Chapter 2: The Firstborn Son of Earth
A FULL TWO DECADES of the Knights Excubitor marched around me, ten to either side, such that I walked at the center of their column. I must have looked out of place amongst their mirrored armor and red capes, a grim shadow amidst all that bright finery. As was their custom, they marched with highmatter swords active and held in both hands before their faces, ready to kill me if I made any sudden moves. I was acutely aware that I had no weapon myself. My sword had remained on my ship, and they had not even permitted Pallino to accompany me, and no wonder.
We marched down corridor after gilded corridor, over patterned carpets thick as the centuries, beneath Rococo scrollwork and baroque images old perhaps as Earth herself. Golden light streamed through crystal windows, revealing in narrow slices the shining towers and the infinite, bottomless sky beyond.
Perhaps you’ve seen it, if only in a dream? The Eternal City: her fair towers gleaming in the sun. Her halls great as cities rearing their mighty faces through banks of rosy cloud. Colossal statues looming like shadowy giants over windy streets and airy plazas. Hanging gardens as in Babylon of old flowering from terraces above a sky ten thousand miles deep. The Eternal City: old and venerable as sages, proud and beautiful as any queen. She was the heart and eye of the galaxy. The axis about which all our worlds turned.
We passed beneath an arched window, and far below I saw the knife-edged shape of wings where lighter craft patrolled the skies below. They sailed beneath the arched shadows of a white aqueduct that carried water from one floating isle to the next.
I would have stopped if the Excubitors would allow it.
They would not allow it.
The Emperor was waiting.
The approach to the Imperial apartments in the Peronine Palace brought us in time to the Cloud Gardens, where silver fountains played beneath misty boughs lit even in daylight by glowspheres like distant stars. I had walked there but once before, on the day of my investiture, when His Imperial Radiance had made me a knight and restored me to the nobility. Before I had been outcaste, disowned by my father, without title or name.
The memory of that other day dogged my steps as I went. It had been right after I’d first arrived on Forum, fresh from my confrontation with Prince Aranata aboard the Demiurge. Nearly three hundred years had passed—eighty for me. So long ago, and yet still I heard the ringing of His Radiance’s voice beneath the dome of the Georgian Chapel.
“In the name of Holy Mother Earth and in the light of her sun, I, the Sollan Emperor William of the Aventine House, the Twenty-Third of that Name; Firstborn Son of Earth; King of Avalon; Lord Sovereign of the Kingdom of Windsor-in-Exile; Prince Imperator of the Arms of Orion, of Perseus, of Sagittarius, and Centaurus; Magnarch of Orion; Conqueror of Norma; Grand Strategos of the Legions of the Sun; Supreme Lord of the Cities of Forum; North Star of the Constellations of the Blood Palatine; Defender of the Children of Men; and Servant of the Servants of Earth, call upon you to kneel.”
I sank to my knees as I was ordered before the steps of the altar. Incense burned and votive candles, and in the niche above the altar fey shadows danced against a statue of the God Emperor triumphant, one foot crushing a marble cube. His living descendant stood over me, holding in his hands an ancient sword. Not highmatter, but common steel and so black with age that at first I thought it raw iron. The pompous grandeur of his titles still ringing in the air, Caesar stood a moment, and behind him a panegyrist in robes of sable and cloth of gold sang out in Classical English, saying, “In the name of Holy Mother Earth and in the light of Her Sun we pray! May the Mother bless her servant.”
The soldiers and courtiers at my back—my friends and enemies together—murmured the benediction, “O Mother, bless us all.”
Then Caesar spoke. “Do you, Hadrian Marlowe, pledge yourself now and forever to our service? To the service of your Emperor and of the Empire which he serves?”
Knowing what was expected of me, I said, “I do.”
“Do you believe in our Creator, the Holy Mother Earth? Do you believe in the God Emperor, Her firstborn son and heir—our ancestor? Him who crushed the Mericanii and the machines and delivered the universe once more into the hands of men?”
“I do,” I said, but I did not believe it.
“Do you pledge your sword, your possessions, your powers and faculties—your very life—to the defense of our Empire?”
“I do.”
“Do you swear to forgo reward, to seek justice for its own sake?” I kept my head bowed all the while, hiding my face, afraid something of my uncertainty or disquiet might show there and be read by His Radiance.
“I do.”
“To live with temperance through feast and famine?”
“I do.”
“To act with prudence in matters great and small?”
“I do.”
“To show fortitude in the face of tribulation?”
“I do.”
