The Blood Solution (Approaching Infinity Book 3) (12 page)

Tinkling laughter echoed through the training grounds, but Fosso could not locate its source as he turned in a circle attempting to pinpoint it.

“Congratulations, Lissa. You are Entitled by God. Now, let’s see what you can teach me.”

“I make no pretense at superiority, Sar Fosso,” her disembodied voice replied from everywhere at once.

“You mistake my intent. There is no reproach, chastisement, or sarcasm in my words, only high praise. Lissa Kaaskau, Initiate of the Sixth Secret, do your best to evade me.”

Fosso bowed his head of blue steel and his Halo shone with greater and greater intensity. A secondary Halo began to grow from the first, spreading out and lighting the training grounds like a small sun. The resulting ball of light buzzed and thrummed like a dynamo, sending off sparkles and streamers of light like water bursting from the joints of an articulated pipe.

“There you are,” said Fosso aloud, pleasure clear in his voice.

A sunset-red spot marred the light that Fosso was producing. It flitted to and fro, but within the area of Fosso’s influence, there was nowhere to hide.

“You can see that I’ve had to counter your stealth with this gaudy display and only because I knew to look for you,” Fosso said. “Truly magnificent. But the contest draws to a close, Lissa. How would you finish it?”

“I would have you chase me, Sar Fosso,” she replied, a combination of longing and challenge both mingling in her voice.

Fosso leapt into the air for the sunset-red mark, the great light springing from his shoulders adjusting with his movement. Lissa darted just out of reach, and Fosso followed and thus they danced in the open air of the training grounds, rising to just below the ceiling, skimming the floor, back and forth between partial floors that laddered the walls, until finally, Lissa could run no further and they lighted upon one of the mezzanine levels. They were not done, though.

Lissa no longer hid from the senses, but like Fosso, she was covered in what looked like a thin layer of flexible steel, hers the color of sunsets. She was like a replica of Fosso, in fact, though petite and feminine and, of course, of that brilliant red. Fosso studied her new shell for a moment before engaging her physically and saw that it was more likely to bend light than to stop a knife. She had trained in Olka Stusson’s style, though, and moved like gossamer on the wind, the very attempts to reach her seeming to drive her away. She had never been easy prey and would be less so now. Still, she was not yet Stusson’s match, and Fosso was not unaccustomed sparring with either of them. Grasping the Sixth Secret was of immense benefit to her in every measurable way possible, but it would not ensure her escape.

He’d dimmed his Halo, but Fosso dogged her, taking a number of her strikes, each of which ringing like the sound of a great bell, but otherwise not slowing or repelling him.

She giggled nervously now, her breath coming in irregular gasps. She missed a step, recovered, and continued to retreat, afraid to lose sight of her pursuer and so moving backwards all the while. Finally though, Fosso loomed before her, appearing to rise up, growing to immensity, and catching her in the unbreakable trap of his arms. His Halo resurfaced, the white-gold lighting her rich red beautifully. Her shell melted away, and she stared as if entranced

“Do you yield?” he said.

In the grip of his arms, with his Halo poised to finish her, she opened her mouth to answer, but could only manage inarticulate sounds until, breathless with effort and awe, she mastered herself to say, “I do.”

Jav walked the top of the courtyard wall—still growing but nearly to its full height now—on his way to meet Raus. There were many people milling about which was odd and created a very casual atmosphere that was quite in contrast to the daily routine of the Palace. It was excusable, of course, even understandable, but disconcerting nonetheless. The courtyard might normally be busy as such, but not until the Palace growth was complete and Arcade could be repopulated with shops and stalls and eateries. The walls were usually busy with incoming and outgoing off-world jump deck traffic, since, officially, all of the decks inside the Palace were strictly internal. But there was no off-world travel as yet and there wouldn’t be for several months, so Raus was a bit of a spectacle to the average man or woman, at least for the time being.

Jav sighed. All would settle in the next few days.

