THE LOCKER HINGED OPEN like some jeweled scarab, and the black face stared out at me. Perhaps you’ve seen it plastered on some poster or in some propaganda film? The face of the Devil of Meidua? Fashioned in the likeness of my own face it was, blank and staring, with mirror-black lenses for eyes beneath the cap of the helmet with its broad neck-flange. Those eyes stared at me from the suit locker, impassive and cold as those of my ancestors carved in black marble in the caverns of our necropolis.

I had become one of them in the end.

We had been soldiers before we were lords.

But I had no time for philosophy, and sealed the suit. Sensing the closure, fibers within the underlayment tightened and hugged my body like a diver’s second skin, covering me from the neck down. The suit’s thermal regulators came online, and the clinging garment felt at once like no garment at all, became a part of me. One after another I stepped into the armored boots and felt them screw shut about my calves. I did the same with the cuisses on my upper legs, removing the items from foam-lined compartments in the chest before me. The tunic came next. I pulled it over my head, letting the garment fall almost to my knees. The shirt was sable as the rest, fringed with a labyrinth pattern in crimson thread. I fastened the belt with its strapped pteruges about my narrow waist and felt it cinch tight with the shield controls at my left hip, sword holster at my right.

Fingers plied the locker controls, and at once the sculpted breastplate and helmet rose toward me, rotating on a gimbal, tracking hardpoints on my skinsuit. I raised my arms wide and stepped into the open breastplate, felt the magnets clamp onto the inner layer and screw on. Folding like a beetle’s black shell, like a Nipponese paper sculpture, the suit closed around me, titanium and ceramic segments folding, flexing as I moved. Even as it did so, the mask and helmet broke apart, retracting, neatly folding themselves into a wide collar about my face and neck. The pauldrons shifted into place automatically, obeying sub-intelligent programs in the suit’s datasphere matrix. I flexed my shoulders, listening to the whine of servos as the armor moved with me.

Perfect.

“What’s going on?”

Valka stood in the door behind me.

I didn’t stop my work, lingered only long enough to ensure the ornamental leather straps at my shoulders were in place. I shoved my left hand into the gauntlet the locker rotated to present to me and made a fist as the vambrace sealed into place. The terminal screen and controls winked on, red as death.

“We’re being attacked,” I said. “It’s the Cielcin.”

“I know,” Valka said, and only then did I remember that I’d broadcast to the entire ship. A red haze had settled on my mind and I felt I saw the world through a narrow tunnel, and the only way out was through.

“I know, sorry.” I plugged my hand into the second gauntlet, felt it seal. “They destroyed the Androzani. I’m taking the fight to them.”

Valka’s pale face went paler. “They destroyed . . . what?”

“They got men aboard her, must have breached fuel containment.” As I spoke, I checked readouts on my left forearm. Suit power was nominal, air reservoirs and rebreathers were charged, water recycling was functioning normally, and the suit’s shield generators shone blue.

Her nostrils flared. “Can’t you send one of the others? Crim or Pallino? One of the other chiliarchs?” She did not ask me to take her with me. Valka had been a soldier in another life, but she’d been a deck officer. There was no place for her in the trenches, in the hallways and warrens of a Cielcin worldship, blood wet on our knives. Soldier she may have been, once, but she was no fighter, unless it was by necessity.

“I’m not going to sit idly here while my men fight and die,” I said, lifting the white cape from the wall hook where I had left it and wrapping it around my shoulders. “Would you?”

Valka’s expression softened. “You’re not idle. You were on the bridge.”

“Yes,” I snapped, “being idle. Where’s my sword?” I had left it on the bed when I’d skinned out of my ordinary clothes. Or thought I had.

“Pallino can lead the men just as well as you.”

I stopped my frantic riffling through the mounded garments. “Pallino can’t communicate with the enemy. Damn it! Where is my—”

The sword descended into my field of vision. Valka held it, offered it to me pommel first.

I took it, receiving it as I’d received it from Sir Olorin at the start of my quest so long ago. “Thank you.”

Her fingers floated just off my chest, where the embossed trident and pentacle I had taken for my sigil stood out against the black ceramic. “I don’t like you rushing off like this. You’re going to get yourself killed.” She pressed her fingers against my chest. I couldn’t feel their warmth, only their pressure against the armor.

“No, I’m not,” I said, and forced a smile. “I can’t be killed, hadn’t you heard?”

But Valka had been by that lakeside in the Gardens of Kharn Sagara. She knew better.

There was no laughter in those golden eyes. “I do not like being left here idle, either. I don’t like you leaving.”

Closing my fingers over hers, I said, “I have to. Someone does.” The ship jolted beneath us then. Something must have hit our shields. We stumbled apart, the contact between us breaking. It was enough to snap me back to my duties. My terminal chimed, and I tapped the indicator. “Marlowe.”

“We’re about loaded, sir.” Pallino’s voice came over the speaker. Sir. He only ever called me that when there was work to do.

It heightened my sense of unreality as I answered, “Copy that. I’m on my way.” Looking up I saw myself reflected in the mirror, armor so black it gleamed. I looked much as I had in my vision—was it a vision?—in the Howling Dark. A demon in black. The armor was not the same, but the resemblance was there . . . a shadow on my heart.

“What is it?” Valka asked, sensing something was the matter.

I looked round, somehow surprised to find her there.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I have to go.” I turned to leave. One hand on the door frame, I added, “When I’m gone, seal yourself in here. If the Cielcin board the ship, you’ll be safe.”

“Like hell!” The force in her words astonished me, the anger. I turned. She’d closed half the distance between us already. “I am not going to lock myself in here. You don’t get to put me in a box, Hadrian.”

I realized what I’d said, and to whom, and the wind went out of me. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t what I meant. I’m just worried about you.”

“You’re worried? About me?” She laughed. “Me?”

Of course I am, I wanted to say, but it felt like too much. Struck by an idea I said, “Can you go to the bridge? Aristedes will be busy directing the battle. I need someone watching my back.”

“I . . .”

“You won’t be idle,” I said, stealing her words with a crooked smile, “you’ll be on the bridge.”

She pressed her lips together. “I hate you.” Her hand found mine again and squeezed it.

“No, you don’t!”

Golden eyes met violet, and she kissed me. Why should I remember that kiss so sharply? It was not the first time I’d left her to leap into battle. It would not be the last. It was not our first kiss aboard the Mistral, nor the one we would share that windy night on Berenike. Nor was it the one I gave her before she went into fugue as we limped back to Colchis with black sails.

But I remember it. I remember her hands in my hair and the taste of her mouth and the way the ship shook beneath us. I remember holding her close against me and the little voice whispering you have no time.

You have no time.