“To safeguard the honor of your fellows?”
If they have any, I thought, but said only, “I do.”
“And of your betters?”
I hesitated only an instant, thinking of my lord father, of Balian Mataro, and the lords I had met in the vestibule of Vorgossos. Then I thought of Valka, of Pallino and the rest. My friends. My family. And so it was not a lie when I answered, saying: “I do.”
“Do you swear to respect the honor of any person: man, woman, or child?”
“I do.”
“And to defend it?”
“I do.”
“To never refuse the challenge of an equal?”
There were so many oaths. Too many, and I confess that I have had to find a book on the shelves here to get them all down correctly. But I answered, “I do.”
“Do you swear to despise cruelty, deceit, and injustice?”
“I do!”
“Do you swear to see to its end any course begun?”
I have rued that oath more than all the others, though I thought little of it as I answered, “I do.”
“And do you swear to keep faith with your oath, from this day, until your dying day, in the name of the Emperor, and of the God Emperor, and of the Earth who is Mother and Victim of us all?” And here His Radiance made the sign of the sun disc, holding his saber vertical before him as he touched forehead and heart and lips, and I sensed that everyone behind me moved with me as I mirrored the gesture, moving in a silence deepened somehow by the clink of jewelry and the rustle of human action that disturbed it.
As I made the gesture, I said, “I do.”
The Emperor lowered his sword and—laying it first against my left shoulder, then my right—dubbed me, saying, “Then rise a knight, Sir Hadrian, and Lord Marlowe in your own right.” He offered me his left hand then, and I kissed the ring upon his thumb, the one which bore the twelve-rayed sun that was the emblem of his house.
There is a strength in ceremonies, a power in ritual that is whether or not we believe in the principalities upon which those rituals are founded. So despite my cynicism, I could not help but feel a warm flowering of love in my chest as I stood and the swell of pride. I was a knight, and no mere knight, but a knight of the Royal Victorian Order, one of the Emperor’s own.
There are not many people in the galaxy who can claim to have visited the Peronine Palace, that palace within the greater palace of the Eternal City where the Royal Family makes its home. There are even fewer who can claim to have visited more than once.
On that second visit, the great doors swung open soundlessly, and within, the mechanisms of a great clock chimed. Upon crossing the threshold, the pace of the Excubitors changed, flowing seamlessly from a brisk march to a slow and steady goosestep. The ringing of their boots on the tile aligned with the ticking of the clock whose pendulum swung free and mighty above the pointed arches ahead.
We came at last by many turnings to a water garden built of the whitest marble. Bright fountains played on waters thick with pale lotus blossoms and the azure blooms of nenuphars. Two women sat in one corner softly plucking at harpstrings while His Radiance sat in a humble seat beside a small table. Four of his Excubitors stood near at hand, watching me through mirrored masks. I bowed as my guard saluted, right hand over my heart, the left thrown wide. “Your Radiance,” I said, “I am honored to have been summoned.”
Caesar William rose from his seat—setting aside a small, black book he’d been reading—and approached me with a jovial wave and a warm smile. “Sir Hadrian! It is good to see you again.”
I looked down at my feet. “I wanted to apologize, Radiance, for speaking out of turn at the soldiers’ audience earlier.”
“It is forgotten already, cousin! Please! Stand upright that we may see you.” The Emperor smiled as I stood and gestured to dismiss my escort. The Excubitors retreated backward, folding away between painted columns, leaving me with the impression that they were not truly gone, but waiting invisibly amongst the pillars. “We have not yet had occasion to thank you for your service at Aptucca. That is two of these Cielcin princes you’ve put an end to.”
Bowing my head, I said, “Again, you honor me, Radiance.”
“The honor is yours.” The Emperor waved one velvet-gloved hand, rings glittering, indicating that I should walk with him. “Would that all our servants were so effective.”
I had no response to that and so said nothing, but walked in step with His Radiance around the pools, our shadows leading the way. The Emperor was taller than I, and though I knew him to be more than four times my hundred years, there was no silver in the red of his hair. But for the red velvet of his long gloves and slippers, his suit was of the most brilliant white silk, chased with gold. If I had felt underdressed outside the Sun King’s Court, I felt insignificant in Caesar’s presence. His rings alone might have fetched the price of a planet—not for their gems or their craftsmanship, such things could be manufactured cheaply enough—but for their age. I did not doubt that each of them had come out of Old Earth before the fall.
“They are singing your praises throughout the Empire, you know? Defeating the Pale at Aptucca without spilling a drop of human blood.”
