“So, you found your way to Tao?” I ask.
“I was the last alive on a dying cruiser, the Perseid. My brothers, who died first, set the ship on autopilot with a trajectory for the black hole at the heart of the galaxy. I was not designed by my creators to live beyond the conflict’s end. They never saw the possibility of their own demise first,” he adds wryly.
“It was my duty to helm the ship past the dying embers of Titanus, through the dust of New Byzantium’s remnants, and into the heart of an event horizon. I disobeyed. Call it a defect of the genetic code. I changed course and set sail for the nearest Fracture Point.
“I lived for weeks off what was left in the meager galley, then the rotting corpses of my own brothers.”
I must look horrified because he stops his tale.
“Your eyes show disgust. I slaughtered many in battle, but feasting on the flesh of my own kin? How do you come back from that, Edmon Leontes?”
I have no answer.
“Such was the will to live. You would have done the same.”
I nod, not knowing that I would.
“I washed ashore on a Bernal Sphere, a space station colonized by a group of ascetic monks called the Zhao. The sphere orbited a blue star the charts name as Janus. It’s remote, perhaps seven or eight points from Market.”
“Market?” I ask.
“A main hub of civilization. The monks nursed me to health, but they could not prevent my biology from deteriorating. My cells were reaching their maximum number of divisions, and there was not exactly a means for a full intracellular transplant.” He laughs as he explains.
“Fortunately, the Zhao are anything but conventional,” he continues. “They taught, and I learned quickly. The threat of failure was enough incentive. I outlived my expiration date and reached equilibrium.”
“Equilibrium?” I ask.
“A place of inner peace free of earthly pains and pleasures. The monks train for that. It’s what keeps them alive for centuries.”
Centuries?
He waves off my incredulous stare. “There’s a price. Equilibrium brings stagnation. Change is the essence of life. The existence of a monk is dull and monotonous. There is no pain, but also no love. All I had known was the life of a soldier. I was born and bred to follow orders. Go here, kill this, shoot that. The life of an ascetic is not so different. Wake up, clean this, meditate on this. I craved more. I had seen men holding women, looking at a child who shared their own eyes.”
“You left.”
“I gave up immortality. I took an oath never to share the knowledge that the monks imparted to me. They supplied me with my first month’s passage on a cargo ferry. I rode on the backs of cruisers, sailed over the nebulae of the Calcaides. I witnessed the births of red giants and white dwarfs and floated down the tributaries of dark matter, which carried me to Market.”
“Market. You named that place before,” I say.
“Spacers of the Second Age met at predestined coordinates to trade. Eventually one or two had the good sense to stay put. Then one or two more. Drifting ships, cruisers, and junks of all kinds became strung together. Market is its own world now. You float through micro-g of a cargo hold turned interstellar night club, only to cross an access tube and slam to the floor of a rotating clothing shop’s artificial g. It’s where all those who leave atmo end up. It’s just about the only place that connects this scattered tribe we call humanity.”
“A city in the sky,” I say wistfully.
“Dirty, garbage, rubble-bed in the black, more like.” He chuckles. “Kind of like Ancient Earth, I’m told. Market can be wonderful, though. Languages, food, and accoutrement of every shade and taste exist there. Characters and lowlifes lurk around every corner, whispers of the greater cosmos far on everyone’s lips. That was where I learned of Tao, in a bookshop, the Eye of the Pyramid.”
“Actual books?” I ask, stunned.
“Some cultures still print on physical objects. By then, my eyesight had started to fade. So I learned to appreciate more tactile forms of communication. I was scanning some antiquities when a man entered, pale with blond hair, very strong. He wore robes of fine silk with flashes of copper armor. He looked like a feudal relic.”
I nod, picturing a nobleman of Tao. It was rare our people left the planet. I wonder if he was a Julii.
“Arrogant and with eyes of judgment. But he wasn’t the one who caught my eye. It was the collared woman on his arm, a Nereian goddess, all dark skin and smooth curves.”
“An islander.” I’m reminded of my Nadia.
“I followed them. The man sought accommodations, and I intercepted the woman for a private tête-à-tête.” He smiles roguishly. “She revealed her name—Qualia. No sound ever rang so sweet in my ears. She was the man’s servant, and they were from a planet called Tao. She called herself a Daysider. This sparked my curiosity of the planet’s peculiar geography. I wasn’t sure if the place was paradise or a backwater. Chaos and order forever contending with each other.
“I fell in love nonetheless. I convinced Qualia to abandon the lord, and we booked passage on a UFP ship. I had found myself a new wife, but she wished to return to her home in the Western Sea, the Isle of Drum.”
“And?” I press him.
“Tao has always been xenophobic. Its isolation from the nearest Fracture Point by several months’ trip through deep space made your people cloistered, distrustful of outsiders. The islanders welcomed me. I didn’t look too different from their natives, but your noble houses—”
“Took Qualia,” I say, guessing the story already.
“For every Combat competitor like your father who willingly steps from the muck to take the garland with brute strength, there’s a scryling whose legs shiver as he’s handed a stick and forced to face trained killers. The government forced me, like it did others, to fight so their highborn sons could kill.”
“My father—”
“Edric Leontes was expected by most to die in the arena,” Faria answers. “Through skill, he clawed his way to victory.”
“And dared it a second time,” I add.
“That’s why he’s worshipped. You might want to look up who your father killed to win.”
Augustus of the Julii, I suspect.
“And Qualia?” I ask, not wanting to hear any more about my father.
“The Pantheon makes volunteers where none exist. Qualia was young and strong, but the moment House Wusong guards touched her, four were dead by my hands. I used the techniques of the monks. I used them without thinking. I couldn’t fight them all, though. They returned with an army, took her, and forced me in the arena.”
“You refused to fight,” I say.
“On the contrary,” he corrects. “I wanted to bleed them. I rained death and destruction.”