Lord of the Night

The man was dressed strangely, even to Sahaal's eye, sporting a robe of white and red grids. Not some flimsy ragsheet, this, but expensively tailored and elaborately decorated, hung with gold and crystal pendants. Small cables looped delicately through the stitches at the sleeves and collar, and where his flesh showed — pallid and puffy — the wires burrowed into the man's skin, unbroken lines like capillaries. More startling still was his face — what little remained of it — with its near-total coverage by augmetic devices, steel-sheet plating and bristling, spiny sensors. Both eyes were gone, replaced in messy cavities by mismatching bionics, a thick layer of pus and infection marking their boundaries. A duct coiled over his shoulder like unruly hair, and the soft lines of his lips were broken by ragged scars, as if his mouth had once been sealed shut then broken open. Rebreather tubes writhed, hooked into sockets on his chin and neck, like train tracks bisecting his face. Dermis-circuitry patterned his throat, vanishing into the folds of his robes which, on closer inspection, concealed also the hard edges and uncertain outlines of more mechanical devices.

His movements were jerky but precise — like a grounded canary — and Sahaal judged him more machine than man. He would have remained hidden, content to let this unthinking drone remain ignorant of his presence, but for a single detail:

Brandished in one metal-knuckled hand, the man waved before him a sheet of parchment bearing a bold, ink-blotted image, catching at Sahaal's attention and sending adrenaline pounding through his body: a single unbroken spiral, dissected by a jagged stripe. The thief s electoo.

He worked his silent way down towards the intruder without pause, considering his best course of action, fighting excitement. Despite the robe and decoration, the interloper bore all the signs of being little more than some vacuous servitor, obeying whatever simple commands its master had provided. It was therefore with little sense of threat, and a great glut of hope, that Sahaal installed himself in a shadowed recess to watch.

'I know you are there,' the man said, startling him, voice as lifeless as the lens-eyes that regarded him, focused despite the dark. 'I sensed movement before even I entered this place.' The figure twitched its head. 'Your stealth is commendable. Het-het-het-het...'

It took Sahaal a moment to realise that the man's harsh chirruping was his mechanical excuse for laughter, and he bunched his muscles in the shadows, temper ignited. This was hardly the behaviour of a mere servitor.

The man squinted up at him, brows twitching around metal studs. 'I cannot see you well,' he said, lips brandishing their ghoulish smile. 'What are you?'

'I am your death,' Sahaal said, patience expiring, and pounced.

The man was heavier than he had anticipated — his mechanical portions more extensive even than they appeared — but he went down with satisfying ease. Sahaal bowled him to the floor with a single bound, claws pushing hard through flesh and cable, pinning him. The diagram fluttered from his hand, the connections of his shoulder severed.

The man did not scream.

'You will tell me what you know of the thief,' Sahaal growled, voxcaster blending his smooth syntax with dangerous, reptilian tones. 'The filth with the spiral on his skin. Who is he? Where is he?'

The man smiled. With half-metre claws pinioning him to the ground, with razor edges playing across bone and muscle, with a thick paste of blood and servo-oil soaking into his decorous robes, he smiled.

Sahaal twisted the knives.

Het-het-het-het...

Sahaal fought the urge to cut out his tongue.

'My name is Pahvulti,' the man said uninvited, shivering with amusement, eye lenses revolving. 'I think we shall be friends.'

Sahaal almost killed him then, infuriated by the scum's audacity. He jerked a claw free and lashed at his face, ripping across cables and skin. A rebreather tube snickered apart with a hiss and the lens of his left eye shattered, its sutured edges bleeding from fresh sores. Sahaal stopped short — fractionally — of a killing blow, and it required all his effort to force down the rage in his mind.

'The thief!' he bellowed. 'Or you die in pain!'

'I doubt that,' the man said, calm to the point of insanity, 'on two counts. First... I don't believe you foolish enough to kill the one person who recognises the symbol you've been slicing onto all your victims. And second, het-het-het, I don't feel pain. I regard it as an inconvenience I'm better off without.'

Sahaal all but screamed. Did the fool not know how easily he could be crushed? Did he not know what manner of man — what manner of warrior — he directed his insolence towards?