“Would that it were so,” I said soberly.
The Emperor stopped his steady pace. I could feel his eyes upon me, burning a hole in my cheek. “It is so. We have decreed it so, and you would do well to stand by the official tale.”
“As you say, Radiance.” I dared not turn and meet his gaze, risked only a sidelong glance. His Imperial Radiance William XXIII was frowning, a slight furrow slashed between his eyes. Then it was gone, expression returned to one of pharaonic calm. Recalling that expression makes me hesitate even to this day. Aptucca was a stunning victory, but the lies the propagandists in the Ministry of Public Enlightenment piled atop the truth made it shine out all the more.
“You’re certain the prince is dead?” Caesar asked, resuming his orbit of the pool.
I glimpsed one of the Excubitors between the pillars, watching through the hollow eyes of his mask. “Quite certain, Your Radiance. I killed Ulurani myself.”
His Imperial Radiance nodded, traced the line of his jaw with one velvet-wrapped finger. Something plainly was weighing on the Imperial mind, but we walked on in silence a moment, passing delicate frescoes on the walls of the quadrangle depicting fantastic tableaus of nymphs and angels.
“Tell me something, Hadrian,” the Emperor said. Something in his tone caught my attention, and I turned to look at him. “Are you my man?” He had abandoned the royal we, and in doing so revealed himself—though it is blasphemy for me to record these words—as only a man, and one exhausted by the crown and station he bore upon too-narrow shoulders.
I did not know how to answer him. “Your Radiance?”
“Enough of that. Answer me. Whom do you serve?”
Had he seen that treasonous medallion Carax had tried to give me? Did he believe I plotted against his throne and family? I felt my knees begin to bend and cursed myself for it. To kneel would be to appear contrite and so guilty. So I did not kneel, though I sensed a great many things hung upon my answer, my life not least of all. “I am a soldier of the Empire,” I said. What else could I say? I had not wanted to be, but few is the number who live the lives they wish for.
His Radiance huffed through his nose. “The Empire . . . very good. In that case, I have a job for you.” His irritation fading to amusement, he turned his back on me and examined the nearest fresco. It depicted an icon of Beauty rising from the sea, high-breasted and golden-haired. “Have you heard about this business on Gododdin?”
“Gododdin?” I echoed, not sure I’d heard the name correctly.
It was the first time in my life I’d heard the name. The name of the planet I would one day destroy. How insignificant it seemed to me in that moment! A meaningless word, a meaningless world.
“It’s a primary Legion base between the Sagittarius and Centaurus Arms of the galaxy. We’ve been using it to stage troop deployments across Centaurus as the Cielcin advance. Intelligence dispatched a Legion to Nemavand in Ramannu Province, but it never arrived.”
Something cold turned over in my stomach. “Another lost legion?” More than a dozen had vanished in the last century, convoys hit while traveling at warp, the soldiers taken or slain in their icy sleep. I had been sent to locate the 378th Legion on Arae decades earlier, and but for a few survivors, I had failed. “The Cielcin?” It had not been the xenobites on Arae, but the Extrasolarians.
“Quite possibly. Ramannu Province is badly in need of supplies and reinforcements, and the loss of the caravan may cost them dearly. We do not wish to lose another province, cousin. We require that you make all possible speed for Gododdin, ascertain what has happened to our legion, and return them if possible.”
I felt the jaws of the trap close around me. It was an impossible task. On Arae, at least, there had been a planet nearby, a place worth searching. Though our chances had been slim, we’d had a trail to follow. They may have been singing my praises throughout the Empire, but they sang too loudly. I had flown too close to the sun—and standing so near the Emperor, the Firstborn Son of Earth—that thought nearly brought a smile to my grim face.
The sun, indeed.
I was meant to fail, that I might return humbled and be made to abase myself before the Solar Throne, to crawl the length of that interminably long hall beneath the eyes and nervous laughter of the high lords and ladies of half a billion worlds.
But something was missing. The Emperor would not have called for a private audience to tell me what any of his servants and logothetes might have done. I looked again around the garden, at the lotus blossoms and nenuphars and the icon of Beauty reclining upon her shell. At the Excubitors and the eunuch functionaries lurking in the shadows, always waiting for the Imperial order to approach and be useful.
I looked at the Emperor again, and because it was expected of me, said, “As you command, Honorable Caesar.”
