Assassinorum kingmaker, p.12
Assassinorum Kingmaker, page 12
Had she done it wrong? Misremembered a step?
No. Gwynne was responsible for all that. She needed to hit no buttons or run power; the suit was technically already active and ready.
‘Gwy–’ Sycorax started, then shut up.
There was a small icon on the bottom left of her vision. A Stryder-Rau coat of arms, blinking. Disappearing and reappearing. The text below it almost too small to read.
Invocation in progress…
Invocation in progress…
Invocation in prog–
It disappeared. Once again, the claustrophobia of silence.
Hail, Knight.
Sycorax jumped so hard her helmet hit the padded cockpit wall. She reached up to the helm, hoping to open the visor manually. ‘Gwynne?’
A noise filled her ears. A sound like a broom across flagstone, or the soft hiss of blade-edge on a whetstone. A quiet sound, an alarming sound – more alarming when she realised she had not heard it with her ears.
Hisses and scratches formed into whispers. A hushed voice that was not from one throat, but many, spiralling together, each out of sequence but coalescing as it spoke.
You have come.
You have come.
You have come.
‘Noble ancestors,’ said Sycorax, inclining her head. ‘It is Linoleus Rakkan, Knight of Stryder-Rau. Candidate for the Crown of Dominion.’
Why have you initiated this reconsecration protocol? You have piloted this war machine for nigh on a decade. Thisss is irregular.
The sound of a hundred hushed voices speaking in unison sent a chill down Sycorax’s spine, settling in her belly. It was unnatural, strange. Flashed her back to Programmator Quivarian’s research station, and the rising tide of whispers that had engulfed her when they’d uploaded her false consciousness with the heart_wyrm. Upgrade yourself. Transmute your soul. Embrace the Power of Eight!
She banished the thought, lest the data-ghosts perceive it.
If they detected she was an intruder, Rakkan had said, they could kill her. Drive her into madness. Surge her consciousness so full of traumatic memories from ten thousand years of war that they would permanently burn into her neural pathways, breaking her psychologically and reshaping her entire brainscape.
The whispering chorus fragmented, splitting into voices identical in affect, yet distinct.
He wishes to change his allegiance, hissed one. And will support valiant Stryder.
Fool, said another. He has been injured in the brain. I detect neural anomalies…
He has seen the light and will favour stalwart Rau.
Enough, said the majority voice, a chorus drowning out the dissenters. Knight, state your purpose.
‘I, Linoleus Rakkan, wish to reconsecrate my questing vows.’
You will renounce the quest of the Freeblade? Has the war against the hated foe ended?
To renounce is no small thing.
But it may be done, should it lead to the greater glory of one’s house.
‘The foe is not defeated. But my destiny lies on Dominion. I have served the Emperor, but now it is time to serve my own.’
The highest calling a Knight may have, they whispered together. To serve the house and the High Monarch. Are you prepared for the rituals?
‘I am.’
We–
What about the neural changes?
Changessss?
I sense cranial implants. Linoleus Rakkan has none, apart from the helm port.
‘I was wounded, ancestors,’ Sycorax lied. It was second nature. ‘A shuttle crash in transit. In healing the trauma, I was also augmented.’
Sycorax had gone so far as to reshape her brain, matching the folds of her grey matter as much as possible to a cranial scan conducted on Rakkan. It had been difficult and painful, but now she was glad Koln had insisted on it.
Very well. Tell us who you are.
‘Linoleus Rakkan, Knight of noble birth, the blood of Stryder and Rau united within me. My mother’s people descend from the Astair line. My father’s people are of the Fang line, of which I am the last. By blood and trial, I am a candidate in the Lists.’
Go on.
