Chapter Text
Centuries into the future, when Calligos Winterscale lies on his deathbed, happy and content at a life well lived, he will think of the night he met Rana von Valancius. Right now, that moment is the present, on the eve of Renata Azucena Elizondo Luzuriega von Valancius’ Magnae Accessio. The Almeria, a palace of limestone arches and colored glass windows, stands tall against Dargonus’ night sky, every window trying to outshine the stars. Music from the hired string orchestra pours out of it, joining the crickets that usually dominate Dargonus’ humid summer nights. There’s no escaping it, that humidity, especially when you’ve got bodies jostling against yours.
Calligos uses his lace-hemmed sleeve to wipe sweat off his brow, other hand hanging onto a fluted glass of amasec. He scans the faces of the people around him, some of them notable, most of them beneath his notice. One of them, a young man around Evayne’s age, keeps trying to touch his shoulder.
Calligos shrugs him off, grunting, “Hands to yourself, if you don’t want to lose that hand.”
The young man shrinks back.
“Father, you have got to stop using your clothes like they’re rags. No wonder they never last.” Evayne mutters behind his glass, throwing him a disapproving look.
“You’ll get a say in what I do with my clothes when you start paying for them, boy.” Calligos plucks a cut of roasted duck off a passing server’s tray and pops it in his mouth. “Von Valancius make an appearance yet?”
Evayne shakes his head, “No. From what our whisperers tell me, she isn’t taking it well. Lady Renata Azucena von Valancius must have loved her distant relation more than expected.”
“Oh?” Calligos licks his fingers. He never did like gloves.
“Legendary drinking habits.” Evayne’s mouth twitches, “You might not be the worst out there after all, Father.”
“Keep working at it. You’re about to develop a sense of humor.”
“Harhar.”
“There we go.”
The music starts up again, drawing a flock of dancers into the middle of the throne hall. It’s a fast, passionate, unfamiliar tune, but nothing of the von Valancius was ever familiar to the Koronus Expanse. Unlike the other Rogue Trader houses, the von Valancius were not of Expanse or even Calixis stock. True foreigners. Word had it their people came from Segmentum Tempestus, on the opposite end of the Imperium. By the time the von Valancius arrived on Dargonus, they were calling themselves the von Valancius and praying to St. Drusus, but small things betrayed their foreignness still. It’s in the music now, a warm 3/4th rhythm, and on the brass plates being passed from server to guest and back. Any other Rogue Trader house in the Expanse would serve betel leaf and tobacco for chewing. House von Valancius favored cigars. Not that Calligos was complaining.
He takes one from a trolley and nods to Evayne, “I’m heading out. Go dance with Werserian's daughter. Or that redhead xenos, if you want to, but put yourself out there. We won’t be marrying you off anytime soon, rate you’re going.”
“Marry yourself off first, Father.”
“Ha!” Calligos punches Evayne’s shoulder before leaving.
The air’s colder outside and for that, Calligos is grateful. Still humid, sure, but better now because there’s a breeze rustling his curly brown hair. That and he’s gotten away from all the petty nobles and tradesmen trying to take a bite out of him. Calligos takes one slow sip of his amasec, savoring the warmth on his tongue, while he walks through the maze of rose bushes that made up the Almeria’s gardens. Above him, the sickle moon shines through a thin veil of clouds. It’s going to rain soon, always does during summer on tropical worlds like Dargonus and his own Quetza Temer.
Can’t stay here for longer, then. Calligos turns on his heel and starts walking back to the palace when he hears a crash behind him. It’s followed by retching noises. More retching noises. Deeper this time and with a healthy dose of gasping for air.
“None of your business.” Calligos mutters under his breath.
Another crash. A loud disgusted yelp.
Calligos sighs and takes a handkerchief out of his pocket, heading towards the noise. There, back of a massive rose bush heavy with red roses.
“Still alive?” He calls out.
“Y-yep! I’m just not feeling all–” Female voice. Young? More retching. Calligos can smell her stomach acid and hopes it doesn’t snake its way to his boots. “--there.”
He frowns, “Do you need help?”
“I’ll m-manage–” Again.
Calligos wrinkles his nose in disgust, “It doesn’t sound like you’re managing there.”
“It doesn’t sound like you’re managing there.” Did she just copy him?
“Dargonians let toddlers drink? Throne, you people are more barbaric than I thought.”
“You gonna hand me that handkerchief or not?”
Calligos blinks. Yes, he had it out of his pocket, but it was still in his coat, hand still hidden behind the lapel.
“Well?”
He walks behind the bush, past the clusters of red roses, each of them redder than the last. None of them, however, are anywhere near as red as the pair of eyes staring back at him. Quick stock. Big, fox-like eyes. Red. Redder than any ruby he’s ever seen and he’s seen plenty as a Rogue Trader. Tall, narrow nose. Strong jaw. Warm skin. Not a traditional beauty, no, maybe even plain by some standards but Throne.
Hits the right spots in his brain, that face does.
