THE MOUTH OF HELL opened before me, and beyond was only the blackness of space. The overhead lights of the hangar bay washed out all but the brightest stars, and the shimmer of the static field masked the rest so that all ahead was blackness. I stood amongst white-armored legionnaires, dressed in a suit of deepest black. High boots, red piping on the trousers, the hem of my black coat flowing about my ankles, the collar standing well past the level of my ears. My hair was newly trimmed, and my old coat was laundered and new-repaired. Still, I felt grubby beside the knight-tribune and her first officer in their suits of sculpted ivory, beside their scholiast Varro in flowing green.

And how bright the host behind me! The Imperial standard hung from a pole beneath a golden sculpture of the Sun, and the image of His Radiance, Emperor William XXIII, shone from a holograph plate carried—like a small umbrella—atop a staff. The soldiers all carried energy lances, their barrels and bladed heads gleaming in the light. Red were their tabards, and red their plumes, and black the long cloaks of the officers, drinking the light.

Kharn Sagara stood near at hand, swathed in gold, his golem faithful at his side. A full two dozen eyes floated about them both, shining with a blue and inhuman menace. Behind them both, faces slack and lifeless, stood a hundred SOMs in rank and file, their khaki uniforms uncared for. They carried no weapons, stood to no order or attention, and yet there was a weight to them and a palpable threat wholly unlike the threat of our soldiers, and it is a testament only to the training and the discipline of the Sollan Legions that not one of our people balked in the face of those monsters.

The cornicen’s clear voice went up, crying, “Attention!” And behind me every one of Raine’s five hundred soldiers passed their lances from the crooks of their arms to the ready posture, so that they grasped them with both hands. The crystal clarion blew, clear notes and martial winding in that echoing cavern of a hall.

Darkness. Chaos. The mother of demons.

I watched that infinite Dark give birth, watched the black ship emerge from blackness deeper still. Like a piece of the night it was, its shape difficult to describe: like a broken circle, its surface warped and ruined with irregular designs, as though it were the organ of some awful giant. It was nearly so large as the Schiavona, larger than the Mistral, that it might hold a solid thousand Cielcin screamers comfortably aboard. And I felt—rather than heard—the breath go through the men at my back. The horror. Many of them, I realized, had never seen a Cielcin ship up close before. Most of the war was fought at distance, fought with fire, fought while these soldiers slept on ice in the Obdurate’s massive holds. I was conscious then of the history in which I stood: that here, for the first time in more than twenty thousand years of human civilization, we stood and faced a power like ourselves but greater. Every war, every conquest, every treaty . . . every colony and colonization and the struggle against different peoples seemed to me practice for this, this great other.

Unlike the Schiavona, the Cielcin craft had no landing gear—and why should it? Like they had for the Schiavona, docking clamps and umbilicals descended from the roof of the Demiurge’s great bay, wiring the ship into Kharn’s systems, connecting fuel lines and service passages. That Kharn had the equipment for such spoke volumes. Clearly, Vorgossos and its Master had been dealing with the Pale for a long, long time.

“Forward!” the cornicen declared, and behind us every soldier took one thundering step closer. Our party did not move. Smythe, Crossflane, Lin, Tor Varro, and Jinan and myself held our ground beside the standard bearers and the guards who held the Cielcin prisoners in chains. Sagara made no sign. He did not need to.

At last the preparation was ended, and the time come at last.

The black ship opened.

If I expected a ramp to descend, I was surprised. Instead, a hatch opened in the bottom of the vessel and a sort of lift descended, a platform upon whose broad surface stood an assemblage of the Pale. There must have been sixty of them. Seventy. Not one of them was shorter than eight feet, and each carried a white sword tall as a man, the blades—held in their right hands—resting against their left shoulders. They dressed in black, with cloaks of deepest azure trimmed in silver. Bleak masks strangely painted hid their faces, and their horns rose tall and curving as crowns of chalk.

These advanced, not in ranks, but fanned out in a semicircle, so that rapidly they commanded a great breadth of the space beneath and before their vessel. One of them—taller than the rest and with a white cloak instead of blue—raised its blade and shouted, the voice amplified by some praxis in its mask. I could not make out the words, but I knew a war cry when I heard one, though I had never heard one before. My bones remembered.

“Hold!” Smythe said to her men. “Steady on!”

When the Cielcin was done, a knot of the creatures still standing on the platform parted, and the herald I had seen projected on the Demiurge’s bridge appeared. Oalicomn. The creature carried the same staff forward, chimes ringing. Its massive eyes narrowed in its tattooed face as it surveyed our host and Kharn’s.

