A Letter Home

Std Encrypt V001aNc663

Dearest Mary,

I hope this letter finds you well. I apologize for the delay in writing, but this is the first opportunity I have to post.

How has James recovered from his fall? I hope Joanna has forgiven me for our last discussion. I did not mean to upset her so. Hug them both for me?

As you have probably guessed by now, I found birth on an Imperial Lekaf class vessel. It's a scout ship, so a little smaller than I'm used to. The crew is strange, even for humans.

The captain, a typical Charioteer has a galaxy wide cult following. My employer has direct ties with the Prince, not to mention his own army. The third, a noble, is quiet and gentle in contrast to the other two.

When I next speak to you in person, I will describe them in detail; although I suspect you will know them by name. They have many great and wondrous stories to tell. Some of which I suspect are exaggerated. So far in our travels, we have been without adventure and there is little to speak of.

Can you please do me a favor and let our benefactor know that I have taken charge of his precious item – he will know what that means.

I’m sending you the last of my available monies. My employer has yet to furnish me with my wages. This is likely an oversight as he is overly generous in person, but lacks available staff. I will remind him at my next opportunity.

Love,
Um.

Elibyrge Terminal X334ss21

Teddy’s New Rules

Session Seven: September 14-15, 2007

It’s beginning to feel normal. The stress. The sensation that something bad’s about to happen. The knowledge that the next flight won’t be uneventful; the next jump won’t be normal; the next planetfall won’t be quiet.

This is all going to end badly, when it finally ends. And by that time, my perception of ‘bad’ will probably have changed a great deal.

Unfriendly Relations

I was longing to be away from the Zuviev Estate. Waking up with my head about to drop off didn’t help. I’ll admit it was nice to wake up with Shui-Lin hovering over me, but given I’d just fallen off the couch after a very bad nightmare I wasn’t in any mood to appreciate the vision.

I have a vague recollection of words with her, possibly about the inappropriateness of my having spent the night, and I think I also spoke to some of Sava’s Death Dolls, but neither conversation really made much of an impact on me. I woke up a second time quite late in the day, still a bit light-headed and ravenously hungry.

There was an odd fellow in the dining room, sharing breakfast (and a hangover) with me. One of the Decados minor houses I think, though I couldn’t tell you his name. He had the same...leading...way of talking that Prince Hiram had.

After breakfast (it was my first meal of the day, I’m allowed to call it breakfast) I took the train back to Elibyrge and from there took our borrowed transport up to the station. Our man on the station was a bit surprised to see me in the flesh, and he seemed to assume that my ill-humour was a factor of my rank rather than a lingering hangover and a general disaffection with everything Decados. He’d been keeping an eye on outgoing shipping for me, and thanks to some bright spark in the engineering department they’d found the broadcast Oxana had managed to send out before she died. Her words “execute; execute” had been tight-beamed to a specific location near the jump gate, and the clerk confirmed that a ship had transited the gate a few moments later. So they had a few days head start on us, and the Pancreator only knew what they were off to ‘execute’.

I took the Embrace back to Zuviev and passed on the new intel to Sava, who was wrapping things up by that point. I stayed out at the ship, not really wanting to set foot back inside the estate if I could help it. Brother James joined me there, for another of his ‘talks’.

I really wish he’d just stop trying to understand me. We get along so much better when our personalities aren’t getting in the way of us doing our jobs.

Essentially, he wanted to know where my loyalties lay. Which is not a question a man like him should ever ask a man like me. James is literal, perfectly up-front, and very straight. He knows exactly how much loyalty he owes to each of his charges and he can rattle them off with perfect clarity. A guy like me has rather more flexible loyalties, and which one’s on top depends on the situation. So we had another one of those conversation where he asked me pointed questions and I tried to answer them to the best of my ability, which is never enough for James way of thinking. He ended up casting aspersions at my mother, implying that my absentee father would discard one son in favour of the other, and asserted that I was probably after Sava’s titles and lands.

And the really irritating thing is that it made me think about my mother’s role in all this. Damn him.

He’s right about one thing—I don’t know what her goals are. Never have. In fact, I’ve never asked, or even cared to. She does her thing and I do mine. And maybe she is angling for Yevgeny’s hand in marriage. More power to her, I say. She knows she won’t have her charms forever, and what better retirement can a courtesan hope for but to marry one of her old flames? If she wants him, I’ll stay out of it. If she tries to drag me into it though, I’m going to have to break a rule and disobey my mother.

Because there’s no way in all the dark stars I’ll have anything to do with disinheriting Sava. Especially not after everything Yevgeny’s done to him.

Welcoming Committee

The trip out to the Cadiz gate was tortuously slow. I kept expecting something to go wrong—for a ship to burst out and shoot at us, or for James to another of his little ‘chats’ with me. Everybody was sullen and brooding about the twins. They’re about our only topic of conversation these days. That their reach extends so far beyond their graves disturbs me.

We transited the gate to Manitou without event, and began the trip down to the planet. I was on the lookout for ships fitting the description of the one that had passed through the gate after the execute message, and lo and behold I found one, heading towards us for the gate. I started a friendly chat with them to see if they checked out, and although nothing they said was precisely wrong there was something not right about it. Thankfully, Sava was happy to follow my hunch. He had a chat with their captain, ostensibly to pass messages back to Cadiz, trying to get more info on who they were and what they up to. As they passed us, despite the speeds and risks involved, they took a pot-shot at us. Yeah, I was a bit gob-smacked. Thankfully the shields caught the blast and both ships continued on their courses, us for the planet, them for the gate.

Frantic messages got sent around. The Dean on Manitou was informed of the situation, and was asked to dig up any info about that ship. Thinking that they were headed through the gate, I tried to raise a ship just coming through it, in the hope of catching them before they engaged their engines for the planet, and maybe convincing them to re-transit and send a message to the Decados garrison.

What answered was a Vau. Apparently the look on my face was priceless.

Sava spoke to him (it?) and explained the situation. The Vau very kindly offered to stay on station at the gate and relay information to us. I guess he thought it sounded like fun. His sensor data was frankly astonishing—full ship schematics and crew numbers. What I wouldn’t give to get a hold of some of his tech. Ah well.

We finally made planetfall (after several iterations of the “why can’t we go any faster” conversation) and I headed straight for the Dean’s office while the others...I don’t know, whatever the heck it is they do on planet while I’m working. The Dean fell all over himself to help me out. That’s still taking some getting used to—they call up my service record and their eyes go wide. Anyway, the ship in question had left after taking on some very suspicious cargo, including a heap of Vau explosive devices.

That’s the sound of my brain going ‘doink’. Haven’t these people ever heard of prohibited exports? I know Manitou’s outré and neutral and weird and all that, but sheesh.

I commented that they were probably going to try blowing up the gate. The Dean’s eyes got a bit wider. I asked him if there were any Muster on planet I could borrow for the job. Thankfully, this was in fact the case. I was introduced to the Muster team, and their ugly little troop transport, and their very gung-ho sergeant (aren’t they all?).

Then came the fun of passing all this info on the the others.

“Blowing up a jump gate” are words nobody should ever have to hear, let alone repeat.

I really hate these guys.

Teddy’s New Rules

Session Six: July 21, 2007

So. This is Zuviev. I don’t know whether to feel vindicated or revolted. Both, most likely.

I grew up around Decados lordlings. They were all a bit funny in the head, but nothing quite like this. Of course, they were back woods boys, children of nobles who could never aspire beyond a knighthood and a tiny plot of land. Their influence spread little further than their own doors. Now the Zuvievs, they’re court nobles. Their name is known to the Prince. They move in another circle entirely. And it shows.

My mother never had a single bad thing to say about Yevgeny. She spoke of him lovingly, described him in superlatives and misty-eyed recollection. None of her clients escaped comparison with Yevgeny. She missed him, loved him still. All those years and she still loved him. So either she didn’t know him very well, or I don’t know my mother. Neither really sits well. She was good at reading people – had to be, in her line of work. So she had to have known at least some of what he was.

This is a man who kept a dead symbiot in his basement.

This is a man who raised his children in vats.

City of Delusion

The mood in the mansion settled into a kind of wary industriousness – the servants all had stuff to do for the impending visit of Prince Hiram, so Sava’s takeover was little more than a blip in their routine. Sava herself settled in the library to interview what were now her staff, and the priests had ensconced themselves in the chapel, so I was left at a loose end. I invented some make-work; smoothing things over with the Muster mercs on the grounds; getting a Charioteer bureaucrat on the station to monitor outgoing ships; and making sure Sava actually ate something. She wasn’t looking too bright, not that I blamed her. Shui-Lin and James didn’t surface, so I went off in search of them. I figured there was a good chance they were avoiding food and sleep, too. Like me, really.

Strolling up the hallway to the chapel I had a run-in with Lady Maya. I decided to be polite. She is Sava’s mother, after all. But rather than ignoring me as I’d hoped she would, she stopped. I was looking firmly at my boots. “Look at me,” she said, in a voice not unlike Oxana’s. And I did. She’s beautiful, like a porcelain doll – flawless skin and cold, cold eyes. She said something else, about wanting to see my face, then she spat on me and continued on. Well, I did help kill her kids. And it was a much more controlled reaction than I’d imagined.

Down in the chapel, James was deep in prayer, with Shui-Lin watching over him, looking tired and worried. In fact, she looked worse than Sava. I gave her a quiet telling-off for not eating and she started an argument about how she felt fine and had more important things to be doing. Honestly, these nobles just don’t have any sense. She relented in the end, and staggered off to eat dinner and put herself to bed, though not before telling me about the problem with the chapel. See, the twins had been making some alterations. There was scaffolding up over the stained glass window, and sheeting covering the glass itself, hiding whatever image was there. Shui-Lin didn’t want James to see that image when he finally came to himself. Basic revulsion won out over curiousity and I decided against going to have a peek. It was probably blasphemous, anyway. I had the servants paint it black, and headed off for bed myself.

Black Holes and Revelations

The following day we faced the not-too-palatable prospect of going through the Institute. I say unpalatable, but that was only my initial impression. Sava made it worse by commenting that she thought there might be symbiots down there. Pause for minor hysterics and a mad dash for the armoury in search of flamers.

