, Always down. And never left nor right.

“One would think that by now we here should have learned our lesson with regard to reports of your demise.”

“Tell me, Lord Marlowe,” he asked, “are you still my man?”

“I never left your service,”

“Earth and Emperor, I haven’t been that surprised since I caught Corvo in the showers.”

“Angels are only demons that kept their oaths . . . and still serve good and truth.”

“The Quiet isn’t a people. Or if he is, I know but one.” I raised one finger, let it fall. “It . . . he is a person. An intelligence. A will.”

“I am sovereign of half a billion suns, Marlowe. Half a billion suns, and still the Dark is vast enough to swallow us whole and not even notice . . .”

We will find Dorayaica’s god, and when we do . . .” He turned again, and a green fire was in his eyes, keener and more deadly than any I had before seen there. “We will kill it. You and I.”

Writing this, I have no way of knowing who you are, Reader—or in what age you are reading these words. I do not know what you must think of me, or of all us sad Sollans. Nor do I truly care.

“I told you: I am humanity, and humanity is bleeding. I have given everything I can, everything my station demands and allows.”

“No rest for the wicked, Demon in White.”

Like all our Emperors, a failed experiment, an attempt to cast again in flesh and bone the image of the God Emperor who had delivered man the stars. Was it truly his office that hung so heavily from his neck? Or only the weight of that failure? That reminder that he was not the God Emperor, but a mere and walking shadow? That reminder that God did not speak to him as me.

“Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.”

“Take the doctor and go!” I said to the decurion. “Find Sharp! Go!” “Hadrian, don’t you dare!” Valka hissed. “This didn’t work the last time!”

Prince Kaim laughed. “What was it you said, Doctor? That the galaxy is curved? That if you travel far enough and fast enough, you return to where you began?” He turned his masked face to me. “I told you, Hadrian, that in Jadd men would know your name.” As he spoke, Prince Kaim lifted gloved hands to his face, undoing the clasps that fastened the porcelain contrivance in place. It clattered as he drew it from his face, and an instant later, Sir Olorin Milta was smiling where Prince Kaim had been a moment before. He set aside the mask and paused a moment to smooth his mustache and pointed beard, then smiled and said, “I am Jadd.”

“There will be no peace unless we take it.” Even with my eyes shut, I could feel Valka’s gaze on me. “And I’m not sure I’m the man to do the taking.”

“I lost your sword!”

“God does not need us to believe. He does not need us at all. But we each have our part to play in what He intends.”

But Olorin—Prince Kaim—stood and raised a hand for silence. His eyes were shining, and he shook his head. “You say you do not know miracles,” he said. “Are you blind?” He shook his head again, more violently. “You do not believe in God, but I do.” He descended the dais as he spoke and drew level with me. “And I believe you.” His eyes flickered from Valka to myself. “In your Empire, they say you are the Earth’s Chosen. I say you are a gift. God has sent you to us, and sent me to you.” Prince Kaim extended his hand to me, as he had once upon the airfield in Borosevo when I was just a boy. “We will fight these monsters, and by Ahura Mazda, we will win.”

“Is that more poetry?” Lorian asked, recognizing the Classical English. “Do you have a line for everything?” “Almost everything,”

“That’s why I have you, Aristedes. Every great lord deserves a proper jester!” Lorian emitted a burst of nearly mirthless laughter. “And as you’re not a great lord, my lord, you must settle for me!”