Authors: R. M. Meluch

The Ninth Circle (71 page)

BOOK: The Ninth Circle

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Nox took his place on the cliff’s edge. Looked down. Well, yes, there they all are. The bloody carnage below welcomed him. Nox spread his arms. “Oh, my brothers, I am coming.”

Will the circle be unbroken, by and by, Lord, by and by
?

He launched himself into a beautiful dive.

The wind rushed at his ears, his nostrils; his heart raced in instinctive terror as the bloody ground came hurtling up.

Then there was a sting of ropes against his skin, pressure on his face and chest, the nauseating reverse and a springy jouncing up and down.

The net had deployed.

Nox screamed in his mother tongue. “Son of a bitch! Son of a bitch!” He thrashed like a cat in a bag.

The bouncing settled, and he felt a tug from above. The other hidden mechanism had deployed to reel him up.

One arm and one foot sticking out through the thick netted mesh, Nox was rising. The bloody ground moved away from him. He struggled to get all his limbs inboard. He caromed lightly once or twice against the ragged rock face, spun. His breaths heaved. He braced himself.

This is a psych. He’s toying with me before he kills me. He’s going to drop me again. For real this time.

The winch turned. Nox was near the top. As he rose over the edge he met Cinna’s black eyes. Nox glowered back at him.

The winch stopped. Nox dangled there just over the cliff. He would not repeat himself. He silently dared Cinna with all his wrath,
Drop me
.

Cinna seized the net and swung Nox over to solid ground. Cinna pulled a cord that let him out of the net. “Watch your step.”

Nox stood up and stepped out in a quivering rage, snorting.

Cinna turned blandly and walked down the path that led to the waiting area.

Nox paced, looking for a good rock with which to bash Cinna. Or maybe he should just push him. Maybe he could grab him and jump. Or maybe just jump and be with his brothers. That’s where he was headed anyway.

After an eternity he heard Cinna returning up the path with their last brother, Pallas.

Pallas hiked up with heavy tread over the crest. He met Nox’s gaze. Nox tried to ward off the brightening hope on Pallas’ face to see a brother alive. Nox gave a grim shake of his head.

But Pallas had seen Nox and assumed that Cinna was netting people. Pallas looked around for who else was up here.

There was only Cinna and Nox and Pallas.

Pallas looked over the edge, scuttled back from the mess below. “Ho! Who is that?”

Nox, furious and crying, answered him, “
Whom don’t you see up here
?” He was past trying to contain his tears.

Pallas seized Nox in a brief pounding hug. Pushed apart hard, wheeled around, and hurled himself over the edge.

Nox thought his own heart would stop. But it continued its merciless hammering inside his chest. He was still cruelly alive with this monster when all his brothers were dead.

He ran to the edge. He didn’t want to watch, but he had to. He needed to see it. He didn’t want Pallas to die alone.

Far below, something shot out from the rock face. A spreading honeycomb blossomed wide, then folded back in on the dropping figure, closing around it. The net stretched down long. Bounced back up.

The net had deployed. Nox could see Pallas moving within it.

Nox gasped, his vision blurred, dizzy between crushing relief and rage.

The retrieval mechanism was drawing Pallas up. Nox stayed on hands and knees, breathing grief and fury.

The net’s arm swung over solid ground. Pallas emerged from the net, shaken, sad, composed.

Pallas’ demeanor made Nox pick up his
dignitas
.

Nox stood up and faced Cinna. Nox spoke thickly, “It is just us three then.”

Cinna said, “There are eight in a squad.”

Pallas and Nox exchanged puzzled looks. Eight? Where were the other five supposed to come from?

Cinna signaled someone to come.

Gritty footsteps sounded, approaching. Boot soles on sandy rock. Pallas and Nox turned toward the sound.

Cinna didn’t look. He knew who was coming.

Nicanor, Faunus, Leo, Galeo, and Orissus hove into view, hiking up the rocks.

Pallas caught in a breath, astonished.

Nox turned away. He looked over the cliff.

The red pools and broken bodies at the bottom of the cliff vanished before his stinging eyes.

Pallas stared as his brothers returned from the dead. Pallas’ eyes were nearly round, pooling tears. His lower lip quivered. He asked them, his voice shaking, “Are you real?”

Nicanor gave a couple of uncertain blinks with a tentative smile. He didn’t understand the question. “Aye. Why? Aren’t
you?
”

Pallas threw his arms around Nicanor, hugged him fiercely. His face mashed against his brother’s ear. He pounded his fist against Nicanor’s back. Pallas hugged them all, Leo, Galeo, Orissus, Faunus.

Cinna had netted them. All of them. They were real. They were alive.

Nox stood apart, hugging no one.

His brothers’voices overlapped in a blur of baritone sound, trading stories of their jumps. Their voices trailed to silence as each caught sight of Nox, his face fixed in a gargoyle glare.

Nox turned to Cinna. Spoke, deadly cold. “Your turn.”