Truth be told, I’d have been happier staying in the house. Even with the death dolls and Sava’s mother. Anything was preferable to the horrible possibility of running into another symbiot. And yes, I was terrified at the prospect. There’s no sense there; nothing you can scare into submission or reason with. Worse; they infect humans with their filth and turn us against ourselves. Time is insufficient distance from the horrors.

In any case, we went. Shui-Lin led us in a prayer, and then we descended to the sub-basement.

It both was and wasn’t what I expected. Cold and clean; surgically neat and stinking of disinfectant. The elevator doors opened onto a long corridor, one wall punctuated by doors, the other clear glass, terminating in an airlock door at the far end. Beyond the glass was a horror no less disturbing than symbiots, but at least somewhat more human.

Vats. Great glass tubes of viscous liquid, five of them empty. The other three…

Even now I can’t call it to mind without a shudder. I can list them dispassionately enough: a pre-born; a male child; a pre-pubescent girl. Floating in their tubes, asleep and dreaming. The family resemblance was unmistakable; these were Sava’s siblings. My siblings.

Sava seemed unsurprised, as though remembering her own childhood, and it occurred to me that she was probably grown in one of things. Like a prized show beast. No normal life there; no comforting arms, no little accidents; nothing that a child can learn and grow from. Raised in perfect isolation to be perfect specimens of the Zuviev bloodline. It makes me sick.

And then, of course, followed a terrible helplessness – I can’t do anything for those children. They’re stuck there. Bound to House and blood and the mad designs of their ‘parents’. They’ll turn into vicious little homunculi like Konstantin and Oxana, so far removed from human they’ve lost their humanity. It’s there in Sava, too; that distance and coldness. Just a little. Just enough.

Maya and Yevgeny are responsible for those atrocities, and to think that they could perpetrate them on their own children… Or perhaps they don’t even think of them as their children, given how little they’ve had to do with their upbringing. By the Gates, I want to hurt them.

Hoodoo

…kids in vats was just the beginning.

I stayed out in the hallway, ostensibly to keep an eye on the unchecked doors and to make sure nothing came down the lift to meet us. Really, I was sick with fear, and though I had my back to the glass wall and the vats beyond, my brain kept calling up images of them. I didn’t want to be there, and I didn’t want to see what new horrible revelations might be behind the other four doors.

The others went through the airlock into the vat room and poked around a bit. I wasn’t paying much attention, because to do that would have meant turning around and facing the vats again. The doors were much more innocuous.

They finally emerged, a little shakily I thought, and started going through the other four rooms. I stayed where I was, happy about being unable to see whatever was in the rooms. I was getting rough descriptions from Shui-Lin anyway. The first was a sort of operating theatre and the second, some kind of laboratory.

The third room elicited some confused noises from the others, and Sava called me over to have a look. I probably bitched a bit about being prised away from my nice safe spot. Inside was a bank of second-republic computer mainframes. Huge, sleek black things with slide-out keyboards and seductive curves. Alas, they wouldn’t let me play with them. Why call me in then? Honestly.

I returned to my relatively safe wall and proceeded to sulk. The others opened the last room. And by their reaction, they found what we were all hoping we wouldn’t find; a symbiot. No sooner had that word been used than Sava called me over again. I swore at her a bit. I really didn’t want to be in a room with a symbiot, dormant or not. She convinced me in the end of course, with an argument that went something along the lines of “come in here and look at this computer panel or I’ll be forced to do it myself and probably break something and let this thing out.” So, in I went.

Once the initial shock passed, it wasn’t even half as terrifying as the ones we’d encountered at Daishan. For one, it was dead, and securely locked behind plexiglass. Although ‘secure’ is possibly an ill-advised term where symbiots are concerned.

I got into the system and went through the files, learning that the symbiot had been there for nigh on thirty years. They’d brought it in dead and hooked it up to a formaldehyde system to keep it from decaying. Despite their best efforts though, the sample was finally succumbing to entropy, and they’d been searching for a stasis chamber so they could keep it indefinitely. Why, you ask? Well, turns out they’d been testing and examining the thing, getting DNA reads and studying its form. I can only assume so they could use whatever they discovered in their repulsive research. Happily, it didn’t look as though they’d taken any physical samples out to use in their research, so it was unlikely that their ‘children’ were contaminated.

But it did leave me with a dilemma. Brother James. I would have cheerfully passed on all this data to Sava and Shui-Lin. But James would probably shoot first and think later. And I didn’t want to give him any reason to think of Sava as tainted. So I deleted the memory core.

Everything went dark. I said ‘oops’, or something similar, and commented that whatever had happened could probably be fixed from the larger terminals. I was both worried about what those other databanks might contain, and eager to get my grubby little fingers on them. Before anybody could object, I was out the door.

Brother James stayed in the room with the symbiot. He was calling in a Brother Battle strike force. Which really didn’t bode well for Sava, his family, or his estate. I was having visions of guys in cassock superior declaring the whole estate tainted and burning it to the ground.

Anyway, a bit of fiddling got me access to the big databanks, and I was faced with a positively daunting list of files and research subjects. The big, shiny, not-to-be-ignored one was “Zuviev Apotheosis Project”. Feeling a bit ill, I activated it.

And the computer started talking. Well, I was impressed.

It launched into an overview about the project, which included words like ‘genetics’ that, in concert with the thing in the next room, made Zuviev look very bad. Now in my defence, I was not thinking very straight at this point, and I was also completely oblivious to the fact that Sava and Shui-Lin were standing right behind me. And I ran my mouth off, the way I always do when I’m stressed. I believe I said something along the lines of “looks like I’m going to have to delete this, too”.

Which is when Sava punched me. I was shocked more than anything. She very icily ordered me upstairs and told me to stay there until she came to get me. I guess I’m lucky she didn’t run me through.

Shui-Lin lectured me on the way back up to the ground floor. It boiled down to my inability to keep my fool mouth shut. Nothing new, really. I’m a bit irritated that she made me feel guilty about it, though.

Later, the Brothers Battle (two oddly timid young men who were stonkingly outranked by Brother James) arrived and vanished downstairs to cleanse the symbiot taint. Which wasn’t really a taint, given it was so very dead. And I’m appalled that they blew up the entire room, taking a lot of very expensive second-republic tech with it. Honestly, luddites.

I had it out with Sava a little after that, her chilly anger having warmed a bit by then. I think I explained myself well enough, or at least to her satisfaction – and for once I was really telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I left her with a brotherly embrace which I felt was reciprocated, though I could have done without the friendly arse-pat she gave me as I left.

Assassin

Late that afternoon found us standing politely behind Sava as she waited to greet Prince Hiram Decados. His shuttle, like the Brothers Battle before him, landed on the roof, which by now was feeling less than stable (the Brothers had not taken their landing softly). The Prince’s shuttle is a nice piece of kit – sleek and black, with just the merest hint of green. It put me in mind of one of those racing cats the traders bet on while waiting for their routes out of Pandemonium.

Prince Hiram himself is every bit the ‘thing’ you hear rumours of. You could call him human, but you’d be stretching the term to its utmost limit. Grossly obese and supported by a floating tray propelled along on mechanical legs… I could tell that Sava was impressed, though by what, I’m not sure. The size of his purse?

Lady Sava introduced herself, and apologised to the Prince for the presence of the Brothers Battle. The Prince didn’t seem concerned, and swapped pleasantries in that double-speaking language nobles use. Then Sava introduced her companions – I muttered some meaningless pleasantry and was irritated to note I’d slipped back into my normal accent, something the Prince seemed to find very amusing.

Sava led his highness off to the guest quarters so he could refresh himself before the party, and the rest of us slunk off to get dressed. Well, except for James, who vanished back downstairs to watch over the empty room and the no doubt very-sick-of-the-sight-of-him lower ranked Brothers Battle. I’m not really sure what he’s hoping to achieve by standing around outside that room. To me, it smacks of a man running away from something, and it makes me wonder what Oxana did to him.

The party preparations were reaching boiling point, and the eager types were already arriving when Sava summoned me to the chapel for a chat. Ominous-sounding, no? The chapel was still dimly-lit, but the cloths had been pulled away from the scaffolding and a warm breeze was wafting in through the shattered window. Bits of glass dusted the pews and the floor. Nice to see Sava getting her anger out on inanimate objects.

She said she’d had a talk with Prince Hiram. Seems His Highness was very graciously not going to have me killed for interfering in a vendetta. That cold feeling in my stomach? That was the realisation that I had, in fact, screwed up big time. Sava had called vendetta. Publicly. In front of a goodly number of Zuviev guards. And I’d not even paused. I’d kept shooting at Konstantin. Clearly yet another case of me acting before thinking. But back to the salient point – His Highness graciously not having me killed. You see, since I’d kept shooting after vendetta had been called, clearly I had to be the only other person legally allowed to participate in the vendetta: an assassin. Sava had a fancy scroll, already signed by Prince Hiram, which named me as a Mantis Assassin, all above-board (though back-dated).

Yeah. Kilroy and Mantis Assassin. The list just keeps getting worse.

I signed the paper. It’s not like I had much of a choice.

Little by little, I get closer to the Decados. It’s enough to give anybody nightmares.

Exo-Politics

The party. All the right people were there, of course. With Prince Hiram on offer, it’s not like they’d refuse.

Shui-Lin, in an uncharacteristic show of defiance (well, she’d like us to think it was uncharacteristic) wore one of her blood-stained dress robes. Unsurprisingly, she didn’t stand out. Brother James stayed downstairs guarding his precious empty room. I guess everybody’s entitled to a night off, but he could have chosen a better time to be sulking.

Sava was her usual glorious self, and I hovered near her most of the evening, in the misguided assumption that she might have needed protection. From what I’m not sure. She’s more than capable in combat, and she clearly had the Prince’s favour and so it was unlikely any of the other nobles would be out to get her. In the short term, anyway. Maybe it was just because she looked somehow lonely without her shadow.

There was violence of course, It was a proper Decados party, after all. One of the Prince’s Cossack guards accidentally-on-purpose bumped into a minor noble, and there was a duel in which the noble lost his life. Sava was put out, presumably because the prince hadn’t asked her first, and killed the Cossack in retaliation. Prince Hiram found the whole thing very amusing. Shui-Lin was less entertained by all this casual death, and took herself off to bed. I was in half a mind to leave with her, but I didn’t want to leave Sava on her own (stupid, I know).