“Yukajjimn!” it said, voice rough and high, like the cry of some bird. “You stand before the Lord of the Seventeenth Branching, who is Aeta! Prince and Chieftain of the Otiolo! Who is Viudihom, the Self-Made! He who fashioned our world, who brought forth life from dead stone! He who brought us out of the Chains of Utaiharo! Who Sees the Watchers! Who knows the Mind of the Makers! Who leads us through the emptiness and the light!” It rattled its staff as it spoke and slammed the butt against the floor. I had heard most of it before, and held my silence as Tor Varro translated for the others. I wished Valka could have been there, but she was trapped on the Mistral with Corvo and the rest of what once had been my Red Company. “You stand before the Great One! Our Master, Our Lord, Our Keeper! Who is Father and Mother to us all! Utsebimn Aranata Otiolo!”

At this it swooned, or else threw itself forcefully to the ground. Facing outward, all of the Cielcin guards knelt in perfect synchrony, swords still flat against their opposite shoulders, their long braids nearly touching the floor. I felt again a species of rotten terror, knowing that now, surely, I would look upon the face from my vision. The face of the beast who killed me.

Prince Aranata appeared.

And again, I relaxed.

It was not the face I had seen.

Eyes I had not met in dream swept over us from a face huge as a man’s chest. The prince was a giant, nine feet high and broad almost as two men. Black armor glittered like wet glass, and the rings of silver and of platinum that banded Aranata’s horns gleamed like stars. His great cape spread out behind him like wings, and his mighty braid wrapped twice about its shoulders. At the sight of the prince, Tanaran and all our prisoners fell upon their faces and lay shivering, and no action of our soldiers could so much as make them lift their eyes.

Behind Aranata, similarly adorned and attired, came a slender Cielcin, more delicate of feature. It kept its eyes down, its mouth firmly closed. This second creature held in its hands a silvered chain, thick as a child’s arm. The chain ran back, fastened to a silver collar. And in the collar . . .

Bassander swore.

I had seen the creature in the collar before, and the sight of her was more terrible than I’d dreamed. Unprompted, Crossflane rounded on Sagara. “What is the meaning of this?” The Undying did not reply, and the old officer turned on me, demanding, “What is this, Marlowe?”

“It’s a woman,” I said, voice dead of feeling.

It was a woman, or what was left of one. She was not quite like the one in my dream, I saw. That one had looked more like my mother, but this was younger. Slighter. Pale as milk, as the creature that dragged her forward. She wore nothing, unless it was strips of blue silk and the jeweled anklets that—chained—hobbled her gait. Great scars mottled her flesh, angry and red. These ran along her arms, her legs, the insides of her thighs, and at the corners of her mouth. And her hands . . . her hands! These had been slit by some vicious surgeon, the flesh between the fingers pared away so that each digit remained a useless ornament, unable to grasp . . . anything. A cleft between her largest toe and the rest of each foot gave a similar impression. She could hardly walk, and it was suffering to stand.

There was nothing in her eyes but tears.

Her soul was dead.

Raine Smythe placed a hand on Crossflane’s arm to quiet him. “Welcome, Prince Aranata,” she said, “I am Dame Raine Smythe, Knight and Tribune of the 437th Centaurine Legion, Third Cohort under Sir Leonid Bartosz. I have the command here.”

Tor Varro—a tall, black-haired man with a stern, vaguely paternal face—stepped forward to assist in translation.

“Eka Dame Raine Smythe, scahayu uje Tribune ba-scandatan Centaurine bi thumum sava, ba-cohort bidim ti-Leonid Bartosz relu. Siaje o-utorie ti-saem gi,” the broken girl said instead, voice high and brittle and hard as flint. She had repeated the tribune’s words precisely, translating without editorial.

“She’s translating,” I said to Raine.

“Citharathun mnu,” the girl echoed. I felt my stomach turn, and had to look away. Even Sagara looked disgusted, and I was glad—not for the first time, and certainly not for the last—that the Cielcin could not interpret our facial expressions at all well.

Prince Aranata Otiolo looked down at Smythe, who seemed hardly half his size, and said, “Yelbe odein ba-kousun shi.”

Tor Varro turned and repeated the words in Galstani, saying, “He says he has come for his property.” I took it as a sign of the man’s quality that he used the masculine pronoun for the Aeta, not the neutral one which would ordinarily be the more appropriate in our less fluid tongue.