She snatches the handkerchief from his hands, snapping him back to reality. While she’s swiping away at her own face with his handkerchief (he probably shouldn’t ask for it back), Calligos takes a look at the rest of her. Short, black hair cut to the bottom of her jaw. Straight cut bangs. Good bit of muscle on her too, if the arms and bare back showing in her blue dress were any indication. Really good bit of muscle.
Calligos clears his throat, “Keep that thing.”
“I wasn’t going to offer it back.” The woman sniffs, coughing before she looks at him. Really looks at him. It’s a quick glance too. One sweep from head to toe and back. No, not one. Two. She grins, “Don’t think I’ve seen you before.”
“Don’t believe we’ve met.” Calligos leaves it at that. She’s still red faced and hazy-eyed. It’s by the Throne’s grace this woman is still standing.
She’s about to answer when she lurches forward, hands slamming into his chest and for a moment, Calligos forgets to breathe like he’s thirteen again and not three hundred and thirteen.
And then she pukes on him. On his best coat.
Calligos should push her off. Instead, he’s frozen in his spot because first, she’s just a head below his eyes and she’s got her hands on him.
“Ah, sorry! Hold on, let me get that-” She starts dabbing the handkerchief on his lapel. Blush on her face now, full lips parted, hard red eyes glazed with drunkeness. She stops, for a moment, and blinks, “Holy shit you are built.”
Calligos is not the kind of man who is easily taken aback. He is also not the kind of man people casually vomit on and then compliment for his physique.
“What?”
“Sta. Rosalina…” She breathed out, one hand already running from his chest to his shoulders, the vomit entirely forgotten, and swallowed, “Do you just do nothing but hit chest all day? Wait, no that’s stupid. You’ve got a killer ass too. Throne, do you just live in a gym?”
Calligos grabs her hands, holding her wrists together, “Are you on something? Other than amasec.”
“First off, I had enough jeneza to put down a grox. Second, ‘course not.” She looks over her shoulders, “Okay, maybe I am on something, but don’t tell anyone that.” Then looking at him from head to toe, “And maybe I do…need to be on something.”
“No.” Calligos scowls. “You get on out of here. Call on your handmaidens to fetch you.”
“And be nagged at? No thank you.” She sniffs, putting one hand over the collar of gold and rubies wrapped around her neck. It doesn’t match her eyes. Calligos sees the slight difference in color. Hers are more brilliant.
“Less scrupulous nobles would have helped you out with more behind that bush.”
“And you’re more scrupulous?” She exclaims, “Just my bad luck then!”
Calligos could already feel the headache forming. He should have minded his business. Why does he never mind his business? But then again, if he had, he would have never become Rogue Trader. He knows he’s going to regret this, already does, but – “Where were you assigned? Let me take you back to your quarters.”
“Oho, now we’re talking.” She giggles, latching onto his arm. Calligos would have shoved her off if not for the shift in her stance. She’s leaning on him, actually needs him to support her.
“I’m not–” Calligos stops himself and sighs, “Just tell me where to take you.”
The Almeria’s still abuzz with party guests flitting from one hall of delights to another, and it takes Calligos a good amount of maneuvering to make sure he isn’t seen while trying to escort the woman back to her quarters. He steers her out of the way just as a group of rowdy young nobles, led by a very drunk Astartia Werserian, run out of a drawing room and race each other to the lake just beyond the rose gardens.
“Trying to preserve my honor? I’m not a maiden anymore, don’t sweat it.” The woman chuckles, leaning into his side. He lets it be for now because she nearly twists her high-heeled foot when she does. Calligos puts his arm around her, pulling her back up to a more stable standing position.
He shakes his head, “If anyone sees me, they’ll stop me for another boring bout of conversation.”
“Not much of a talker then? I had the opposite impression.”
He blinks at her. She grins at him. Again. Throne. What’s wrong with him? Did she slip something into his drink while he wasn’t paying attention to her but to her eyes? Footfall’s no planet, but most of its citizens were of Rykad stock and Rykad’s people were superstitious. Always warned him of love potions and curses. An older gent who lived in his habclave handed Calligos an amulet once and told him it would protect him from all harm. So far, it’s worked.
Maybe love potions were real too?
“There’s no helping it.” He sighs, ignoring the confused look she gives him, “I’m too recognizable.”
“Famous guy, huh? You’ll have to excuse me, I’m new in the Expanse. Don’t know everybody who’s anybody yet, but sharp memory like mine, I’ll remember you if you tell me what you’re famous for.”
“Nice try.” Calligos laughs. A real laugh, deep and hearty. She’s been trying to get him to reveal his identity throughout this entire walk to her quarters. He wouldn’t be surprised if she’s taken him on a detour just to ask more questions.
“Come on, there’s gotta be more than one person famous for what you’re famous for.”
There is, but there were only forty nine Rogue Traders in the Koronus Expanse. A hundred or so, once, but the closing of the Maw trapped the other half in Calixis and left the rest of them scrambling to negotiate new borders and treaties before the power vacuum gave birth to a blood bath. Incendia Chorda had the sense to call for a council among peers but with Calligos being the only true peers of hers left after Theodora von Valancius’ death, the new borders heavily favored the two of them.
He weighs it in his mind. Telling her. Or not telling her the truth.