A little later, I got taken off for a private meeting with the Prince. Terrified? Not quite. Apprehensive? Almost definitely. Prince Hiram has this genial, avuncular manner that makes you think he’s foolish and ineffectual, even though you know damn well he isn’t. It’s a neat trick. I may not like him, but I have to admit a grudging admiration for him.

He started off by saying he’d heard I was a Kilroy, and I admitted that, yes, some people called me that. He seemed to find that amusing. A lot of little things amuse the Prince. He touched briefly on the paper I’d signed, and was of course amused by my reaction – uncomfortable and irritated. I got the distinct impression that he knew damn well why I was with Sava (or perhaps that’s just me leaping to conclusions based on his way of speaking in hints).

We discussed the huge problem the twins had left behind them, that is the Charioteers getting a big hate on for the Decados, and how it could be fixed. Surprisingly, he agreed to my suggestion, which was that I’d provide a list of the missing Charioteers and their vessels, and that those vessels and their keys would be returned to the Guild. I named the bureaucrat on Cadiz station as the Factor. He’ll think all his birthdays have come at once. I don’t know what’ll happen to the Jakovian agents currently flying those ships, but they’re only peripherally complicit, and there’s been far too much death over this already.

The Prince left me with some final comments, delivered conspiratorially with the admonition not to tell Sava. Which is doubly peculiar, because he has to know I’d tell Sava anyway, so telling me not to is just a big red flag to make sure I tell her. Anyway, he wanted me to know that he was loyal to Alexius. Not to the throne, which is his usual line, but to Alexius himself. I could drive myself mad trying to figure out what his angle is in telling me that in that way, but I’m not going to give him the satisfaction.

Later, I had a moment of panic when I realised I’d been negotiating pretty high-level stuff on behalf of the Guild, something I really didn’t have the authority to do. Or at least, I didn’t have that authority a few months ago. I guess that’s just another ‘perk’ of being a Captain. When we finally hit Leagueheim I am going to have such a huge report to hand in. I just hope the Deans are in a good mood when I tell them.

The party sort of ground on after that, thankfully never reaching the heights of debauchery the Decados are famous for. I left before the end, happy to leave Sava with the few remaining party die-hards. I collected a bottle of vodka and was heading back to my room when I noticed that Shui-Lin’s light was still on, and presumably because I was a little bit drunk, I knocked, and she let me in.

We finished the bottle together, over now dimly-remembered conversation about religion and the spaces between the stars. For a priest, she holds her liquor well. I must have passed out on the couch at some point (and I really need to stop spending evenings in Shui-Lin’s room, because it’s bound to start rumours I don’t want to deny). That’s where I woke up, tangled under a blanket, desperately forcing myself to take stock of where I was, not where I thought I had been. The nightmare was a bad one, and it wasn’t letting go. I was back in that dingy little room near Elibyrge spaceport, waking to pain and terror, but it wasn’t the twins leering at me over their surgical tools.

It was Yevgeny and Sava.

Teddy’s New Rules

Session Five: June 23-24, 2007

You know, looking at myself in the mirror right now, I look a heck of a lot more like the upper-class wannabe I was when I first hopped that freighter to the Academy. The scruffy flightsuit’s gone, replaced with a suit of the kind Sava thinks looks good on me. I’m feeling more comfortable in my own skin. The doubts are still there, but they’re little background things. I’ve got better things to do than wallow. And, well… The new image suits me. Damn Sava’s good taste.

PTSD

I think we were all a bit shell-shocked after the run-in with the symbiots and the week-long decontamination. Rothwell was the only one with a grin on his face, but then he was sort of entitled to it. I let him do the piloting – I was still shaky from the Symbiot encounter.

We parted ways with Rothwell on Istakhr, and I have to admit that I was just a little bit sorry to see him go. For all his moaning and poor conversation, it was nice to have another Charioteer around. A competent one, that is. More on that later.

We all had jobs to do and set off on our separate paths – Sava and James to track down Freka, Shui-Lin to see her order, and me to dig up rumours. There was a lot of bad feeling towards the Decados, as they’d recalled their ambassador, shut down their embassy, and were no longer sending food. I ran into an old comrade from the Mendip, who was suitably in awe of my shiny new reputation (which I was still trying to get used to). He was stationed on a grain ship, the Spite Enpaulisch, whose captain I hoped could be convinced to take us incognito into Decados space. He was waiting for parts, and not having much luck with the engineers. I told him I’d see what I could do, and he agreed to ship us to Malignatius.

I caught up with the others at the main port, where there was ample evidence of our earlier dramatic departure – huge glassed craters showed where my guild had vented wrath at the Jakovians. I love my guild. Ship weaponry trumps surface-to-air missiles.

There was a pleasant pause for shopping; an afternoon spent in cheerful conversation with Shui-Lin, who was in a freer mood than normal and wore her smile near-constantly. She actually laughed at some of my jokes. Of course, her good humour with me didn’t last, and I was chiefly responsible for cocking it up.

Sava and James had found Freka and taken her to a safe-house (little more than a garage, really). I was sent off to fetch Shui-Lin and whatever healing supplies she might need, but not before a frank discussion with Sava about what I wanted done with Freka. She’d been responsible for a great many Charioteer deaths, and I’m not ashamed to say that revenge was foremost in my mind. I told Sava that I wanted her dead, and wouldn’t baulk at doing it myself if I had to (I was probably bluffing about that part, but I’ll never really know). Sava was okay with that, chiefly because he also seemed to want her dead.

Shui-Lin tended her charge with utmost compassion. I have to admire her ability to put aside personal opinion and just do her job. Eventually though, she had to admit that Freka’s wounds were beyond her healing abilities, and the lot of us shipped down to the Amalthean temple.

Freka didn’t last much longer. I was glad of being absolved of the need to kill her, and I would have been happy to forget the whole gruesome episode, but for Shui-Lin. Sava had told her about my wanting to kill Freka, and there was a roaring argument about who intended to do what when. I tried to explain that I would never had done anything to Freka while she was under Shui-Lin’s care, but she was having none of it and stormed off in high dudgeon. And just when we were getting along so well. It only got worse after that.

Weight, for throwing around

I wrote up my report to the Kilroys, adding in Freka’s uncomfortable revelations about the twin’s possible psychic abilities. The port master was happy to see me, in the manner of a man aching to be seen to be ‘helping out’ the better-connected. Which I’m not, but if he wants to think that, fine. He arranged for the Spite’s engine part to be delivered promptly, and I asked him to do what he could to support the Charioteers back at Stigmata.

The Spite’s captain was a gnarled old cyber-jockey who on first impression put me in mind of Captain Hamer. On closer inspection though, he had even fewer interpersonal skills and no gumption to speak of. So I started out being polite and deferring to the more senior rank, and in very short order ended up practically running his ship.

Shui-Lin remained bad-tempered, and her mood wasn’t improved by some not-so-gentle joking on mine and Sava’s part. The Spite consisted of a cargo contained at the rea, a bridge and quarters at the front, and a long gantry in between. An indifferently-lit, well-windowed gantry with faulty grav systems. I got slapped for my troubles. I deserved it, too. I should remember that women take a lot longer to get over things than men do.

We slipped through the gate to Malignatius without incident (discounting Sava’s current ‘little problem’ with jump gates, which I really don’t want to go into). The story got interesting as we started to pick up transmissions – a hymn being wide-broadcast, singing the praises of the celestial twins, who had rained holy fire on the unbelievers at Malignatius and ended the war with casual ease. All sung in proper Avestite church-Latin. I slapped on the brakes and ordered us back through the gate to Cadiz. I may have used the word ‘abomination’. That’s about when the captain locked himself in his cabin.

By the time we gated into Cadiz system I was running the bridge. Which was a little odd, to say the least. As we headed in towards the planet I stayed on the bridge (only a little to do with the fact that I was avoiding Shui-Lin’s righteous anger). We were picking up all sorts of transmissions about the twins – they’d quelled the resistance on Malignatius, and were several days ahead of us, back home on Cadiz and humbly accepting their accolades. It was all teeth-clenchingly irritating. Then the Decados flagship came through the jump gate.

Sava spoke to Prince Hiram, whose whole opinion on the matter boiled down to “I will look good no matter what happens, I’ll be congratulating somebody when I arrive at Zuviev Estate, and I don’t much care whether it’s the twins or you”. Which left a nasty deadline hanging over our heads. And a grudging respect for the man who runs House Decados.

In trying to get information about where Sava’s parents were, I sent messages to two Charioteer vessels heading in the planet. The first knew nothing. The second immediately changed course to intercept. At this point, I’m not sure who was stupider – me or them, but I’m the one who came out on top so I get to write the history.

We exited the Spite, sending a very relieved captain on his way and full burn back to the gate. Then I got to play chicken with starships. Which is as fun as it sounds, but only if you pull it off successfully. I came haring at the other ship at full-burn (which is a not inconsiderable speed in our little tug), then flipped her over when we hit weapons range and hit full burn in reverse, catching two missiles in our engine splash and trapping the other vessel in the tractor beam as we passed overhead. Textbook manoeuvre. They’ll probably name it after me.

We boarded pretty smoothly, with James taking care of the greeting squad and me talking the ‘captain’ into surrendering. The little shit was working for the Jakovians, who had given him the ship after killing the Charioteer captain. I relieved him of the stolen jump key and we trussed him up in the hold. We let him loose on Cadiz – deposited in a Muster sell for a set period to give us time to be well clear of him.

Just as an aside, I’d worked up a pretty big hate by this point. At the twins, mostly. They needed killing in my opinion. Badly. They’d brainwashed two units of Jakovians, almost slipped a symbiot infection past the quarantine, and been personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Charioteers and the theft of a similar number of jump keys. Nobody fucks with the guild. I never thought I’d take this stuff quite so personally. I mean, I’ve been loyal to the guild since I joined, but lately it’s been dawning on me that the buck stops with me. There’s nobody out here to give my problems to – that was abundantly clear at Stigmata garrison, with me and Rothwell the only captains in the vicinity. ‘Captain’ and ‘Kilroy’ means I have to fix the problem myself.

And hell yes, that’s ego. Shut up.

When all else fails, fake it

We settled in to a mediocre hotel near the Zuviev Estate and went to work gathering intel. That nearly got me arrested by local security, but I run a pretty good line in bullshit and they let me go, having been convinced I was undercover.