His Imperial Radiance did not reply at once, but remained standing with his back to me. “For more than seven hundred years now we’ve been at war. Too long.” He raised a hand, two ringed fingers extended, like a priest issuing a benediction. “We are going to tell you something, Sir Hadrian. Something that is not to leave this garden.” And here he turned, hand still raised, eyes narrowed. “Assuming, of course, that you are truly our man.” I knew better than to say anything, to interrupt that most exalted personage. Still His Radiance waited as if in expectation of a reply. But I had stood before the throne of the Undying in Vorgossos, where the hours fell like seconds and were lost. I had learned to out-sit Kharn Sagara. I could out-sit the Emperor. His placid face twitched in the smallest smile I have ever seen. “Very good.” He let his hand drop and, without preamble, said, “I am old, cousin. I would see this war end before my reign does.” The royal we was gone again, but he amended the breach as he continued. “You are thinking that we do not look old, but you are palatine. You know how quickly the end comes for us when it does. We must think to the world we wish to leave our children—and to the children we wish to leave our subjects. And so we have a request—one we will not require of you.” I did not believe that for a second, as the barest request of the Emperor was ever the gravest command. “In your travels to Gododdin, you will take our son, Alexander. He is an admirer of yours and in need of seasoning.”
You will take our son, I thought. A request indeed.
“As you wish, Radiant Majesty.”
“Nemavand lies on the border between Centaurus and the Norman Expanse. We are not willing to lose this province, Sir Hadrian, or to risk the Cielcin spilling from the frontier into the mass of our Empire,” the Emperor said, looking back over his shoulder. He clasped his hands behind his back, the red of the long gloves standing out bright against the white of his coattails. “We trust the Halfmortal-Hero-of-Aptucca will not fail us.”
“Of course not, Radiant Majesty,” I said, shutting the trap about myself. To fail now was to lie to the Emperor. And to lie to the Emperor was death. I bowed my head, hoping the angle and my fringe of ink-dark hair would hide my face. Was the Emperor threatening me? Or only mocking?
The Emperor waved one hand glittering with gold. “Then go. Our logothetes will inform you as to the particulars of the Gododdin mission, and a messenger will be sent to find you when you must collect Alexander. You are to be careful with him, but to treat him as you would any squire.”
“As you wish, Radiant Majesty.” Aware of the Excubitors, I dared, “May I ask His Imperial Radiance a question?”
The Holy Sollan Emperor replied, “But of course, cousin.”
I inhaled sharply. “I have had a request for access to the Imperial Library on Colchis pending for the last fifty years.” Fifty-three, in point of fact, but that was not the moment for pedantry. “I would very much like access to the archives.”
His Imperial Radiance frowned slightly. “The archives? Whatever for?” Access to the Imperial Library at Nov Belgaer was limited to the scholiasts who staffed it. Not even my position as a Knight Victorian could open the doors; only a writ of approval from the Imperial Office could do that.
How could I answer the Emperor? I could not tell him the truth, that I sought answers about what had happened to me aboard the Demiurge. About the howling Dark beyond death. About the Quiet. Kharn Sagara had told me the Mericanii machines believed the God Emperor of old had been aided by the same forces that had delivered me from death. It stood to reason that somewhere, buried in some forgotten corner of that most ancient library, there yet remained some clue, some scrap of evidence to further my quest. But to acknowledge there were alien forces in the universe older and perhaps greater than man was a heresy punishable by death. Even to admit my knowledge of the Quiet would have been enough to invite disaster—and not only for myself, but for Valka, for Pallino and Crim and all the others who knew the stories of Hadrian Halfmortal were not stories at all.
But the Emperor’s eyebrows were rising with each passing microsecond, and I had to say something. “On Vorgossos, the Undying said the Cielcin have been raiding our worlds for far longer than we believe. That this war is only the full-scale invasion following centuries of smaller attacks like the first battle at Cressgard. The Colchis library is meant to keep a copy of every text in the Imperium. It is possible some account of these earlier raids exists, but lacking reference to the Pale directly has been overlooked. I am not only a knight, Radiance, but a scholar. If there is something in these accounts which might aid the current war effort, I think it worth the cost of a few years of my time to uncover it.”
“Do you?” the Emperor asked, and clasped his hands behind his back again. “It is for us to decide what the years of your life are worth, Sir Hadrian.” He bit the words off sharply, and it seemed that some shadow passed behind his mask-like face. “But perhaps . . . This request of yours is new to us! It had not been brought to our attention these past years,” he said. That, I thought, was a lie. A request from one of his Knight Victorians—particularly his youngest and most well-used—would have crossed his desk at once. He had ignored it. “We will consider it upon your return.”