Celia Friedman - When True Night Falls

His robe was where he had packed it, underneath all his possessions in the bottom of a small steel-bound trunk. He uncovered it gently, reverently, not out of concern for its material substance—he had commissioned it out of wool, not silk, so that it would travel better—but in humble regard for its spiritual value. Carefully he unfolded it, laying it out across his bunk. Fine worsted, singed and polished, bleached to a creamy white: it caught the sunlight and held it, adding the blue glow of morning to its substance. About the neckline a wide band of embroidery proclaimed his rank with a pattern of overlapping flames, the mark of his Order. It wasn’t the best workmanship, that was true, but it was the best that he’d been able to afford back in Faraday, when he’d paid for the thing out of his own pocket. He could hardly have sent to Jaggonath for his good robes without having to confront the Patriarch, and that had been out of the question. The gold was slightly tarnished now and a few of the threads had become unwrapped, betraying their yellow silk core, but the whole of it sparkled golden in the sunlight and it was doubtful that any onlooker would notice such details in the midst of formal ceremony.

He slid the robe on over his head; wool so fine it might have been silk whispered down over his hair, his shoulders, his linen shirt, his leggings. Its hem fell just short of his ankles, revealing soft kid boots. Too long, he thought, picturing the journey ahead of him, but he was hardly about to cut it. He took his harness down from the wall, sword and all, and considered it. It was traditional for members of his Order to be armed at all times—even when armaments would normally be forbidden—but they might not know that on board the other ship, and he didn’t dare make a gesture that might be perceived as hostile. Finally he unlinked the baldrick from its anchoring belt and donned only the latter, folding the robe underneath it at his waist so that the hem fell no lower than his knees. Much better.

He drew out the Fire then, sliding it free of its won leather sheath, closing his palm about it so that he might feel its heat. It was a precious talisman, a symbol of his Patriarch’s trust . . . but no more than that, now. The crystal vial which contained the Worked fluid had cracked while he was in the rakhlands, and by the time he’d discovered the hairline flaw the few drops that remained had all but evaporated. He’d varnished the glass then, several times over, hoping to preserve what little was left—but all that he’d saved was a faint glow, a fleeting warmth, a mere ghost of the Church’s most powerful Working. He held it for a moment, drawing strength from the memories it conjured—then put it away carefully, reverently, deep within the folds of clothing inside his trunk.

Then: clean hair, neatly brushed. Spotless fingernails, Fresh shave. He ran down the checklist in his mind, the do’s and don’t’s that a man must observe when going from the field to the court. Damien had done it so many times now that he could no longer remember whether the list had been one of his own devising, or the parting gift of a well-meaning tutor.

At last he was finished. There was a crude mirror among his possessions, a polished flat of tin twice the length of his hand; he held it so that it reflected his face, then moved it slowly so that he might observe the whole length of his person. Which was as it should be: the person of a priest not a warrior. He stood transformed.

Now, he thought, Now I’m ready.

With a prayer on his lips, he went to join the captain.

The ship was even larger than it had seemed from a distance, with a span that dwarfed the Golden Glory and made its small rowboat seem like a minnow flitting about its prow. If they meant for it to impress us, Damien thought, it’s working. The graceful curve of the hull as it swept clear of the water hinted at structural dynamics more complex than anything the Glory’s designers had been familiar with; when Damien looked at the captain he saw stark envy in the man’s eyes, and a cold calculation that said if they survived, if they were permitted to make contact with the natives, he was damned well going to get a look at the schematics for the thing.

A ladder was dropped from the starboard side, along with grappling lines of braided steel. The sailor who had rowed them across brought them in with such precision that it was no trial to catch the lowest rung, and no great challenge to affix the great hooks—foreign in form though they were—to the iron rings provided for that purpose.

“You first,” the captain said, holding the ladder taut.

“Don’t you think—”

“I’ve done this more times than you have, Reverend. Go up while I’m bracing it and count your blessings.”

He did so, not mentioning that if he had climbed ice-clad ropes with his bare hands over Death’s Gorge in Atria he could certainly handle this. It didn’t seem a good time to argue.

They were waiting on the deck, a crowd of people as still and silent as the wood they stood upon. As Damien gave the captain and his crewmen a hand up, he studied them, trying to do it as unobtrusively as possible. Twelve guards, in meticulously tailored uniforms ill-suited to naval service; that meant Someone Important was probably on board, who had brought his soldiers with him. They were all armed, and ready for trouble. Four men and a woman, in uniforms not unlike that of the Glory’s crew: officers of this ship, perhaps? Three men and two women who could not be identified by their dress, save that it looked expensive; their stance proclaimed them to be civilians. Several figures moving in the background, swathed in dun robes that covered them from neck to wrist and ankle. And one man in the center of it all, whose bearing would have proclaimed his power even if his attire had not. Tall, proud, openly suspicious, he wore the robes of Damien’s Church as if he had been born to them. White silk split open down the front to reveal close-fitting civilian garments, a mixture of priest’s regalia and common attire that might have seemed blasphemous but for his attitude, which made it clear that everything he did and everything he wore was utterly correct. His skin was a rich brown, doubly dramatic against the white of his outer robe, and the sun picked out copper highlights along high cheekbones, a stem forehead, a strong jawline. His features were broad and well-formed and his black hair, closely cropped, did nothing to distract from them. Energy rippled from him in almost visible waves, and Damien guessed that he was the kind that was addicted to hard exercise—not for its own sake, or even to improve his flesh, so much as a need to give that energy an outlet, to channel it safely within a gym’s controlled confines so that it did not consume him elsewhere. He was the kind of man who became a leader or destroyed himself trying—and in the former he had clearly succeeded.

“My name is Andir Toshida,” he said. His accent was liquid, strangely at odds with the harshness of his tone. It did little to hinder comprehension, for which Damien was grateful; given a possible eight hundred years of isolation, there was no telling what English might have become here. “It is my duty to assess your origin and your intentions, and to render judgment accordingly. You will speak,” he commanded, and he looked first at Damien, then to the captain, “and you will explain yourselves.”

There was no question of who should begin, and Damien did not hesitate. “My name is Damien Kilcannon Vryce, Reverend Father twice knighted of the Eastern Autocracy of the One God.” He was watching the man for a reaction—any reaction—but the dark-skinned face was like stone. Utterly unreadable. “This is Lio Rozca, Captain-General of the Golden Glory, and Halen Orswath, of his crew.” We come in peace, he wanted to say, but words like that meant nothing; they were cheap, they were easy, the legions of Hell could have voiced them with impunity. This man had too much substance to be taken in by empty platitudes. “We came here from the west to determine if humans had settled here, to make contact with them if they had, and to establish trade with them when and where that was appropriate.”