Shui-Lin, who was still a bit shitty with me but was at least deigning to speak to me again, picked up some interesting gossip from her mother superior – Sava’s father had left Zuviev for Leagueheim some time ago, after hearing that ‘somebody he cared about’ had fallen ill. If that’s my mother, I’m going to be very…something.

Anyway, the others decided they’d get into the estate as nobles attending the ‘do, while I got in with the security detail. It was easy enough to get hired by the Muster as roaming security, and I got partnered up with a young grunt who quickly developed a high opinion of my ability to get us posted inside the nice warm house out of the rain. With detours through the kitchens.

The others didn’t have it nearly so good, and a little after nightfall gunshots rang out and a general call to arms came through. Which I neatly sidestepped, to the mounting awe of my companion. I headed deeper into the house, called off the guards with a false call about bogies on the other side of the grounds, and opened a window for Sava and the others. I did apologise to my ‘partner’ for having to knock him unconscious and stuff him in a cupboard. I’m sure he understood. Heh.

I’d clearly used up all my luck though, because that’s when it started going pear-shaped. We were spotted, chased, trapped, and then ambushed by Konstantin’s men. Fortunately, Sava and James are very good at dealing with stuff like that, so Shui-Lin suggested we leave them to it and get after the twins, who’d run on ahead. Very odd to hear her advocate chasing the bad guy. Of course, she’d just been badly shot up by their ambush, so maybe she wasn’t feeling very charitable.

Halfway up the stairs to the roof, we were joined by security, who I managed to convince were on the same side as us (and we were still dressed like militia, so it wasn’t much of a stretch). We hit the roof and there were the twins, heating up a flyer for their getaway.

Two things stick in my head about that moment. The first was the very cold and unconcerned way Konstantin looked at me as I raised my gun and shot him. The second was the little grin on his face as he said “Looks like big brother’s all grown up”.

As if I needed another reason to be ashamed to be related to that.

I think he shot me at least once, because Shui-Lin patched me up later on, but I don’t really remember much beyond standing in the doorway and calmly pulling off round after round, first at Konstantin, and then when Sava closed with his brother, at Oxana.

She tried to get away in the flyer, and I remember moving out on to the roof, firing blaster bolts at the engines in some addle-headed desire to shoot it out of the sky. Sava ordered the men, his men now, to fire on it, and after some convincing they did. She avoided the first missile. The second one blew her to hell.

Then we were standing in the rain on a roof-top, with Sava in a pool of blood cradling Konstantin’s dead body, and James shaking off whatever Oxana had done to him. Shui-Lin was somewhere back in the stairwell, helping the security guards Sava and James had gone through on their way to the roof.

It felt good to take off the Muster militia gear and put my Captain’s insignia back on. But man, do I need a drink.

DSS Princess Anastasia

Heavily armed as a battleship, sleek as a dagger, black as deep space but for the emerald green mantis claws etched into its battle-steel flanks, the DSS Princess Anastasia is the flagship of Prince Hiram Decados himself. Few outside of Prince Hiram's own trusted inner circle of arch-advisors, cyber-heirophants and elite physicians have set foot upon the vessel; it's crew does not indulge in shore leave, and its marque is truly unique. It is even unknown if the Prince relies upon a Charioteer pilot...

CSV Spittein Paulisch

The Charioteer Star Vessel Spittein Paulisch is a bulk trader operating the run from Cadiz to Malignatius, and from there to Istakhr and Aylon. The last few months has seen the Paulisch concentrate on shipping within the Al Malik sphere of influence. The ship's captain, a wily old trader, felt that traversing the Decados interface was a dangerous game. After meeting Sava Zuviev Decados, his intuition has turned into downright bias.

The Royal Gwynneth Hotel

The Gwynneth, as its many long term customers and favourite winesops call it, is a hotel not far from the dusty streets of Samarkand's Grand Bazaar, on Istakhr. It caters to expatriate Hawkood nobility and retainers, or those of the merchant classes with pretensions to padded finery and velvet drapery. Sir Sava Zuviev Decados rented apartments for her entourage during their second stay on Istakhr, much to the staff's evident chagrin.

Lieutenant Arl Carver

Lieutenant Carver is an officer aboard the bulk trader GSV Spittein Paulisch, and is in old friend of Teddy Valenti's. He is a stocky man, lacking neither the flair nor the ruthlessness to advance beyond his current station in the Guild. This suits Carver just fine, given what he has so far witnessed of the stresses of command and responsibility in the Charioteers. He assisted Teddy in gaining passage, along with Teddy's crew and Teddy's own vessel, to Cadiz via Malignatius, prior to the Zuviev Reunion.

Sava's journal, entry 5

7 Aprelye 4999 — the Righteous Hammer, Stigmata system

I am clean of Symbiot taint. The examiners, interrogators and chirurgeons of the Brother Battle are sure of this. I have spent most of a week with them, hiding nothing, completely complicit in their torture of my body, mind and soul. We were rigorous in my scourging: to be anything less, to be careless, would have had too high a price.

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It was not a pleasant experience nonetheless. I was made to reveal all my secrets, shameful in my deviation from the human norm. The worst part was that they did not seem to care. As long as I was not tainted, I was not their problem. In a way it was worse than the Avestites: at least they took an interest.

My friends are clean too. The Pancreator be praised! 

19 Aprelye 4999 — the Ill-Conceived Embrace, Ishtakhr orbit 

Once more Ishtakhr’s dusty horizons curve behind us. It has been a torrid few days. I am sadder and I feel older. At least we have now some of the puzzle.

We came to Ishtakhr once more as discretely as we could, setting down at Baram, Prince Amir’s capital, rather than at Samarkhand. We were hunting Freka Decados. I reasoned that even if she had left Ishtakhr after our last encounter there, she would leave behind agents to continue tracking us. Ishtakhr is just too good a transit point not to watch, especially as it was not a huge leap to deduce that were headed to Nowhere via Stigmata, and so would be likely to return the same way. I wanted answers from her. I was prepared to be unpleasant about it. I did not need to. I was forgiving instead. 

After returning to Samarkhand via aeroplane we booked into the ‘Royal Gwynneth’, a hotel catering to the Hawkwoods. I found its environs restful, if prissy, its staff attentive, if sniffy, and its atmosphere of genteel calm beyond reproach. I was amused at the occupants’ reaction to my obvious house affiliation, but they were not too proud to take my money. 

We split up to pursue Freka according to our means. Shui Lin checked the Amalthean hospice for injured parties. I remade the acquaintance of Sir Juan Cadesse de Hazat. Teddy checked with the Charioteers and the word on the street (or at least, in the pub). All drew blanks. At the hospice, Shui Lin learned that a wounded man answering the description of the one Teddy shot in the last fight with Freka’s men had checked in and out some weeks ago. Sir Juan had never seen Freka again after Prince Amir’s party, but did give me her address, an apartment. This had been relet by a selchakah-addicted Al Malik lordling. There was no sign here of Freka.  

Freka’s cell was not active. The desert dunes at the edge of the spaceport were mazed and fractured with plasma-glass and craters: Teddy’s escapade had probably led to our missile-firers being vaporized.  

It was all very frustrating. I could not think how to find her had she left Ishtakhr after all, or even where to look next for guidance. We mused desultorily over a fine but stodgy Hawkwood-style dinner and retired to our rooms. 

In my room The Assassin lay in wait. Literally. On my bed. I cursed my foolishness for not insisting on barbarically wearing my rapier down to dinner. I could see it still sheathed on the dressing table. Fortunately I was still wearing my shield!

But The Assassin had not come to attempt to kill me again. She made no sudden moves, but began to speak of her experiences in hunting me. I found my gaze unable to shift from regarding her: her skin piebald with pigmented camouflage; her fingers and toes startlingly expressive with their extra joints; her eyes dark; her curves slender and athletic but no worse than mine; her lips full and moist… 

There was no hint of love here, but there was lust. I could see it was reciprocated. But we spoke for a time first. She told me her handler was the man I had met as ‘Jakob’. Jakob was safe. She had given up the vendetta job as soon as she found out Freka was doing her own thing. Which was her business reason for breaking into my suite: she knew where Freka was. Her price was not objectionable to either of us.  

It was an interesting encounter, and she was gone before I awoke. A pity. I would have liked to have returned some of the fear she caused me.  

Somewhat refreshed the next morning, I took Brother James with me into the warrens of dumble-homes on the outskirts of Samarkhand. We hired a storage building and a groundcar and bought rations. We scouted the address The Assassin had given me and found it completely unremarkable.  

We stormed into the hovel and were nearly repulsed by the stench. Freka lay delirious on a pallet, one side of her body burned to a turn by a plasma bolt’s near miss, suppurating gangrenous pus that seemed almost to phosphoresce in the guttering light of the candles. The smell was amazing: I hope I never smell it again. James did what he could to get her mobile. I gave her Elixir and she recovered enough to beg for death. All my desire for her further pain crumbled. We took her to our storage building and lay her on a clean pallet — there was no need to secure her. Brother James fetched Shui Lin and Teddy. Shui Lin began to attend to Freka while we stood around like guilty children.  

Days passed. We forced Shui Lin to eat to keep up her strength and ran her errands. Finally Freka was fit to be moved again, and we took her to the hospice for better care. But it was too late. Freka sank quickly. She was conscious enough at the end to garble out some of the answers we required of her. And at least she smelled better now. When she was finished, I allowed her to be forgiven her treachery and let her die a soldier of the Decados. It was all I could do. 

It was at her bedside that I learned that feudal loyalty works upwards as well as down. Freka had been betrayed by her lords, my siblings. She was not the traitor.  

Freka: you sought to bring down the Decados. You sought to kill or detain me and my people for unknowable purposes. You killed in our name. But in death, you are still ours, and we will not forget your name. Pancreator forgive you, Pancreator accept you into the Light, Freka.  

Freka told us of the Twins. She told us how they had suborned two Jakovian cells. She described how they had come to her and her men like angels of the Pancreator, like the Pancreator itself, so worthy of love and worship that will and judgement just had to be suspended, except where it served the Twins and their greater glory. She did not know why the Twins sought to wreck Charioteer trade with the Decados or to invite the storm of the Symbiotes onto our worlds. All she wanted to do, even at the end, was to serve the Twins and above all, to just see them once more.  

