The Emperor of Nexus was seated upon his throne. The vaults of the Cathedral ceiling caught and rebounded the rolling notes of the organ. Candles burnt in banks either side of him, reflecting off the dark stone floor. He could hear, beyond the screen, the echoes of the congregation leaving after the service. His section of the building was deserted, apart from him and the figure now striding towards him up the aisle.
His visitor was, like the rest of their order, swathed in a black cloak. Hood, boots, and gloves left no trace of flesh exposed. Only the sauntering gave a clue whose face was concealed in the shadows: a lithe swagger that suggested either extreme arrogance or madness.
The figure halted at the bottom of the steps and bowed exaggeratedly low. “Your Majesty.”
“Lord Icarus,” the Emperor acknowledged, tilting his head slightly. “I trust you are well?”
“Quite well, my liege, thank you.” Icarus lowered his hood. His hair was sleek and reached his shoulders, framing an aging but handsome face with an inward-curving jawline. The piercing blue eyes scanned their surroundings. “We are alone, I trust?”
“I have instructed the custodians that we are to be disturbed by no one.”
“You may reveal yourself, then.”
“Indeed.” Slate-colored smoke had trailed from the Emperor’s skin. His body slumped in the throne, motionless, the eyes open but dulled. The smoke was projecting from his chest, swirling upwards to form a column in front of the mortal marionette. It resolved into the form of an old man, long haired and bearded, skin and robe entirely grey. The only thing of the Emperor that remained were the eyes—twin globes of gold that burnt like suns in a basalt galaxy.
“This vessel is weakening,” the grey figure muttered disdainfully, glancing back at the Emperor’s carcass. “These mortal puppets decay so easily.”
His voice still sent Icarus shuddering slightly: it was deep, far deeper than he had thought possible, and carried the weight of millennia. “If all goes to plan, then you shall not have to endure it much longer. I trust that is why you’ve summoned me? Is everything on schedule?”
“Yes, it is. We hold a Shard in addition to the Darkness pouring into this world from the Cult’s many conquests. The Cultists still believe the Emperor intends to create a superweapon as a means towards greater imperial domination. The real purpose of the Aterosa remains concealed from all but us.”
Icarus nodded. “And you think it can work?”
“It is flawless. Ndiuno was the very first world to fall to the Darkness, but I knew at that point it would have to be resurrected once the Cult had run the course of its usefulness. The Fourth Shard still exists there: the Risa Star cannot be reunified without it.”
“So your instructions for me have not changed?”
“No. You will be the only inhabitant of this world to survive imminent events.”
Icarus grinned, insanity flaring in his eyes. “I look forward to it.” He peered past the grey man at the Emperor’s body.
“You’re right. His body is decaying fast. The skin has turned blue. How is your replacement coming along?”
“Very well. The boy has summoned his first demon and is increasingly proficient at Dark alchemy. As things stand now, he will last me until the end.”
“Ironic that an Apollonian will deal the final blow to this pitiful state of the universe—though he can’t take all the credit. He’s not the first of their number to defect!”
The peals of Icarus’s manic laughter joined the organ music, rumbling in the distant vaults of the ceiling.
Jack sat on his bed, staring through the porthole into the gloom. They had been aboard The Golden Turtle for at least a week now.
Sardâr had handed the black mirror to one of the crew members on the command deck as soon as they had got on, and it had been linked into the ship’s navigation system. It now hung in the center of an isolated ovenlike chamber, pulsating with indigo energy. Jack felt uneasy just being in the room with it, as if the intense shadows of the glassy surface veiled unsleeping eyes. As far as possible, he had tried to keep off the command deck and didn’t envy those crew members obliged to work there.
Initially, they had passed through murky river water into the vortex of light usually indicating a jump through space. But gradually as the hours had passed, the lights had faded until they were shooting through an apparently endless tunnel. Darkness locked them in on all sides, and if it had not been for the mirror, they would have been utterly lost. It was not a comforting thought that the force guiding them through the shadows was directly linked to the Cult’s base of operations.