“I had my turn,” the patterner said.

Color poured into Nox’s face. Nox breathed fire. “
Do you not trust your brothers?
” And he thrust out a demanding palm.

Cinna gazed back at him.

Cinna and Nox stood locked in a stare down. Cinna dead calm. Nox vibrating.

Cinna moved first, smoothly. His hand came forward. He lightly placed the net deployment control into Nox’s hand.

Expression blank, Cinna turned and walked off the cliff.

His brothers swarmed to the edge to watch the drop.

Nox stayed where he was, standing perfectly still. He knew what he had to do.

Drop him.

The row of brothers looking down over the cliff reared back like one beast. “Ho!”

And they laughed.

The net had deployed.

They watched as the netted bundle bounced up and down and twisted round one way, unwound, and twisted round the other way.

Orissus cranked his head over his shoulder to see Nox. Orissus snorted. “I wasn’t sure you were going to catch him.”

Nox looked down to his hand, his fingers depressing the control trigger.

“My hand slipped,” Nox said. He passed the control to Pallas. Let someone else reel the cur up.

Pallas moved the switch that activated the retrieval assembly. The mechanical arm lifted up. The winch turned. There was a dry squeak to it.

As the bundle rose above the cliff edge, Nox glared at the patterner balled up in his net, still dangling over the edge. Cinna seemed calm to the point of boredom, resting with his back rounded against the rope bag, his knees folded up against his shoulders. He waited without pleading.

Nox said at last, “Bring him in.”

Pallas turned the control to swing the net over solid ground. Sand in the metal gears squealed.

Cinna disengaged himself from the ropes and stood up before his brothers.

The patterner was a strange being. So very like them. So very not, with eyes that appeared to be looking both inward and out. The cables extending out of his forearms and out the back of his neck made him look alien.

Faunus asked Cinna, “Did you know Nox was going to net you?”

“How could I?” Cinna said. “
He
didn’t know what he was going to do.” Opaque eyes slid to Nox.

A motion like a tic tugged at Nox’s mouth. He admitted, “I didn’t.”

Nox had made up his mind while Cinna was falling. Actually, there’d been no mind to it at all. Nox’s hand just squeezed. Some brain cell sent that message, but it wasn’t a conscious one. Nox thought he meant to drop him.

All their rage had guttered out. Each of them felt it. Something thoroughly burned out was settling on the cliff top. The ashes of fear.

“
Now,”
said Nox. “Now, we are a squad.”

Cinna asked his brothers, with a nod at Nox, “How did he get to be your mouth?”

Pallas shrugged, his head turning slowly side to side. “He just starts talking.”

“I was dropped on purpose,” said Cinna.

“I swear we didn’t mean to,” Nox said wearily.

“I didn’t say it was
your
purpose,” said Cinna.

Nox’s mouth hung open. He couldn’t speak. Leo and Galeo exchanged glances.

Nicanor spoke, “
Whose
then?”

“I wish I knew,” said Cinna. “When I returned to the cliff to replace the net’s motion sensor with the handheld switch, I found the net deployment mechanism had been sabotaged. Someone jammed a rock into the works. The simpler a deed is, the harder it is to find its pattern. My death may have been a conspiracy, and I don’t have access to a database that would reveal it to me. It may have been some bored kid with a rock. I don’t know if the failure of the net was specifically targeting me or if I was simply the next sod to jump. Either way, I was murdered.”

A bored kid with a rock would not explain how Cinna got picked up from the bottom of the cliff in time to save his life. Or how he lived at all. The impact from that kind of fall should have sprayed his brains over the whole province.

“You find out who did that to you, Little Brother, you let us know,” said Nox. “We can get real creative on him.”

“I am counting on that.”

“And what about us?” said Nox. “Why are we still alive?”

“You—we—are The Ninth Circle of Hell,” said Cinna. “And we are dead. Never forget that. We don’t exist. We haunt by leave of Caesar Numa.”

“
Why?”

“Caesar needs a free hand,” Cinna said.

All became clear.

No one would be hunting them any more. There was no bounty on dead men or on an annihilated spaceship.

Spacefarers could be as superstitious as ancient mariners. The implausible sightings of the leopard ship would be dismissed as ghost stories. The actions of the Circle could be attributable to no one. Especially not to Caesar.

Because we are dead
.

Credible people had watched them die.

The Ninth Circle existed at Numa’s will.

And all the broken pieces fit together. The brothers had everything they wanted. Well, not everything. Not half. But the main thing, the thing that made them whole. A purpose. A belonging. A reason for living.

They started down the path together. Orissus singing a drinking song, Faunus playing along on his panpipe made of cloke bones. Nox and Pallas tried to dance to the tune, but the way was too rocky. They stumbled a lot. Cinna walked with them.

And it became their motto, never to be spoken outside the Circle:

Semper Pro Roma / Numquam Nomene Sua

Always for Rome / Never in Her Name

BOOK: The Ninth Circle

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