Freka had been a witch of some power. I became concerned at the power the Twins wielded even over one such as her.  

We left Ishtakhr for Malignatius soon after that, seeking a quick resolution to the vendetta in accord with my vision. For concealment The Ill-Conceived Embrace was bodily loaded aboard the Spittein Paulisch, a bulk freighter whose captain apparently owed a favour to Teddy. The rest of its cargo hold is filled with medical supplies bound for Malignatius, where rumours have it that the recent ‘troubles’ have been resolved with supernatural swiftness by the Twins. Somehow they have ended up in charge of the Decados contingent from Stigmata, and used this to suppress the revolt. Or perhaps they are just charming every party with their new-found witch power. 

25 Aprelye 4999 — the Ill-Conceived Embrace, Malignatius jumpgate 

We have learned that the Twins have left the Malignatius system a few days before we arrived. They are bound for Cadiz, where they will be hosting a reception for Prince Hyram who will reward them for their great achievement. We have to follow them! Even now the Spittein Paulisch is swinging back to the jumpgate and to go through to Cadiz system. We have to get to them before Hyram can be made part of their empire of mind-control. I have to kill my siblings.  

6 Maya 4999 — Zuviev Estate 

Even as a bright pinpoint, one’s home sun is a welcome sight. Now, after several days on Cadiz I can’t believe that I once took this light for granted. It’s brighter than the light of Malignatius but dimmer than the glare of Istakhr’s redder sun. It’s warmer and softer than the suns of Nowhere and Malignatius. It’s less aggressive than the sun of Severus. I am in love with my sun’s colour. It is my family too. 

The Twins are dead. I killed them. The Vendetta is satisfied. I am strangely not. There is blood on my hands, the same colour as my own. I held Konstantin in my arms as he bled out from a torn femoral artery. The rain made a blur of his precious blood spilling across the landing pad. I tore him apart. I am the Zuviev, if Yevgeny can not be found alive. I am truly a Decados. Perhaps I am damned like them. Like us. 

On reaching the Cadiz system, we discovered ourselves to be only a handful of days behind the Twins. There was a surprisingly small amount of traffic in the system — evidence of their actions against the Charioteers. At my request Teddy attempted to send a message to Yevgeny but this was intercepted. One merchant ship, the Hand of God 137, altered course to intercept our host the Spittein Paulisch. Our course was obvious: board and storm, but only Teddy agreed with me. I ended up ordering Brother James to play his part, and that felt discordant. I had previously enjoyed his methodical approach to our objectives but I did not realise that he could not act outside this mindset. We were on the verge of catastrophe. Anything less than swashbuckling just would not serve us, no matter what the risk. I am glad, however, that Brother James was professional enough to follow his orders even if he didn’t agree with them, and in the resulting chaos, he served me as well as he always has. I have grown accustomed to his looming form at my shoulder. I think I would feel undressed without him there. But now that my pilgrimage is over, I must give him the opportunity to serve another more deserving cause.  

A small fleet jumped into the system behind us, and I recognised Prince Hyram’s flagship. This hailed us and soon I was summoned to speak directly to His Highness. Even over a scratchy intercom, it’s a good voice. It’s like being smothered in velvet.  

But I digress. The Prince accepted my warning about the Twins’ witch powers with an indulgent air (he already knew to take precautions), and told me he expected the matter of our vendetta solved before the reception at Zuviev Estate. He would celebrate with ‘…whichever Zuviev lord survives to welcome him’. This, apparently, is the Decados way. Fortunately in this time it was in accord with my own plans. 

Teddy took the Ill-Conceived Embrace out of the Spittein Paulisch and set us to intercept the Hand of God 137. For all its lack of amenity the ICE is apparently a superb interceptor, with its overpowered engines and industrial-grade tractor beam making the intercept very simple. Or perhaps it was just Teddy making it look easy.  

The Hand of God 137 did what it could to avoid Teddy’s assault but their pilot was nowhere skilled enough. A fast approach thwarted their eluding us; a sudden spin and a frantic burn from the main thrusters thwarted their missiles; our tractor defeated their efforts to escape. Teddy and Brother James secured the Hand of God 137 with efficient ease and took its pilot prisoner. We learned from him of the Twins’ agents’ general orders to respond to anyone using the name Yevgeny, or ours.  

We took both ships to Cadiz orbital and docked the ICE, making planetfall after four days at Elibyrge in the Hand of God 137. Such space! Although, much to my chagrin, I find my attitude to the ICE softening in recognition of its sterling potential as a raider. Not much of a yacht, however.  

Returning to Elibyrge spaceport was odd. I found myself half-expecting to be arrested again by Death Dolls and taken to my father, who would explain the plot to me. I was disappointed when I decided I was on my own. This was asserted by the one final thing Yevgeny left for me: at the lost property office, a box containing a note from him telling me he had left the estate behind for Manitou. The mess was all mine to deal with. And I now had only a couple of days left to do so.  

As commercial travellers we journeyed to Zuviev and its homely familiarity was heart-breaking to me. All was as I had left it: same skies, same horizons, same scents, same people, same accents. But I was kept apart from it: as if a sheen of glass were between me and any real contact with my place; like the couple of times in my childhood when my immune system was disconnected and I lived in a sterile room at the Institute, touching nothing, breathing no-one’s breath.  

We found rooms at a poor hotel at Sailmakers Beach and began to scope our task. Teddy went to the Guilds; Shui Lin returned to her home hospice; I tried to find my old doctors from the Institute. Many of these had disappeared, which in hind-sight is a very bad sign. The Twins had set agents out to catch my fumbling attempts at infiltration, however, and one, a nurse-acolyte at the hospice, tumbled Shui Lin and alerted the Twin’s security — Zuviev security — against us. It was no worse than I anticipated. I was beyond worry at this stage: my fears for my life and my friends’ weal, and my fear that I would actually have to kill my own siblings, added to the dissociation I felt. I went through the motions. 

Teddy managed to bluff his way into the Muster contingent bolstering Zuviev security at Feodosiya. I consciously fought back despair in order to use again the lesson the Gargoyle showed me, and we planned a raid on the estate that night. Shui Lin, Brother James and myself used a small boat to approach the estate from the river, while Teddy was our inside man. This proved the salvation of the plan since the mud had shifted since last I sailed on the canal and I beached our dinghy mid-water. In dealing with the guards in the grounds who heard us squelch ashore, one of them got a pistol shot off and the alarm was raised. Teddy distracted the guards and let us into the house.  

We sped upstairs to hopefully find the twins. We were met on the first floor by Death Dolls. Bad. Fortunately they were yet loyal to House Zuviev and not the twins and agreed not to stand in the way of our vendetta. In hindsight this makes me think that they are shielded against witch powers (their masks? Implants?). This makes me happy. 

The Death Dolls located the Twins in the Institute for me. A squad of Muster guards gave me some exercise and a pass-card needed to get through the first-floor door separating the wings of the house. We passed from the Decados opulence of the Zuviev home into the stark white surgery-space of the Zuviev Institute. I used to love this transition when I was a child.  

Konstantin controlled the Institute’s security system and mocked us with it, but he had not anticipated that we would have a pass-card and could not lock that out without preventing his goons getting to us. We decided to take the security room on the ground floor, hoping to catch Konstantin there, or failing that to seize a strategic advantage over the guards.  

There were six guards waiting for us in the lobby. They shot at us as soon as we emerged from the stairs. We — I — were a rabble. Shui Lin was somehow in the front of our group and took two or three bullets; I watched as if in slow motion her stumbling as the bullets hit her. I expected more blood. Why did they shoot her? She was enrobed as an Amalthean! Who shoots Amaltheans? I think a part of me died to watch her fall. After it, everything became simple. Teddy shot; James shot and charged; but by that time I was already among the guards and my dance was death. Steel shone and screamed electricity. Flesh parted, repulsed from my work like a snail from salt. Blood shouted. None of it was mine. No more of it was ours.  

In the end there was the silence of the dead and dying, a relief after the gunfire. In this pause we heard a shuttle landing on the roof-port. Teddy assessed Shui Lin’s condition and I handed him the rest of my elixir to steal her back from death. We were successful — or perhaps the Pancreator had already put a protecting hand between Shui Lin’s soul and the consequences of our folly. Shui Lin lived. And so then, did my soul. 

Of course, now it was full of anger. Teddy was possessed by a similar demon, I think — he stormed ahead of us in the stairwell. At the top were more guards: he bluffed past them without even slowing. 

We ran to catch up. There were more guards at the top of the stairs and upon the roof.. Brother James tossed them like dolls. And I did not slow down from killing them, my passage a line of bright death.  

On the roof the Twins were standing at the foot of a shuttle’s entry ramp. There were more guards with them but no Death Dolls. It was raining: one of the seasonal storms blowing in from the Eilyat Sea was dropping sheets of water from low gunmetal clouds. The lights of the landing pad and shuttle cast strips of colour across the wet maxicrete. The air steamed and shimmered off the shuttle’s skin and engine sponsons. My sword was washed clean of blood.  

Everything was simple. I was still operating in some clean, mechanical mental space that matched my MercuryWire, perhaps. Konstantin gloated for a bit and then shot a blaster pistol. I don’t recall seeing its impact. Oxana ducked into the body of the shuttle. I charged across the water at Konstantin, hurtling through the Dance written in the lights in the water, while Teddy shot at him. His shield flared. He raised a textbook rapier to deflect my onslaught but it was pitifully too little. I thrust my blade into his thigh, into a soft gap between mechanism and bone, and tore out his femoral artery with a twist. The dance ended with the soft collapse of the universe. The colour collapsed out of Konstantin’s face, so much like my own. His strength washed out of his with his bright red blood in the rain and he fell heavily onto me. I helped him down to the concrete. Somewhere else Oxana howled, an insane thing with half her brain, half her soul, excised.  

I killed my own brother. My life-time’s practice in the art of killing, the artifice of my fine body, and my love for my art, reached apotheosis in this moment: I had become an angel of death. I felt through our touched cheeks his heart stagger and stop. I heard his last breath lurch out of his lungs. It sounded like a curse. I am not surprised.  