‘My mother is Baroness Hawthorn Astair-Rakkan, pilot of Greyhound, who fought the Great Devourer at Magravor. Her father was Baron Selenus Rakkan and her mother Dame Salkerk Velkus Astair. Dame Astair’s mother was Baroness Halvarina Astair, pride of the Astair line, who alone held the Tovernian Bridge against the fallen Knights of House Morvayne…’
Memorising the lines had taken more time, even, than learning the Knight’s controls. Rakkan would know his genealogy all the way back to the Long March ships that carried their voyaging ancestors away from Holy Terra. It was a component of him as familiar as his facial features and unique as a fingerprint. A thousand generations passing their blood and legacies to form him.
And if she forgot one title, mispronounced a single syllable, the machine would know she was an impostor.
Sycorax sank deeper into the impersonation trance she’d developed in the days of study and reflection. Lived inside the constructed identity. Let it take over. Willed her body not to react to the data-jack pressing on the back of her brain. Channelled the mem-recording of Rakkan’s recitation of his genealogy through her brain’s speech centre. Hoped the tone of his voice, uncomfortable at speaking such a personal and ritualised chain of information, had not corrupted the recording.
When she finished, four hours had passed.
The voices lay quiet and cool on the coils of her brain, considering.
And who are your father’s people?
‘My father was Sir Selkar Fang, scion of the Fang line and loyal servant of House Rau, pilot of this very Knight Armiger, martyred defending High Monarch Lucien Yavarius-Khau from the fallen Knight Dawn of Slaughter. His father Malnus Selkar was an outsider of noble rank. His mother was Sevana Khal, matriarch of the Fang, and favoured servant of the Machine God. Her father was Milvian Hunyad, Kingsward, and her mother was Lariana Taan, diplomat who piloted no Knight, but steered the machine of state. Milvian Hunyad’s father was–’
STOP.
She faltered. ‘Yes, ancestors?’
The data-jack twisted into the back of her brain case like a screw. Sycorax felt pain shoot around her head like a crown. She saw fire, curtains of it, with two dozen hulking Knight suits sprinting through the flames, murdering the fleeing tides of humans before them with fire from their spiked guns.
Milvian Hunyad had no father.
‘He–’
Traitor blood grants no legacy. Hunyad is not responsible for his parent’s sin, but he may not claim the noble ancestors of that line – no true noble line produces a traitor. That line is forgotten and forbidden. Milvian Hunyad’s father joined the traitors of Dread House Morvayne, and his line is damnatio memoriae.
The data-jack twisted like a burrowing worm, boring towards her hindbrain. Pain exploded through her temples and shot down her spinal column. Internal stimm-dosers flooded her system with pain suppressors and mental stimulants.
Disconnected images of torment. Around her, a circle of Morvayne Knights in their magenta armour, closing for the kill. Chainblades on her adamantine armour, smoking with the friction of teeth on metal. Green eyes igniting in underwater darkness. A Knight looking down to see that shrapnel had penetrated his cockpit and severed both legs. The sky, full of smoke, rising blood choking her as it flooded the helmet.
Voices broke up, arguing with each other, the chorus of the dead descending into riot.
What had she said wrong? Had Rakkan played them false? She ignored the pain, the horror. Focused on her expanded recall to fish out the detail she’d missed…
‘Cascar Tyranno!’ she shouted. ‘Cascar Tyranno was his father. Under law. Adopted Hunyad to redeem him when his natural father turned heretic.’
The data-jack stopped twisting, her head pressed so far forward in the throne restraints that, seen from the outside, she must have looked as though she were bowing to the controls in front of her.
Under law… A pause.
There is no law but blood, half the voices intoned. It is the way of House Rau.
And yet, came the answer, every soul makes its own legend. It is the way of Stryder.
Cascar Tyranno believed the child’s blood could be valuable to House Rau. He took the boy as his own, gave him his line.
It is legal, answered the Stryder voices.
It is tradition, intoned Rau.
Why did you forget this shame? Why say that Hunyad had a father, when Tyranno was only a father under law?
Sycorax took a ragged breath.
‘I misspoke. I do not commemorate nor remember the obliterated line. Struck it out from my soul. To remember it would be to honour it, so I have forgotten. Milvian Hunyad has no father in law or spirit but Cascar Tyranno.’