Jack was restless, more so than he could ever remember. He had tried to recoup some sleep in the first days, but whenever he had closed his eyes, he’d been interrupted by a mental slide show. The last couple of months flicked along the inside of his lids in cinematic fashion: Alex’s abduction; Bál disappearing into the abyss; Lucy, wounded and imprisoned, staring hopelessly straight through him…
He couldn’t sleep, and when he awoke, he felt angry with himself for not being rested. After that, he had taken on as many jobs as possible in an attempt to tire himself out: scrubbing the deck, helping in the kitchen, washing clothes, even learning how to monitor the levels of water pressure. He worked hours upon hours, trying to match the exertion of the Albion factory, yet he still couldn’t sleep.
He had barely spoken to Ruth, Sardâr, Dannie, or any of the crew members in the last few days. He might have felt guilty about shutting himself off if he wasn’t suspicious the others were in a similar state.
Dannie was as chirpy as always but seemed to have tactfully recognized that Jack didn’t want to talk and so had immersed herself, much to Quentin’s annoyance, in disassembling and reassembling sections of The Golden Turtle to learn exactly what made it work.
Ruth was busy with her captain’s duties but, even so, was very quiet. Jack guessed why: she was the only one of them to have seen Nexus; though she didn’t remember it, he knew the ghost of her time there haunted her. Knowing that every moment was bringing them closer to her forgotten past couldn’t have been easy.
Sardâr, for his part, seemed to have done right by Bál in taking to staying in his room for long periods, emerging sporadically for meals. Jack thought he must be diverting all his attentions to planning for when they reached their destination.
In fact, whilst keeping his body as busy as was possible in a submarine, Jack himself had had plenty of time to think about their plans. The more he had thought about it, the more his initial drive had jaded into anxiety. The mission they had committed them selves to now seemed like suicide. How could a small group of Apollonians, some of them barely competent alchemists, hope to penetrate the very heart of the Cult’s operations? In previous situations—in Birchford, in Thorin Salr, in Albion, and in Avalon—they had only just survived against one of the Cult’s Chapters. Now they would face the entire assembled force of Dark alchemists and probably some demons too—and there would be fewer than ten Apollonians. Were they expecting to just stroll in, free the hostages, and be back on board in time for tea?
He blinked. A glimmer of light had appeared on the edge of his vision. He looked away from the brooding Darkness and again into the room. Inari was planted on the carpet staring at him, tails oscillating symmetrically. Neither of them said anything for several moments.
“I’m sorry I snapped at you the other day,” Jack put forward when it was clear the fox wasn’t going to speak first. “Bál had just… and Lucy…”
“That’s alright. And if it’s any better, I’m just as frustrated as you are about my inability to intervene.”
“I suppose you can’t tell me how I can help?”
“Nope.” The fox stretched and hopped up to the bunk, settling on the sheets.
Jack let his head rest against the wall and ran his hand through the fox’s fur, scratching him behind the ears. As before, he felt an almost electric tingle when his nerves came into contact with the glowing strands.
“I take it you know where we’re going?”
“Yes. You know I can’t come with you, don’t you?”
“I thought so. We’re on a suicide mission, aren’t we?”
The fox turned his head to look at him. “I wouldn’t put it that strongly. Let’s just say your probable life expectancy just got a hell of a lot shorter.”
“We are doing the right thing, though, aren’t we? Going in like this?”
Inari scrambled up to sit before him, his paws on either side of Jack’s forearm. “I don’t know. I can’t tell you what I’d like to, what I’m thinking. No matter what happens in Nexus, certain patterns will become clearer.”
“Patterns? What do you mean?”
There was a knock on the door. Inari nodded at him. Without even the slightest sound, he was gone, the depression in the mattress the only indication he’d ever been there.
“Come in.”
The door swung open to reveal Sardâr, long since reverted to his true elf form.
“We’re almost there.” He paused. “Who were you talking to?”
“No one,” Jack replied a little too quickly.