As I sat in misery, my tears invisible in the rain, the shuttle ramp closed — Oxana was recovered enough to attempt a getaway. Teddy shot at the shuttle’s engines and severed a feedline but it was not enough. The shuttle staggered skywards, swinging out to sea. The machine was easy to find once more. I took a squawker and took control of the defences. I ordered the shuttle cut out of the sky. At several kilometre’s distance, my vendetta struck it down with missiles and in a chrysanthemum of savage light amid the sheets of rain, it was done. Burning metal fell into the bay.  

I slew my own sister.  

They left me in the rain for a decent interval, but soon the Death Dolls came to me and took me to safety. This is what they do. Later they told me that the shuttle had emitted two scrambled messages in its final moments: execute, execute. I dread that I will soon find out what my sister’s retribution will look like.  

Tomorrow Prince Hyram Decados will attend a reception in his honour at Feodosiya. I will host. Soon after that we will venture back into the Institute to determine what the Twins wrought, and to cleanse it of links with the Symbiote, which is very much what I fear we will find.  

And then there is Maya, my mother. She is guarded now by Death Dolls. I have not spoken to her yet. Another of my fears is that she is still a tool of the Twins.  

And in the near future, we will return to space to race another ‘execution’ to Leagueheim and Teddy’s mother. Manitou is on one route from Cadiz to Leagueheim. Perhaps we can race Yevgeny there.

Captain Fyodr "Teddy" Valenti

A cheerful fellow, just over six feet tall, with pale blonde hair and bright blue eyes. He dresses in a slightly rumpled grey pin-striped suit over an eye-hurtingly bright Hawaiian shirt and wears a long leather coat for armour. An elaborate and carefully-maintained blaster pistol is worn prominently on one thigh, and he carries a slug pistol in a holster under his coat.

He is friendly and outgoing, with an easily likeable manner and enough good looks and charm to make just about anybody comfortable. He can’t sell fridges to Eskimos, but he could probably sell them ice-cream.

Sava's journal, entry 4

28 Mart 4999 — Leaving Nowhere, the Ill-Conceived Embrace

I had wanted answers. A clear direction. I dreamed of forgiveness perhaps. Ultimately though, I sought understanding. But the Gargoyle of Nowhere is not meant for human minds, but something greater. I know the vision it left in my mind is The Truth. I am ashamed that I do not understand its import. Through analysis I can make the vision mean many things - like seeing visions in a fire. Perhaps all are true. I fear, however, to get it wrong.

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Have I wasted the months since Cadiz? My younger self might feel that. I am wearied that I still have as much work ahead of me as I had before I stood before the Gargoyle. I had hoped for relief, and all I have is more to understand. But the vision holds Truth. I know that. I must find some way to crack the code.

Or is this part of the lesson? Must I find some way to make the Truth part of me without effort, like the shen of the blade? In this case I must meditate on the vision but not force its compliance. We will see what riches it unfolds.

The Gargoyle is vast and old, seemingly made of black stone that does not erode. It squats in the middle of a white stone plaza with eternal patience. It is utterly alien, but not utterly without meaning. It speaks to the viewer’s dreams. I stood before its tendrilled face in the place of its attention and it spoke to me. I was among the stars. There was a Tantsyen konykov at my feet but I was not moving upon it: it was moving under me. There was an even greater majesty here than that of the Baron’s training floor. This was the Dance of the Universe, immense, timeless and inevitable, or so I thought. It wheeled and brought me to the killing move, and I was pierced through and I fell, and as I did so some of the stars dimmed or extinguished. And there I stood again. And again the Dance wheeled and I reached the killing move and was slain, and more stars dimmed. The Dance was a dance of death. The universe would be slain through inevitability. This aroused an emotion in me that I cannot name: desperation, anger, fear, heroic defiance - all were part of it, but it was greater than any. As the Dance wheeled round for a third time and the killing move approached I reached out to take control of the Dance and lead it, and I dodged, and was not slain. And the Dance continued, and no more stars went out. I became a disembodied observer, and was aware that there was another like me already there.

There is a killing move hovering before the universe, aimed at the heart of the Pancreator. But through our resistance, our will to love the universe, can the blow be avoided. Destiny is powerful but through effort, can be set onto a new path. This is what I understand from my vision. I do not know whether it is a general message, or a piece of advice merely for myself, or both. Or neither. I intend to take it to heart, however. I will cease letting myself be dragged by destiny and make my stand.

I shall never return to Nowhere, I think. I kept a handful of its gritty dust, those ashes that cover its surface, to remind me that even entire worlds can fall to killing moves. I will remember somewhat more hopefully the native guides of the wastes that led us to the Gargoyle and shared their bread and fire with us. Simple virtues, pious souls in an empty, dead land.

I have had a long discussion with Teddy that was ultimately futile. His attitude since Istakhr had been noxious and would have gotten him thrashed were I any other Decados. He is 'hurt' that I/we do not trust him as he feels we ought to. I see no reason to change that (especially since he has ‘suddenly revealed’ his Killroy affiliation and a ‘promotion’ to Charioteer Captain), but that doesn’t mean we can’t work with him. At least, so long as our goals lie in the same direction.

He was waiting at Cadavus for me. He arranged transport for my party. He has proved a useful companion. He asserts to be my half-brother, and this may well be true, except that it strains coincidence. He has certainly met the Twins, and tells me he was afraid that I was like them. Perhaps I am. I do know that he wants to keep me safe on the road to my destiny, and until his most recent snit he contributed from his own funds towards this. I don’t know what else he wants from me. I don’t know what else I can do.

Early, 1 Aprelye 4999 — Daishan system, the Ill-Conceived Embrace

Holy Brother Battle Examiner,

Blessed be thy duty in the eyes of the Pancreator and may cleansing fire burn bright and quick the warped shell of my body, should I prove to be contaminated by the horror that is the Symbiote scourge. Pancreator spare me.

My gratitude to Brother James is increased tenfold, for his resolute strength and calm have steered us all through this nightmare of perversion.

It strikes deep, desperate fear into my soul that what we have seen here might be a mere presentiment of the horror poised to eat out the heart of the Decados worlds and from there, the Empire. There is more here at stake than my life and the lives of my companions. If by delivering up our souls to the Pancreator we can hold back the night, then so be it: strike us down in the knowledge that you do right. Let us be lost to Night rather than one mote of this foulness find fertile soil on other worlds.

Later

I should leave a clearer report of what occurred. Yes.

Some hours after we returned through the Stigmata jumpgate, our host the Brother Battle warship Righteous Hammer went into battle-alert. Sensors had detected a Decados-pattern scoutship leaving the planet Stigmata under high acceleration for the jumpgate. This was the vessel that had left Jakovian Rogue team 1 on Istakhr before flying onwards, obviously with the other team still aboard.

I wanted answers. I was not prepared to wait. I convinced Brother James quickly, and Teddy and Shui Lin more reluctantly, to attempt to seize the vessel before it could fly through the jumpgate. We were given a little over an hour to achieve this, then the fleet would obliterate the scoutship with missiles.

To my abiding glee, Brother James donned his Cassock Superior for the mission. To my annoyance I was forced to wear a spacesuit, which meant I was shorn of the protection of my synthsuit and shield. Teddy loaned me a blaster pistol, which I soon found a very agreeable weapon.

A short flight at maximum burn on the Ill-Conceived Embrace brought us to dock with the scoutship uncontested, with some 40 minutes to the deadline. We latched onto the top hatch and Brother James, Teddy and I boarded it. As I entered the top deck I was struck immediately by a sense of cloying dankness, as if I were buried in the worst part of the Severus jungle but worse. I checked my suit seals but they were fine. I suspect my impression was due to my nearness to the Symbiote gestalt, a psychic resonance. I did not enjoy it.

In the forward observation room we found a dead body, its throat cut. Old blood dried down its front. The machinery in the room was a wreck. I made sure the body would trouble no one no more by shooting it through the head. Would that I did this to every body we encountered!

We noticed that the scoutship’s engines changed tone and determined it had accelerated once more - we now had less than 20 minutes to achieve our objectives! Brother James lead us to the main deck, where a body cut in half by the lower deck’s hatch made a pool of gelid blood at the base of the ladder. I neglected to shoot this one.

We made our way forward to the door to the bridge to find it locked and the panel burned. Teddy had to redeem the wiring, but as he attended to this, a door halfway down the corridor opened and a nightmare lurched out. Once it had been a man. Horror had reformed its flesh, sinew and bone into a war-machine shorn of symmetry, of sanity, of humanity. Its claws dug into the deck and walls. It saw us and drooled. Brother James and I shot it down as it charged us. I shot it several more times when it fell, just to make sure. This was not enough. From the corpse grew pallid, clinging vines that stretched and wavered towards the lights. This turned my mind slightly: a man had become a ravening beast that was now become a jungle: an ecosystem in a single shell! How could we fight such an infection if it got out? Would that we had brought an incinerator!

Worse horror was on the bridge, once Brother James used a thermite charge to open the door. Another corpse in the captain’s chair, grown open, his entrails and lights now grown into a phantasmagorical parody of a coral reef over the walls and ceiling, bonded into the control systems of the ship. We had talked of salvage earlier, before we knew the horror — now we knew that this ship must be destroyed.

The worst thing was that the human part of this Symbiote excrescence had enough humanity left to bang its human arm on the chair (with superhuman strength that dented the metal) and proclaim with twisted vocal chords, “I am still me!” We shot it to death cleanly amid prayers for his soul. But our time had run out. The Righteous Hammer contacted us to tell us to get out so they could destroy the vessel in time no matter who was on it. I told them to launch their missiles, for if we did not escape, at least the infestation would be destroyed too. We only had a minute to return to the Ill-Conceived Embrace.

The war-beast’s vines had thickened into a barrier to our flight, and it took ugly seconds for my blade and Brother James’s powered frame to tear through the sickening vegetation. As we passed we saw into the crew room from where the beast had come. A handful more bodies were nailed to the wall by their own flesh, now traitorous under the enticements of the Symbiote.

In the centre of the room was a bag spilled open with dozens or scores of jumpkeys. How much of the hoard from the missing Charioteers this represented we will never know. As we fled Brother James threw a grenade into the space that destroyed the room’s contents.

The legless torso was writhing under fast mutation as we reached the ladder. We wasted precious seconds killing it anew.

Feeling its way into the Ill-Conceived Embrace's airlock was a monstrous insect with scything claws. We wasted more time gunning it down. Brother James threw Teddy up the shaft into the Ill-Conceived Embrace's gravity field and he hurled himself towards the bridge to disengage the ships.