A pause.
You honour us with this answer. You may continue.
Sycorax continued naming the Rau line for a further five hours. As she did so, her mind conjured pages of the great lineage tome Rakkan had given her to study – it had been heavy and thick. There was one volume for each house, each folio-sized, and as wide as her hand. On every page lay the story of an ancestor, hand-illuminated by a living scribe, for no soulless servitor could create work so exquisite. Most pages included a facing illustration, illuminated in gold and platinum leaf, depicting the ancestor and their mount.
Each noble on Dominion, she was told, had such a lineage tome. The pages added as the generations passed and the book was handed down to heirs. If Rakkan were ever to renounce his claim and have children, he would pass it to his primary heir and make copies for other children. The oldest pages were ancient and brittle, turned with a special repulsor rod that minimised tearing and the ravages of the mild acid on human fingertips. It had clearly been rebound several times, expanded, had things inserted.
And one section, she’d noted, had been removed and replaced with newer pages.
The line of Milvian Hunyad. The boy with the traitor father.
As the pages passed before her eyes, both sense-memory and filed in her expanded consciousness, she felt tears welling from her eyes. Wetting her cheeks, running through Rakkan’s pointed beard.
It was no stratagem, the tears were her own. Because despite lacking any connection to these past Knights, the litany of selflessness and heroism, victory and defeat, touched her. She’d known death and sacrifice, she told herself, and it had triggered something deep. She tried to activate a shot of emotional dampening solution but it had no effect. So deep in this role was she that Sycorax was feeling Rakkan’s emotions. A dangerous and worrying thing.
Or else, the stories of consciousness mingling with the machine were no folk tale – but the thought of it was so disconcerting she pushed it aside as a distraction.
When she had named the last name, they interrogated her. Asking her to name the birth and death dates of certain ancestors. Recount stories of their heroism or where they placed in the lists of a tournament that had occurred four thousand years gone.
Then, there was silence.
We have found you true and worthy, Sir Linoleus Rakkan. Your reconsecration is complete. Does any have course to question this?
Silence. Then, a hissing voice. Small and alone:
He lies.
Noble cousin, why say you this?
He lies, he is different. I cannot know how. Perhaps he has been corrupted by the Ruinous Powers.
The longer the chorus spoke, the more Sycorax had come to recognise the parts of the whole. She could see it now, a crowd of shadows in the back of her brain. Like being surrounded in a dark room, sensing the presence of bodies rather than seeing them.
This hissing voice, the detractor, had a female cast to it. A long-ago bondswoman, the same who’d said she was different.
Present your evidence.
No evidence. A feeling only. He is wrong.
Do any others believe this?
I have thirteen others who support me. They sense a difference.
But you have no evidence?
No.
Your faction are suspicious of every pilot. It is not your first accusation thus. Vigilance against treason is a virtue, but this is paranoia. If you have no evidence, and have not the votes to reject a pairing, you are overruled. The consecration is complete.
We shall watch. And we shall see.
Noble Knight, have you raised the banners?
‘I have,’ she said, tasting sweat on her lips. The closed helm and active cockpit, stuffy from hours of the reactor running as the Knight stood still, sweltered. Below her, she could feel the damp seat of her pilot armour sticking to the leather throne. ‘I have raised the four banners and am ready to pledge.’
Before her eyes, the helm’s vision slit slid open.
Even Sycorax’s ocular orbs, surgically enhanced for night vision and to resist sudden changes in light levels, were briefly dazzled by the first sight.
Before her was the cargo bay, its sodium lumens hard and bright as though the light was pouring into her skull.
Colours blazed full, the table in front of her with its crackling pig and crimson vine-alcohol showing almost neon. Rust speckling the far reaches of the ceiling vault overhead. Across the bay, Raithe and Koln turned from a discussion and looked at her. Koln curious, Raithe anxious, one arm across his chest and cradling the opposite elbow, the fist clenched in front of his mouth.