He was nearly to the jump deck when a little man caught his attention. To describe him as little was perhaps unfair. He was older, nearly given over entirely to gray, but he was broad in the shoulders and chest, and didn’t appear to have even a pinch of fat on him. Jav thought he looked familiar and knew that he must have been a soldier, surely retired now and not one of Barson’s. Strange that he should still be in such trim physical condition at his age. Jav realized that he was staring at the man, and worse, scowling unintentionally as he turned the question over and over in his head.

Jav cursed himself after they passed one another, annoyed by his own inadvertent rudeness, but then overwhelming that feeling was something else. He felt like he was forgetting something important. Something was pricking inside him like a pin—
whispering
?—for attention. He didn’t have time to dwell on what it might have been, though.

Raus greeted him with loud good cheer, clapping his huge hands down on Jav’s shoulders. He wore the ash gray uniform of the Death Squad: a long-sleeved pullover and loose trousers tucked into low black boots, thick and heavy.

“Hello, Raus,” Jav said. “Are you ready for your date with immortality?”

Raus’s brow furrowed as he thought for a moment, and then he said, “I’ll let you know if it feels any different from the variety I’ve been experiencing so far. If you mean to ask whether or not I’m ready to commit to serving the Viscain Emperor, then the answer is yes.”

Jav nodded, silenced by Raus’s grave reply. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you to the Emperor. We’re going to be very busy over the next few days. This will be your first time away from the Tower in how long?”

Raus shook his head, unable to come up with an accurate figure.

Jav liked Raus. They had known each other for less than a month, but in that time, Jav had come to feel a connection to Raus, recognizing a core similarity in their natures despite their apparent differences. He sympathized with what Raus had had to do over the course of his life. And he certainly couldn’t ignore their shared difficulties with soul echoes. Similarities aside, though, Jav also knew that part of his openness to Raus was due to the void left by Ren Fauer’s death. He missed Ren every day, knew that he could not be replaced so easily, but it filled Jav with hope just the same to be able to connect with someone so soon after Ren was gone.

“Your brother is in good hands,” Jav said. “It’ll be good to get away.”

They moved along the top of the wall through thinning traffic and into the Vine proper through a wide aperture. Inside, the artificial light contrasted little to that of the waning Sarsan sun. Raus was trying to comprehend exactly what he found himself within: a plant, a palace, a spaceship, a god, the Emperor himself. The scale alone humbled him, but the thought that the whole structure was aware, could think, could create, could bestow parts of itself as boons was enough to cause him to rethink his worldview. Initially he’d had no idea of the scope of the Emperor’s person. He’d bargained because he had nothing else to lose and potentially everything to gain. When Jav started telling him of the Empire, that it was more or less the Emperor himself, Raus had been skeptical, but reserved judgement, at least outwardly. Now there was no denying that the Vine rose without end into the sky, that it formed a Palace that both dwarfed and humbled Kapler Tower. Raus had seen firsthand the power of Artifacts as well. Jav had threatened to pull his arms off, and it was clear that it had been no idle boast. He had also raised skeletons from the mass graves surrounding Kapler Tower and set them to his bidding. For all the science Raus thought he knew—which had never left room for something so ethereal as divinity—Raus felt like a child all over again, marveling at the “magic” of magnets as he had at age four. There had always been explanations for Raus’s ability to produce electricity—in truth, a trait shared by all humans amplified to a staggering degree in Raus’s case—or his brother’s ability to prophesy—which was either perception outside of linear time-space, or unconscious extrapolation of passively received stimuli, or some combination of the two. The brain and the body were capable of many things that were not, strictly speaking, normal and even more so when adjustments to each were made by skillful hands. But there were always limits. The Emperor’s existence spoke to Raus of an end to limits, of infinity, and of the divine. He was humbled, ready to serve, and happy to do so at Jav’s side.

Raus followed Jav down a series of lightly travelled dim corridors and into a small personnel jump deck. Even as Jav ushered him off the deck, Raus protested, insisting they’d gone nowhere, but the corridor they found themselves in silenced him. Though it looked like all the other corridors he’d walked, it wasn’t the one from which he’d entered the jump deck. He looked about awkwardly as Jav led him further. They reached a set of pressure doors that opened to a room which was half-balcony, looking over Sarsa from a height that stopped the breath in Raus’s chest. Down through clouds he could see the small spike that was Kapler Tower, the extent of the Black Fields, and the tight rows of tall, straight, dark green trees that grew in the slowly failing soil beyond, looking almost like moss upon the low range that hemmed in the land settled by his ancestors. Beyond that, he could see the black, desolate sea, and farther still, the white glow of the ice floes that forever marked the north.