We had run out of time. The ships still linked fell through the jumpgate together with Brother James and I still on the scoutship. This did not stop Brother James going about his mission: he helped me towards the our ship and then followed after dropping breaching charges into the hulk. Once the airlock closed behind us, Teddy undocked and put space between the ships.

Once through the jumpgate the charges blew, destabilising the scoutship’s abused reactor, which then exploded in turn in a pyre of cleansing fusion flame. I checked my suit for breaches, found none, although the surface was etched in places as if by a fine mist of acid. I will be discarding this suit as soon as I can.

The Ill-Conceived Embrace's data store identified our destination as Daishan. The ship’s sensors picked up between 20 and 30 dreadnought-sized Symbiote ships lazing in space some distance away from the jumpgate. The jumpgate itself was on a slow cycle and would take 20+ hours to recharge before we could escape. We shut down all systems and drifted, pretending to be debris from the blast. It seems to have worked — we have not been scanned or approached.

Later

Soon we will return to Stigmata to face the cleansing fire. I want to be clean. I do not want to face a future in which I become a monster like the poor traitors in that ship. But I do not sense the cloying dankness that I first felt on the scoutship and that gives me space to hope that we escaped the taint.

I try to arrange the facts I have learned so far, but they are slippery, like live sardines.

One. Two Jakovian cells went rogue at the same time the Twins and Maya acted against me. They travelled towards Istakhr and Stigmata. One cell remained on Istakhr. The other arrived at Stigmata, where they displayed Symbiote infection. This probably happened to them on Stigmata, but it is remotely possible that it occurred earlier but was dormant until Stigmata. They attempted then to return to Symbiote space, namely Daishan. The pilot’s last actions suggest to me the infection was a matter of dormancy or betrayal. Either way, there seems to be a connection between the Institute (per three, below) and the Symbiotes that I do not like at all.

Two. The cell remaining on Istakhr is led by the woman Freka, who may be a Decados, and who may be a witch. Her cell has lost three or more members in confrontations with my party. She seems interested in our movements. I thought they were hunting me illegally, but their motives have since become undetermined.

Three. Over a hundred Charioteer pilots with keys giving them access to the Decados interface have gone missing. They all apparently had contact with the Zuviev Institute. However, enough of the keys have remained in use that traffic to Decados space has remained relatively constant. This suggests a surprise attack on Decados, or a secret takeover to use the Decados shell against some other enemy, such as the Empire, or maybe even the Vau.

Four. A great pile of the keys were taken by the rogue Jakovians and sent towards the Symbiotes. These were destroyed when we destroyed the scoutship. I’m happy about that, but not as happy as Teddy.

Five. I don’t know how much of this the Jakovians know.

Six. I don’t know how much of this Yevgeny knows.

Seven. The Decados garrison on Stigmata and the Decados fraction of the picket fleet at the jumpgate have been withdrawn to Decados space because of ‘trouble on Malignatius’, leaving much unhappiness behind.

Eight. The Twins have chosen this time to make Vendetta. They are apparently allied with Maya. By killing me they assure themselves of the Zuviev Barony in our generation. How are they connected to the Jakovians? Can they be connected to whatever is happening in the Institute?

I want to return to Istakhr in the hope that Freka is still there to answer questions. Failing that, I think I need to return to Cadiz. I think via Aylon, De Moley and Severus if Malignatius is a war-zone.

Teddy’s New Rules

Report, Session Four: May 26, 2007

So, what now?

I own my own ship.

I made Captain.

I may have inadvertently joined the Kilroys.

I’ve visited Nowhere and consulted the gargoyle.

All before I hit twenty-five, let alone my original target of thirty.

 

I’ve also survived contact with a symbiot infestation, not that I’d rate it on a list of ‘pluses’. In fact, I’ve a sneaking suspicion that my better nature was not operating at all when I insisted we go after that ship. Seriously, do I have a death wish? A sensible man would have coped with not knowing, and let the Brothers blow the Jakovians out of the sky. To hell with duty.

When did I get a list of things more important to me than my own life?

 

When I close my eyes, I can see that vast white nothing that the gargoyle showed me. Empty from horizon to horizon, then slowly populating with the scant few people important to me. Is that me: my goals and wants and needs? A endless nothingness driven by others? Don’t I have any drives of my own anymore? Did I ever?

 

On the bridge of that infested ship there was a pilot. He was riddled with infection, yet he still had enough of himself to speak. “I’m still me,” was all he had time to say before the bullet curdled his brains.

 

I have a job, and a duty. I know what I’m doing.

I just don’t know why.

Brother-Captain Justinian

Vance Justinian is the commanding officer of the Brother Battle presence at the Stigmata Gate, with the CSV Righteous Hammer as his flagship. He is a veteran of the Symbiot Wars, having fought their inhuman taint planet-side on Stigmata, as well as in boarding actions in orbit and at the Gate itself. He is a powerfully built, though softly spoken man, born into a minor house on Byzantium Secundus.

CSV Righteous Hammer

The Righteous Hammer is the flagship of the Brother Battle fleet stationed at the Stigmata Gate. Is a battle-barge class vessel, about the size of a dreadnought, yet with weaponry configured for close support rather than long range firepower. She features a sizable boat-bay, with assault landers and shuttles, and an excellent medical facility, staffed by Brother-Apothecaries trained in combat trauma and rooting out Symbiot taint.

James' Confession

Forgive me for I have sinned. It has been some time since my last confession.

As I wait for the Brother Battle Symbiote Cleansers to begin their work on my body I question the actions that brought me to this crossroad.

Over the past week, I have seen into eyes of God. And those same eyes have seen into me. I am changed in that viewing.

By all rights, we should be dead. Several times over. It is only thanks to luck and the grace, compassion and stupidity of others that we still live. Teddy has shown his true colours, and they are Charioteer. Sava still floats through the universe, oblivious. Shui Lin allows her duty to cloud her judgment. They are fools. And I am more the fool to companion them.

I have looked into the face of the enemy, and glimpsed it's plans. I don't yet know what these plans mean, but it is becoming clearer that my life is not my own. I am no longer a pawn, having been promoted into something else entirely.

I will mourn the death of all those that died on that Jakovian transport, Symbiote or not.

Baroness Maya Zuviev Decados

A more direct personality than her husband. The Baroness is taller than him (and most other men) and as beautiful as breeding, training and technology can allow. She is not quite his intellectual equal but she is not merely a trophy wife either: one of her hobbies is verbal duelling. Potentates and savants often leave her entertainments with the impression they’ve been mugged. She is well-versed in the biological sciences and was instrumental in perfecting her children according to her understanding of the Zuviev Apotheosis.

Baron Yevgeny Zuviev Decados

A person first meeting the Baron would be left with the impression that he would rather be attending to his beetle collection, or perhaps a selchaka habit, than politics, intrigue or violence. Although classically handsome the Baron is not a forceful personality. He moves languidly. He drawls. He makes obscure jokes and smiles wryly when no one else gets them. He refers to his extensive library through erudite non-sequiturs.

Indeed, the casual acquaintance might regard the Baron’s holdings as ripe for secession and begin to feel mingling contempt and pity for his softly unfocused self.

And yet.

The Baron directs a facility of the Genetech Cartel, the Zuviev Institute.

The Baron commands a small force of troops, the Death Dolls, that are loyal to him unto death, and in quality and equipment have been favourably compared to Prince Hiram’s Kossaks.

The Baron returned from a long quest among stars that have remained unlisted, even unnamed.

Zuviev has been remarkably free of serious civil unrest for over twenty years.

Zuviev has been free of serious attention from the Inquisition despite the almost casual secrecy surrounding some of the Zuviev Institute’s bioengineering product.

Zuviev has not been plundered by more forceful branches of the sprawling Decados family.

The Baron has been married to his sister Maya for over twenty years without going insane.

Sava's journal, entry 3

6 Mart 4999 — back in the Ill-Conceived Embrace, Istakhr system

We are packed into in our cramped spaceship once more. The hold contains wilderness gear for use on Nowhere, so I cannot use the space for practice. Assembling this materiel was the least eventful part of our stay at Samarkand in the House of Baron Mikhail Khrushchev Decados.

Click on title for full post...

Although our lives were in considerable danger and our flight out of Samarkand starport culminated with missiles being shot after us, I did leave the planet with regret. I enjoyed three moments of profound happiness on Istakhr that will haunt me for a while. For a few brief moments I did not worry.

The first and second moments were in the bazaar, choosing clothes for Teddy and Shui Lin to wear to Duke Haqim’s palace for a ball thrown by Earl Amir, Prince of Barran’s in honour of Sir Lexine. I decided that they needed to reflect their own personalities more than the strict observance of high fashion in their garb, so I chose a very conservative suit for Teddy but let him wear a white undershirt and his garish Charioteer shirt under the jacket — the effect was at once powerful, raffish and playful, and suited him very well. For Shui Lin I was somewhat malicious with her holy self-denial, and had made for her a simple shift-gown in a Li-Halan inspired cut, of ‘aer-silk’, a fabric from Pancreator-knows-where that is seemingly the colour of air, not quite white, not blue, but subtly all colours. With her hair worn up held with a lacquered chopstick she was striking, maidenly pure but also regal: her Li Halan heritage was challenged to assert itself by the gown and she shone that night! I took note of the looks on men’s faces when they saw her. I must admit it caused me a moment of jealousy, and then I knew I had wrought well

The third moment was the drive in the Baron’s groundcar to the ball. I experienced a sudden moment of presence, of knowledge of the moment itself, as I sat by the side of Baron Khrushchev on the soft leather of his car’s seats, with his uniformed driver separated from us by a glass partition. We watched the electric-blue dusky evening darken into night, drawing out the stars. The softly-worn towers of Samarkand swept back behind us with the clutter of foot-traffic about their skirts; the smoke, the lights, the softly washed-out colours of the marketplace! Before us rose the gilded domes of Amir’s palace above the date-palms behind a pale meltrock wall: a destination out of a desert dream!

The car stopped gently at the firelit open gates of the palace and staff opened the doors for us. The Baron alighted first and stepped round to help me out and then offered me his arm, and I suddenly regretted my callow lack of judgement in never having a crush on the man! I found myself trembling as I took his arm, and flushed, and my bodice was suddenly too tight. His grace was immaculate as I gawkishly fixed my gown-skirt about my shins. I wanted to lean into him as we walked into the palace. I wanted to be his, as the rapier at his waist was his. And I knew, that at that moment, he was not unaware of the romance possible between us, thanks to the sirenous song of the Samarkand desert by night. Alas!