But most of all, she saw the four banners. On the left, a heartsblood-red one with the stormcloud of Rau. On the right, a sky-blue one with the falcon of Stryder. And in the centre, a plain-white chevron with the Imperial aquila, and the immortal banner of Stryder-Rau – quartered with the houses’ colours, its badge an image of a hooded falcon gripping a stormcloud.
And she realised she was not looking at a screen.
This she saw through the eyes of Jester.
Four banners, said the chorus, echoing itself. Four choices. Were you a mere squired bondsman, as most of your Armiger kin, you could only choose to serve your master or the path of the Freeblade.
But you are in the Lists, of the succession line. You must choose a path of glory, power or service.
You may kneel to Rau or Stryder, abandoning your claim forever in order to pledge to a house. You shall spend your remaining days winning glory for your kin.
You may choose to kneel to the High Monarch’s banner and win power for yourself, for the path of court is also the path to the Crown of Dominion. But we caution you, Linoleus Rakkan, no one of your humble bloodline has ever achieved the crown, nor has any Armiger pilot. Yet still, the life in service of court is still a life of power.
Or as you did in your last vow, you may choose to serve the Emperor – a Freeblade with no pursuit of the crown or house glories, a soldier in the wars of the Terran God.
Glory, power or service. Arise and choose!
Sycorax looked down at the clawed feet beneath her, feeling their pistons stir, waves of disorientation crashing upon her as she moved legs that were not hers, swung down a limb topped with a thermal spear to help her up.
She rose, pistons sliding, steam venting from her back. Pendulous arms followed. Her head felt too low, as if she were once again mimicking a hunched genestealer cultist. Everything appeared too bright, too vibrant. She saw Raithe and Koln move, startled and excited, and blink-dismissed targeting indicators as the Knight painted them as possible threats.
Sycorax hesitated, tottering on the backwards-facing legs, and took a step.
It was like nothing she’d ever experienced. The foot – clumsy like a newborn grox – came down on the table of offerings and fractured it. Splintered wood and metal rods ground under her foot like dry leaves.
She wobbled on her feet, took another step, feeling the vibration run through the walls from the footfall.
Within the clumsiness, the drunken confusion of it, she felt power. Power like she’d never imagined. In her career, Sycorax had killed many men – many things that were not men, for that matter – cutting down eight and ten at a time without thinking.
But this was entirely different. She could bash aside daemons with a flick of her wrist. Hole a Land Raider in a single shot. Kick straight through the bulkhead of this ship and into space.
Her steps became steadier. One. Two. One. Two. She had to think about each one. Plan how the foot fell, make up for the unfamiliar balance. To keep steady, she swept the arms out wide and saw the vicious teeth of the chain-cleaver.
He stumbles, hissed a voice.
He was head-injured, responded another. His brain is not the same as it was.
And then, she stood before the banner of Stryder-Rau. Looked at its divided colours and badge of the falcon and the storm.
Carefully, heavily, she knelt before it, beweaponed hands finding the floor to keep her from tipping. Her cycloptic lens nearly touched the deck in reverence.
You choose power, you choose the crown, said the voices. May the Terran God and your venerated ancestors have mercy on your soul.
EIGHTEEN
>>Operational Planning Transcript 4
>>Operation: Kingmaker
>>File No. 5782-Gamma-KMKR
>>Mission Day: 21
>>Recording Device: Ear canal augmetics [stereo]
>>Recorder: Avaaris Koln
>>Location: Officers’ mess, transport craft
>>Cleared for Reading: Koln, Avaaris; Raithe, Absolom; Sycorax [LIST ENDS]
>>Clearance Level: Vermilion Special Privileged
>>DO NOT TRANSMIT<<
>>DO NOT DUPLICATE<<
>>PURGE DATA ON MISSION COMMENCEMENT<<
[Transcript begins at 3:22]
KOLN: –given that, I anticipate no problems with access to–
[AUDIO: Door opens, shuts.]
RAITHE: Good of you to join us, Sycorax. Three minutes late.