“Your first viewing of your own world from such a height?”

Raus whirled about in response to the voice, but Jav turned easily and said with a slight bow, “Minister of Affairs, Witchlan.”

Raus turned to Jav, acknowledging the import of his words, and turned back to Witchlan to whom he bowed.

“You may rise and you may speak, Mr. Kapler,” Witchlan said. He was all in russet and brown, his robes looking something like a cross between velvet and leather—they didn’t look like clothes so much as a part of him. His cap—or was it his head?—rose to a point and ended in a reed-like taper that coiled into a jaunty curl. His face was a dark patchwork that maintained a strict symmetry. His mouth was a vertical slit among many that brought to mind the under gills of mushrooms.

Kapler rose. “Yes, it is,” he said.

Witchlan had been standing near the doors when Jav and Raus entered. They had walked right past him without noticing, which was understandable since the only light here came from outside and even though they were closer to the sun than Raus had ever been, that light was still weak and would now fail more noticeably every day as the Vine drank it, consuming it physically.

“Are you impressed, Mr. Kapler?”

“I am.”

“Good. That will be our first step towards trusted service.”

“Thank you. . . Minister,” Kapler said, unconsciously rubbing the back of his neck with his right hand.

“Specialist Holson has also vouched for you, which is sufficient. While you have given us no cause to mistrust you, as a matter of course I must inform you that the Artifact you are about to receive is your proof and your badge of office, making you an elite Shade of the Viscain Empire. Acceptance of this badge of office means that all previous titles are forfeit, all previous pledges of loyalty are either invalidated or superseded. Should you demonstrate that you have negotiated in bad faith, please be advised that we have the right and military capacity to forcibly remove the badge of office from your person, which will result in your death—in addition to being mortal, Artifact removal is excruciatingly painful, I’m told, and messy. Please also remember that you have placed your younger sibling, one Ban Kapler, in our care and that his life shall also be forfeit should you renege on any of these or other established terms.

“Do you understand, Mr. Kapler?”

“Yes, Minister,” Raus said.

“Do you agree to these and all other terms put forth?”

“I do, Minister.”

“Good.”

Raus sucked in his breath when the image of the Emperor, pale and fleshy, appeared before them suspended above and just beyond the balcony’s edge. Raus had been told what to expect and thought he would be prepared after having seen the Vine up close, but the face before him, huge with its carved eyes and mouth and the way those features seemed to move and change with the dancing firelight behind gave Raus the first chill of his long adult life.

“Raus Kapler,” the Emperor’s wheeze of a voice boomed, “I have witnessed your pledge and judge you to be true to your word. Step forth, accept these, the Resurrection Bolts, and be transformed.”

Raus stepped forward and held out his hands, fumbling to catch the two gleaming metal studs that appeared in the air before him. They were what the Emperor had said—bolts—but their size was such that Raus needed a hand for each. They were shiny, silvery steel, topped with thick square heads, and tooled with sharp threads that threatened to draw blood. Raus held them, not quite sure what to do with them for a moment. Then, raising them to either side of his neck, he said, “Yes, Lord Emperor,” and touched the tips to the skin there. Light filled the cup of the balcony as the Bolts were accepted into Raus’s body, becoming one with him.

Raus looked at his hands. The color of his skin had changed to a translucent gray, revealing the sickly greenish tinge of the flesh beneath. He narrowed his eyes and went Dark. He instantly grew in size by nearly a half, and a row of silvery steel bolts, smaller copies of the Resurrection Bolts, rose up along the back of each arm and down the length of his spine. He pulled his tattered shirt off and reexamined his hands and his arms now as well. The pale green under his skin was more pronounced, but his arms had grown even thicker with muscle. He tentatively touched the Resurrection Bolts, which now jutted twenty centimeters out from either side of the trunk of his neck.