The ball itself was somewhat underwhelming: we were back at the Baron’s residence before midnight. I think Sir Lexine’s announcement of Alexius’s crusade against the Vuldrok was baldly done and grudgingly rehearsed. Perhaps she should have done more in private to win support for it before she spoke. Having the Amir on side was too obvious. The Archbishop’s objections were formulaic. And including a Hazat hothead for comedic value was trite.

I ended up duelling this one: Sir Juan Cadesse de Castille de yadah yadah Hazat, in defence of Sir Lexine’s honour. He was allegedly one of the Baron’s better pupils, a self-determined duellist, and she had better things to do than recover from a thrashing or pushing up daisies. He was determined to pick a fight with Sir Lexine over Alexius going after the Vuldrok before helping the Hazat with the Kurgans. She described it to him patiently as a pragmatic decision to take softer targets before harder targets and that certainly sounded like good strategy to me. (Although balanced against having materiel and troops at the beginning of a campaign, as opposed to wielding notched swords with aching muscles at its end. We shall see.) But Sir Juan was unimpressed, or his mind already made up. Hazat honour is said to be rigid.

Still. A couple of snide remarks about his understanding of said Hazat honour and his loyalty to the Emperor encouraged him to challenge me. A tense moment before he chose swords over pistols, but I figured he would have virtually admitted cowardice in choosing not to draw a rapier on me. My second was Sir Lexine. Sir Juan’s was a young Decados that I thought was another student at the Baron’s academy, but more of her later. Prince Amir condescended to referee, which he did with graceful ennui but an eye for the spectacle.

Another notion of uncertainty: this was the first time I have faced a skilled opponent without the protection of my shield. I thought it quickly through. He would be relying on the converse, to take advantage of the moments of fear that such a state would normally provoke in his opponents, and so I resolved not to be as circumspect in the battle as I might against an unknown opponent.

We faced off. I found out later that Brother James set up behind me with his hand on his pistol to intimidate the Hazat. It’s not what I would have wanted but it fits the Decados mode, so I let it pass.

I’ve run the sequence through my mind a hundred times since. As I expected, Sir Juan was skilled and aggressive — lucho grande, in the slang of the Hazat. After a few moments of eyeing each other off he acted first, lungeing at me with stamping footwork but charging past me (which I barely anticipated in time), his blade wide to skewer me as he ran, in a fair memory of ancient chivalry and jousting, perhaps. He was obviously expecting me to be held enchained by fear and put no thought to an effective defence of his own. He also did not anticipate the slipperiness of the rockmelt floor and his charge was not balanced. He may as well have been throwing meat-axes at me. I tapped his blade off-line and curled a slashing riposte round his arm that opened up his torso and made a mockery of his tailored jacket. I lowered my blade and stepped back. The crowd twittered at the red blood. I fought to stop from grinning predatorily. The adrenalin was sweet.

I must note at this point that I had not slept during the day between the assassin’s unproductive interrogation and the ball, so I was clearly hyperaesthetic, which could also have explained my exultation on the arm of the Baron. Fatigue and adrenalin: powerful co-stimulants.

The seconds took us apart and Amir asked us if we could be reconciled. It looked as if Sir Juan would fight on so I thought to score another point: I offered that if he would acknowledge the Emperor’s right to dispose of his Empire as he wished, I would be satisfied. This of course led to a second passage at arms since his Decados second was also persuasive.

I was cruel. Sir Juan had learned little from our first exchange and came at me with a mere variation of his first attack. This time I stepped forward, slightly across his charge, and thrust at speed, taking him in the side of the abdomen before he could react. He actually could not stop himself running up my blade for a step and the tip came out his back with a pop of parting cartilage. I twisted the blade as I withdrew it this time and I regret that: I found out from Shui Lin later that I came within a hair’s grace of killing him with that blow. He collapsed in surprise as much as anything. He had the grace and sense to concede at that point and apologise for his words to Sir Lexine, and I accepted them with good grace. I thanked him for his honour as I felt bad about my earlier goading given his state now.

The Decados wench tried to urge Sir Juan to a third passage! I gave her The Look until she stopped hissing encouragements and she left sulkily into the gardens soon after. Would that I had challenged her as well: her name was Freka, the superior of the rogue Jakovian that we had watched die the previous night. Teddy noted to me later that she had been assiduous also in cleaning Sir Juan’s unbloodied blade, so I expect she had that ‘prepared’ for me as well.

Freka killed or crippled at least two people on her exit from the gardens. Decados ambassador Sir Grigori Constantin would never express another piece of ennui-filled sarcasm, being now a drooling, mind-blasted wreck. And Captain Swallow, who turned out to be a Killroy, met his nemesis in her. The Ambassador’s factotum ‘Jakob Jakovich’ also disappeared. Curiously, he had started the evening as a drooling idiot in the Ambassador’s train. I ascribed this to acting roles, perhaps a joke, as Jakob had been perfectly effective in the bounds of the embassy, but Teddy sees it as some kind of mental symbiosis between them — that there was only one mind in two bodies, now fled in the body of Jakob (still missing).

I must admit I do not understand the connections here. If Jakob was indeed Jakovian, does this mean he is allied with the rogue cells? Is he now their prisoner, their victim, or their stealthy hunter? Is Freka a psychic as well as a rogue Jakovian cell-leader, or was one of the other spies hiding in the garden to cover her escape — or to assassinate the Ambassador? Was the assault on the Ambassador something else entirely?

Teddy later related to us the gist of his words with Swallow. It turned out Swallow was a Killroy and had been investigating the disappearances of Charioteers around the Decados worlds. The Charioteers gone missing all owned jumpkeys that connected the Decados worlds to the rest, and could be relied on never to part with them willingly. I think this means that some force is looking to circumvent the Charioteers preparatory to an assault on Decados space. There is renewed trouble on Malignatius as well, but this seems less interesting to me. There is always unrest on Malignatius.

The Charioteers’ disappearances occurred about the same time that the Twins made their attack on me. Swallow had heard of Baroness Maya Zuviev Decados as well through his investigations, which leads me to believe she is up to her neck in whatever is going on. The rogue Jakovians hunting my party may not even be after me but Teddy, since he fits their target profile, and there is a new revelation making him not a peripheral player in my family’s games.

The next day, Teddy asserted after much ominous foreshadowing (he sets himself up very well, I must say), that he was a bastard son of Yevgeny. I see now with renewed eyes that he does have familial resemblance — inherited or manufactured I don’t know. He carries a family sigil, inherited or stolen I don’t know. He says he was tortured by the Twins once and carries scars which do look like their work, but this is another matter of mere appearance. He says he was looking after me in following me to Cadavus and offering his services, but he is a complex man and his words are either misleading or empty. But that said, that I have not died in his company I think is a good sign. So far. He has also claimed to be a Killroy (he claims that this is merely a ruse) and other Charioteers seem to give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps, like me, he has seen too many ‘Killroy Agent 77, Xavier Diamond’ magic lantern shows. Diamond is supposed to be a secret agent but he never assumes a disguise and everybody seems to know him anyway. Head games from Charioteers. What is the universe coming to?

I don’t know what to make of Teddy’s stacked revelations. I can’t name my emotions. I am frustrated that his ancestry particularly is one more secret — or partial revelation — that I don’t understand. I certainly don’t quite believe him. Perhaps this is why I can’t decide how to respond. Teddy cowers when I come near him as if he expects to be beaten up. This revelation has also put Brother James into a bad mood at him, but I have dealt with this effectively by addressing them both formally, putting everything onto a professional level that they can still function at.

The day before we left Istakhr, Brother James and Teddy got into another car chase and gunfight with the rogue Jakovians and killed one, injured another, but at considerable cost to their own health. My understanding is that they did work to aid each other in a situation where either might have left the other to their fate, so I think the trouble between them can be healed.

The most important piece of information we won from this fight was that the Jakovians had a missile launcher. So warned, we were able to deal with the missiles they did indeed fire at us on the way into space. Teddy’s piloting and Brother James’s deadeye with a flare gun, to be precise. I would be considerably worse off to lose either of them, even if the one lies to me, and the other tells me nothing at all.

 

On the night after the ball and my duel, I slipped into nightmares towards dawn. Fatigue and reaction, perhaps. I was on the Baron’s Tantsyen konykov and fighting for my life. I could not read the curves but only react. I knew that no matter how skilfully I defended myself, I would die. At that point my assailant, whom I can not see even now, slipped a strike past my perfect Decados defence and slew me. The killing move.

I took the dream down to the Baron’s training room and tried to work through it but the shards of dream kept getting in the way. A duellist must expect to be pierced every once in a while but this was different: the imagined sensation of cold steel penetrating my breast and heart chilled me and made me clumsy.

The Baron came upon me then. He had resumed the avuncular mask that he had almost let slip last night; but I still felt my infatuation for him. We talked it through. He let me down gently, as perhaps he ought to have done. He claimed advanced age disqualified him from my affections, but 56 is not old! Not for a man like him! I must respect his decision however, and find some way to turn my infatuation back into mere admiration. I could learn to love him as a mentor, or even as an uncle, as he seems to wish.

It’s confusing. Although I have read many ‘romantic’ novels, I am still a stranger to these emotions.

The Baron led me through my dream’s lesson. There is indeed a rare combination of Hazat blade and Li Halan footwork that is a killing move against the standard Decados doctrine. As I know that, I know there are also several counters, and I am reassured. The Baron’s Tantsyen konykov is his lifetime’s work, and includes kata from all the major houses, as well as the Brother Battle, the Ukari, and many snippets from across the Known Worlds. It is not yet complete of course. There are spaces. I have resolved to help the Baron fill them in, and to follow his lead as a disciple of his school.

The Baron revealed that he knew my parents, and travelled with them for a time. He deeply liked Yevgeny but detested Maya, and this ended their time together. Perhaps this explains the avuncular mood he has brought to his relationship with me. I will have to be content with that.

I left with sorrow this conversation, and later the Baron’s house. I will visit him again and I will bring him gifts of swordplay.

I have found a friend.