Smythe pursed her lips, raised her chin so that she looked up, unafraid, into the eyes of the giant before her. “And he shall have it, when he has treated with us. They are being kept safely and well—as you see.” She waved a hand, encompassing by its arc the prostrate forms of our eleven captives. There was Tanaran, and the vicious Svatarom beside it. None raised their eyes.

The xenobite rested a hand on the hilt of its sword and took a step forward, making to brush past us and approach its people. At a shout from the centurion guarding the prisoners, our soldiers closed ranks, angling lances forward so that barrels and ceramic bayonets aimed at the Lord of the Seventeenth Branching. The kneeling Cielcin soldiers hissed, and as a unity pivoted on their knees, threatening to rise.

“Hold!” Bassander Lin shouted, throwing out a hand. “Everyone hold!” I may have disliked the man, but to his credit, I have seen Bassander Lin in several crises, and never once seen his composure crack. He kept one hand on his shield catch, but the other was open and flat, calling for peace.

“Tanaran-kih!” the prince demanded. “On your feet, slave!” Without lifting its face, Tanaran got its feet under it and stood—still bowing. “Look at me!” Tanaran turned its face up, eyes narrowed as if it faced some bright light. “Speak!”

The baetan’s voice was barely more than a whisper. “The Watchers were not on Tamnikano, Ya Aeta-doro,” it said, “or if they were, we could not find them. Ichakta Uvanari is dead, and all but these.” It had not stopped bowing, and waved a hand over its shoulder at its comrades. “We have failed you, and beg your mercy or your mercy.” The words it used for mercy, ndaktu and daktaru, meant different things. The first, as I have told you, was judgment, justice. The second clemency. Almost I expected Aranata to strike off its servant’s head then and there, and devil take the Empire.

But Kharn Sagara stepped forward. “My lord,” he said, speaking with his own voice. “Welcome back. I trust my gift was to your liking?” He spoke as a servant does to his master, and I wondered at that, for the Undying served no power in the cosmos but himself.

The reminder that Raine and Crossflane had dealt with Sagara and with the Cielcin in human blood and bodies twisted sick in me, and I glared at my boots, and so heard the beast’s reply, “They will serve beautifully. Nobuta!” It took me a moment to realize that this was the name of the Cielcin holding the silver chain, though Varro caught it easily enough. It yanked the chain, dragging the mutilated wreck of a woman forward. She did not cry out as her butchered feet splayed painfully on the floor, stumbling toward her inhuman masters. I looked up in time to see the Aeta bare his glassy fangs. “We will do good work with them. These yukajjimn have . . . so much potential.”

Crossflane grunted a curse when he heard the translation, but held his peace for fear the broken girl would translate him.

“The humans wish a peace with your scianda,” Sagara said, allowing the girl to translate. I found I could not take my eyes away from her empty face, nor turn my ears from the sounds of her harsh and barking words. Her teeth flashed, seeming too small behind her thin lips. With a start, I realized they’d been filed into points. I clenched my own teeth. They had shaped her like themselves, visited pain and other violations I dared not imagine upon her. Long ago, in my own home, I had seen eunuch myrmidons painted to resemble the xenobites for the Colosso. This was worse.

“Genuri o-svanar ne?” Aranata repeated. “Make peace? They wish to surrender? To serve us?”

“Surrender?” Smythe echoed when she had been told the prince’s words. “We wish to stop fighting. To make peace as equals.”

“Equals?” Aranata said. “The Aeta have no equals.” I should have recognized that statement for what it was: a warning that our negotiations were doomed from the start. But I had come too far and hoped for too long to see the truth I would not hear. I had hoped the Cielcin would be all like Uvanari. But Uvanari had been beaten, and the prince was not the captive soldier I had killed. “You would have us serve you!” he said. “And for this they will expect me to turn on Hasurumn, on Pagoramatu, and the others? Is this the way?”

“You would not have come if you did not wish to speak.” I spoke for the first time, and had spoken out of turn. I felt Bassander tense beside me, and half-expected a blow to the back of my head.

None came, but the Aeta rounded on me, nostril slits flaring. “Raka deni ne?” He addressed the words to Sagara, but towered over me. Who is this?

I did not bend or shy away.

One of Sagara’s habitual silences seemed to have fallen on him, and it was Tanaran who answered, saying, “This is Marlowe. It was he who saved us on Tamnikano. He gave ndaktu to the Ichakta.” It had taken its eyes from its master’s face, and looked straight up at the ceiling, baring its throat in a kind of submission, such as wolves are wont to do.

