Burdens
The corridors of the Cradle weaved and coiled through the superstructure like veins through flesh, tissue tortured and scarred by millennia of growth and crude surgery.
It had changed so much that it was hard to remember that so many portions of it were in fact repurposed. Walls and floors had been altered down the centuries, changed to accommodate the integration. The cold steel and adamantine of ship’s corridors had long since given way to lacquered wood and ornamental gilt.
The closer one came to the heart of the Bladespire, the more room was given over to the display of relics and artefacts, prised from the galaxy by generation after generation of adventurous and avaricious kings. Erastus did not look at the crossed aeldari blades as they hovered in their stasis field, but he remembered the tale of how Liss Helvintr had bested one of their blade-dancers to earn them. The Cradle was built upon the stories and legends of those who had gone before. Greater treasures might be hoarded, but the kings of the Davamir Compact had a legacy to uphold. At the end of each century of rule, new displays would be wrought – the better to show the nature of the king, the character of his rule.
Erastus’ father was a blade. Erastus was still not certain what he was, himself.
He stopped before the door, raising his hand to knock even as the armsmen straightened. He was the king’s son, but he was held to the same standard as any other visitor. He knew that any abuse of protocol would trigger the hidden murder-servitors in their nooks, concealed behind the pale blue velvet of the corridor’s curtains. There were hidden explosives. Gas vents. Flamer exhausts. An entire repertoire of lethal paranoia merely waited for its chance to unfurl, and taste blood.
‘Come!’
Erastus stepped forward and pushed the doors open, standing at last in his father’s sanctum. The King’s Retreat was a squat, drum-like room. Its ribbed walls were hung with tapestries: great starscapes that spoke to the storied past of Compacts and kings. His eyes danced across ancient vistas, battlefields long gone. There was a portrait of his father, lordly and refined. Oil paint had stolen nothing from his presence; instead it had enshrined it. Behind the shining black shadowwood of the desk, there hung the Lamertine Warrant of Trade, alongside the original Oath of Compact.
Beneath it sat his father. He held an electro-quill in his fingers. They were twisted but still radiated strength. He did not look up as Erastus entered. Cyborgised things moved in the shadows above, cooing avariciously. Their lenses clattered in the quiet, in time with the scratching of the quill. As with so many other aspects of the Cradle, they were little more than extensions of its monarch. The archaic spires of the place had become synonymous with Erastus’ father, looming like expectations. As pressing as doubt. Or distrust.
‘Is there something I can help you with?’ Davos’ reading optics caught the light like the eyes of a prowling felid, but he did not look up.
‘Were you ever going to tell me?’ Erastus asked simply. ‘If you had not deigned to sit me amongst your trusted servants, would I have known?’
Davos placed the quill down with weary resignation, and finally looked up at his son. Erastus hated that look. The judgement. The disappointment. It had haunted his steps, from almost the moment he could walk.
‘Would it have made a difference, had you known? Would my trust have buoyed you up, Erastus? Would you have felt like a man, hmm?’ The old man chuckled dryly. ‘This is beneath even you. The sheer pettiness. The entitlement.’
‘Entitlement?’ Erastus slammed his fist against the desk. Stacks of data-slates shuddered, threatening to topple. ‘I am your son! Your heir, now.’
Davos’ eyes flared with a sudden burst of poison wrath.
‘That’s right.’ Erastus bared his teeth, not in a grin but in a savage snarl of triumph. ‘That. Is. Right. She is gone, Father. Evelyne is gone. You have to accept that.’
‘And what? Trust you? Teach you? My wastrel son? The man of compromise!’ He stood, walking around the desk until they were face to face. ‘You could only ever be trusted to act as instructed, to work with what I gave you. With what little you could be allowed.’ His father glared down at him, and all Erastus could do was try to stand tall in the strength of that gale. ‘Would that you were half, even a quarter of what was taken from me!’
‘And haven’t I lost, too? She was my sister!’
‘She was our future!’ Davos lashed out, bringing his ring-adorned hand across his son’s face. Erastus flinched back, felt the burst of blood against his skin, and then bodily pushed his father away.
‘Your future, perhaps. The dynasty’s future. But when have I ever been trusted with a place in that? Why should I care?’
They both stood, chests heaving, panting like maddened beasts.
‘Get out,’ Davos hissed. ‘You think yourself mighty, to come here and stand against me, but I tell you this, you are nothing. Not because I stand as king, not because I am your father. It is because of the calibre of man that you are. The kind I could not raise you up from. I invested in your sister, but with you? It is a mere waste of my time and effort. I gave so much to you and you squandered it! Every lesson and advantage! You will not accompany us on this endeavour.’ His eyes were wild, and he trembled as though palsied. His body seemed barely enough to contain his rage. ‘You will stay here and hold the Cradle – a castellan in name, an exile in truth. When I return we shall discuss your future here.’
‘As you will, my king,’ Erastus said, his jaw set. He turned on his heel and strode from the chamber, throwing open the doors as he stormed out into the hallway. To their credit the guards did not flinch. They acted as though they had seen and heard nothing.
Unlike Erastus, they were nothing if not good soldiers.