Why now? Why come back? Had they been busy exterminating some other species, while two fleeting human generations had come and gone? Had they only granted a stay of execution, and Idris had simply misunderstood? He didn’t think so.
What’s changed? He rushed headlong through the maze of its mind. He was looking for the monster at the heart of it – so he could demand answers, demand recognition and a future for his people. He sensed the others, as though he was stumbling over the tangled string they left behind. As though he saw their faces briefly in the shimmering confusion of the place. Xavienne’s calm determination; Davisson breaking up, mind fracturing; the deadly earnestness of Andecka Tal Mar. She was terrified beyond all reason but was still fighting.
He thought he saw himself in that maze, the Idris that had been. The Idris from Far Lux who had found that one sublime thread to the very heart of the labyrinth, tea with the minotaur, diplomatic relations with the unthinkable. Then as he headed down that way, in search of the warren’s heart, he found the Idris from Berlenhof-that-was . . . he’d been panicked, maddened, failing even as the Heaven’s Sword had failed. And yet he had achieved just enough back then, slowed the enemy just enough . . .
For a moment he was back on that bridge again, hearing shouted orders in Parsef, the cries of pain, the accelerators singing, and he didn’t know which Heaven’s Sword he was on. Then he forced his mind out again, following the trail he’d blazed. Davisson was shrieking in his ears like an animal being butchered. Solace was shouting, a hand gripping his shoulder. But he was losing himself again inside the mind of the monster, hunting it, aware that it was hunting too. It was concentrating on something. Something new, different. He was the expert, after all. He knew when an Architect’s mind felt wrong.
What are you doing? But it couldn’t hear him. It was concentrating, that unthinkably vast edifice focusing on something infinitesimally small – something on the human level, like a giant trying to thread a needle. His ears were flooded with screaming now, too many voices, weapons discharging, a sound like stone tearing, a choir of hornets in a rage . . . He had no frame of reference for these sounds, and couldn’t guess if they were real or not.
Then he was out again, the fresh contortions of the Architect’s mind excluding him without ever acknowledging him. He stared at the torn-up bridge of the Heaven’s Sword and reeled. Solace was shaking him by the arm, had been for some time. Abruptly his legs gave out and he fell into her. He was trying to form words but was forgetting how they were made. There were great rents in the metal walls of the bridge and, everywhere, medics were crouching by bodies. He saw Exemplar Hope lying crooked nearby, too much of her insides ripped out for her to have survived. A dozen other officers and crew had been served likewise and there were myrmidons amongst them. Their beautiful armour was rent and buckled, accelerators lying where they’d been dropped from dead hands.
‘What—？’ Idris said. Because none of this was battle damage. This wasn’t what happened to a ship when an Architect took it and mauled it. This was . . . trivial, small-scale stuff. This was more like the damage people did to one another, for all it left the victims just as dead. This wasn’t what happened when they were struck by an entity that could reshape planets.
Mind still whirling, he looked to his fellow Ints.
Andecka was kneeling, clutching at her head. He thought she must still be locked in combat with the Architect, still vainly trying to reach it. Davisson was . . . dead, he had to be dead. Something had ruptured inside his skull, hard enough to push the whole left side of his head out of shape. Xavienne . . .
He ran over to her, already stuttering denials. This was not Architect damage. Something had struck her, something physical, something sharp. It had carved into her thin body and smashed her to the ground. There were medics here, the Partheni prioritizing her over their own fallen – desperately stitching her and her life together as best as they could. The sight of her injured, perhaps dying, was like a spike into Idris’s own heart.
‘Idris, stay still,’ Solace was imploring him. ‘You’re hurt. Let the medics get to you.’
‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ he mumbled, tasting blood in his mouth. He spat it out past his chewed-up tongue. Then he saw Trine. The Hiver’s bad leg had been removed completely, severed at the hip, and a handful of their arms were just stumps. Their false face flickered and stuttered as it tried to speak. But its expressions and the movement of its lips didn’t match the words that thrummed from their torso.