“Asvatada ne?” the Aeta asked, tilting his head in the direction that indicated affirmation, approval. “Did he indeed? Then you have my gratitude. Itana Uvanari was one of my most prized possessions. It is good to know it died a good death.”

Uvanari’s death played behind my eyes, the Cielcin bleeding out on the floor of the Chantry’s interrogation cell while the klaxons blared and flashed their warnings. It had fought to the last, slipped its bonds, murdered its torturer, and come for me. Only chance and my meager skill had saved me.

“A good death,” I agreed. If there is such a thing.

The Aeta’s nostrils flared again, and he tucked his chin, angling his horns in a way I think meant as a kind of threat or dominance display, the way strong men might square their shoulders and thrust out their chins. “I would speak to my baetan alone.”

“That can be arranged,” I answered in the Cielcin tongue, speaking without thinking. I saw Bassander and Smythe both snap their eyes to me when Varro translated, faces dark. Switching to the standard, I added, “As a show of good faith.” I should not have spoken, I knew that full well, but the damage was done. The whole party glared at me: Smythe and Bassander, Crossflane and Jinan, even the impassive Varro.

Hurrying into the gap left by my outburst, the knight-tribune said, “I intend for you to leave these meetings with your baetan, Aeta. Provided we come to some arrangement.”

“Arrangement?” Aranata echoed. “You presume to threaten me?”

“Threaten?” Smythe asked, genuinely baffled. “Not at all.”

She did not see—none of us did, then—that any challenge to the Aeta’s supreme authority, even the barest murmur that we had a right to refuse it anything, was seen as an assault against that authority, or worse: a grave insult.

“You think we will deal with you like some common merchant?” Aranata asked, saying the word merchant with all the venom of a prelate denouncing whores.

“We will not just hand over our captives,” Crossflane said.

The herald, Oalicomn, spoke from its master’s shoulder. “Hostages, then!”

“Of course hostages!” Crossflane snapped, unable to contain himself.

“Danagayan wo!” the broken girl intoned, indicating Crossflane’s scorn by her choice of words. Inflamed, Aranata whirled and struck her soundly with the back of his hand. She hit the ground like a wet towel and did not stir.

“Abassa-do!” said the Cielcin holding her chain, the thin one dressed as Aranata was dressed. “No!”

I started, gaze lost halfway between the chaos with the xenobites and my own people. Abassa-do. Abassa . . . Father. I turned, taking in this new fact. Father. Parent. I had never seen a Cielcin child before—I was not sure if anyone had. Looking again at the creature called Nobuta, I saw. The shape of its face was rounder, softer, the horns shorter, eyes wider. Though it was nearly so tall as its parent, it had not achieved the breadth and fullness of adulthood.

A child.

Earth and Emperor forgive me.

Tor Varro hurried forward, saying to the xenobites, “I’m a physician. You’ve hurt her.”

He had the scholiast’s talent for understatement, it seemed. But Varro was blocked by Nobuta, who said, “No, it’s mine!” The scholiast’s fists tightened—a display of feeling that astonished me in one of his order. But he backed off all the same.

“Do we want peace with creatures like this?” Bassander said softly. Raine slashed an arm across his path as he took a step forward. Jinan quietly swore in Jaddian. Privately, I felt myself agreeing with Bassander. I found myself staring at the cleft soles of the girl’s mutilated feet, a black feeling in the pit of my stomach, wondering what awaited Kharn’s gift of five thousand. Raine’s gift.

“Okun-se!” Prince Aranata’s voice cut through the commotion, cold and dead as Brethren’s hands. “You!” It took me a moment to realize that the Aeta was speaking to me. Behind him, the child Nobuta crouched beside the translator, stroking her scarred face. “Tanaran says you have honor. A beast’s honor, but honor all the same. By that honor and by what you did for my Ichakta, tell me the truth now. What do you want?”

“What do we want?” Raine Smythe echoed when I translated, “For it and its people to stop preying on our colonies.”

I turned, faced the Cielcin Aeta where he towered above me. Varro was distracted with the injured girl and so I had a chance—a passing chance—to speak the truth and not as I’d been scripted. “I wanted to see your kind with eyes unclouded,” I said, giving the answer I had given Gilliam Vas so very long ago. “And to make peace.” “Peace!” Aranata barked. “Qilete!” Only when I heard the word spoken back to me did I realize the problem.

The Cielcin word for peace was submission.