Sardâr looked at him a moment, then shook his head. “We’ll be on the command deck. Five minutes.”
Jack arrived soon after. His first reaction was not to join the Apollonians at the table but to look toward the chamber where the mirror hung. It was exactly as it had been when he had last been there, wreathed in a veil of purple and black. Again, he felt as if it were watching him.
He pulled his gaze away and went to stand by the table.
Of the three already there, Dannie was the only one who looked as she had when they had embarked. She had apparently made no attempt to revert to a human disguise. Instead, with her camouflage abilities activated, she now looked something like a space-age robot, her body the composite of the panelled wood and gold around her.
Sardâr and Ruth, by contrast, both looked haggard, shaded with the same look of insomnia and worry.
“So,” Sardâr began, rubbing his eyes. “We’re approaching our destination. We know Nexus is a city, probably the only inhabited part of the entire planet. Other than that, we know next to nothing about where we’re going. I think we can reasonably surmise that, as the Cult is the center of life here, the core of the city will be some kind of church or cathedral. This prison tower, the Precinct of Despair, shouldn’t be too far from there.”
“What about the others? Gaby and Malik?” Ruth asked.
“They’re joining us using a dimension ship,” Sardâr said. “We’ve pulled a couple more agents out of missions on other worlds to assist us.”
“So eleven of us, then?”
“Well, that’s almost a single Chapter compared to the Cult,” Jack commented coolly. Having now had his worst suspicions of their operational blindness confirmed, he was significantly less enthusiastic about this mission than previous ones. “So what are we actually going to do once we get there?”
It was Ruth who replied. “Like we said, espionage.” She set a wooden box on the table and lifted the lid.
Jack got a look inside. It appeared to him just like a bundle of dark material, until Ruth lifted one out and held it up against her like a dress. “We’re going undercover as Cultists?”
“It’s the safest way,” Sardâr replied, pulling the three remaining cloaks out of the box and handing one each to Jack and Dannie. “We took these off the captured Chapter back in Avalon. Quentin’s adjusted them to fit each of us.”
Jack slid a cloak over his tunic. It was surprisingly comfortable and thick and fitted him well enough. He took the boots and gloves Sardâr handed him and put those on as well. He was now sure that if he put the hood over his face, there could be nothing at all to hint at his identity.
“I’m not sure I like this,” he said. “It feels like we’re, well, the Cult…”
“Have you got a better idea?” Ruth challenged him, her temper evidently as short as his at the moment.
“We’re coming up on our target,” one of the crew members called out.
“Activate stealth mode,” Ruth replied. “And prepare for emergence.”
The gloom all around was indeed clearing. Like a black fog, it was furling away from the dome, giving them their first view of the world beyond. Even with the shadows gone, they seemed to have materialized in some sort of alleyway. Dark stone surrounded them on all sides but one, where a side street led elsewhere.
Exhaling slowly, Ruth strode to the glass chamber and keyed something in to a panel. With a hydraulic hiss, the door slid open, and she grabbed the mirror, holding it as far away from herself as possible. “Keep to plan,” she said to the crew members. “We’re going to be in and out in as short a time as possible. Keep the ship here in stealth mode until we return, and stay inside. Under no circumstances whatsoever should you come into contact with the locals here. Is that understood?”
Everyone in the room nodded, and several saluted. Jack couldn’t help admiring the fact that, at a time when her nerves must be shredding even more than his, she was able to command the respect and obedience of her crew.
“The priority is to get to the Precinct and back,” Sardâr explained as they made their way towards the hatch. “We get the prisoners out and then worry about gathering information.”
Dannie climbed the ladder first and hauled open the hatch. As she and Sardâr moved out of the way, Jack got a look at the disc of sky above them. It wasn’t promising—obscured by writhing clouds and illuminated by lightning. The churning air was reflected exactly in the mirror in Ruth’s hand as droplets of rain began to collect on it. Something from GCSE English came back to him. “Pathetic fallacy.”
“What?”
“When the weather reflects the mood.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Ruth grimaced. “I’m ecstatic about being here.”