It clicks. He could tell her a truth.
“I’m a pit fighter. Best one on Footfall.”
“I believe it.” She gives him another once over, but it’s not really once now, is it? “But not the best, not right now, no.”
Calligos frowns, “What do you mean not the best?”
“You’re not the best now, if you ever were.” She’s staring too long at his face. Makes his chest tighten just a bit. “Uneven gait. My guess is you had a hip injury at some point and it never quite healed right. Your left leg’s bent just a little more than the other. Nerve damage, maybe. You’ve also got a twitch in your right arm.” She looks to the one Calligos had put around her waist. “Your fingers aren’t steady. Middle finger and pointer finger twitch towards your palm every now and then.”
“What are you? A chirurgeon?”
She laughs. The sound is dark and heavy and it spreads from Calligos’ ears into his face, making him feel warmer than he should be, even on a summer night like this.
“Something like that.”
If the walk went on a minute longer, Calligos would have twisted her arm and told her to quit toying with him. Drunk and high or not, he wouldn’t be an amusement for her. But it does end. It ends at two iron-studded doors at the end of a heavily decorated hallway packed with suits of armor and paintings of a rocky countryside overlooking the sea. On his left, the moon shines through the arches, followed in by the summer breeze.
“Here’s mine.” She lets go of him, leaning her back on the door, but she nearly sways to the floor again. Calligos grabs her by her shoulder, pushing her back to her door.
The woman looks at his hand, gaze trailing up his arm and to his face. Her red, red eyes linger on his lips and it makes him realize that he’s got her pinned to a door.
“You sure you don’t want to come in?”
“You can barely walk.”
“Such a gentleman.” She laughs. What a laugh.
“Go to bed.”
“At least give me a name.”
Does he want to? Calligos has learned over the years that the last part of a person that should get to decide is the mind. Minds are foolish things. They’ll draw up fortresses of doubt and lay down trenches of misgivings. Instinct, now that was trustworthy. Made calculations faster than any cogitator, better suited to a situation than any tactician can think of.
Calligos does want to give her a name.
“Cal.” He says, too aware now of how her warm breath skims over the back of his hand. Cal. It was Cal in the habclaves, before his name became important enough to say in full.
“Rana.” She turns her head to the side, to the back of his hand and her lips brush slightly on it. “Thanks for walking me back to my quarters, Cal, you saved someone tonight.”
He jerks his hand away, shoving both into his pockets, “From handsy nobles? That’s a lot of someones.”
“From me cracking their heads open.” She winks, a mischievous smile curling at the edge of her lips.
“Right.” He doesn’t believe her, but he’ll let it be for now. Calligos points to her door, “Go, you get some rest.”
“Your handkerchief—”
“I thought you didn’t plan on giving it back?” He can’t help it. Grinning, laughing. It’s been so long since anyone has spoken to him like this, but that’s why he didn’t tell her who he was. Too afraid that lively magic fades into the night if he even breathes his real name.
“Not now.” She shakes her head and her black bob brushes the bottom of her jaw. Calligos has half a mind to reach out. To touch. But touching would lead to other things when you’re already getting fucked and fucking back with your eyes. “When we meet again, I’ll give it back to you, Cal.”
The sound of his name unfolding on her tongue…
Calligos stops the thought with a sharp nod, “Sure. Until then, Rana.”
He expects her to look over her shoulder and give him playful, come on in and break my bed! eyes, like he’s the male lead of one of those shitty four slate romances that fortune tellers sell outside St. Drusus’ chapel on Footfall together with colored wishing candles. The ones where the male lead acts all gentlemanly but then proceeds to ravish the female lead anyway. Ravish, of course, being a milder word for what actually happens. Calligos has seen the real thing in the streets of Footfall. How cheap life really is and what stories of powerful, wealthy men taking an interest in poor, downtrodden women really end up as.
But it doesn’t happen. The only thing he sees looking back at him is the dark varnish on Rana’s bedroom doors.
Calligos lets out a breath. Of course.
He starts making his way back to the gardens. Checks his chronometer. It’s getting late into the night and Lady Renata von Valancius should be making her public appearance soon. There would be a formal presentation before he was obligated to ask her to dance the rigaudon with him, but that would be preceded by Incendia Chorda challenging him for the honor of being the new blood’s first dance. Standard issue Rogue Trader grandstanding and pissing contest. No surprise there. Ah shit, there’s that new Lord Inquisitor too. The lone stray dog sent over by the Calixis conclave that got trapped out here with them after the last one died with the rest of his rotten pack.
Calligos’ head hurts already.
Thinking too hard’s a bad thing. Thinking too long, even worse. It distracts you from your surroundings, makes you stop listening to what’s happening in the real world because you’ve got your head up your ass and in this moment, Calligos has his head up his ass.
That’s why he doesn’t hear it. The soft scrape of a boot behind him, an arm cutting through the air near his ears, and jabbing a needle into his neck.
Calligos turns, grabbing onto the man’s arm and throwing him over his shoulder. He can feel it starting. It's a tingling sensation at his fingertips. For now. The man, dressed in servant’s attire, gets up and lunges at him, a lasknife swiping at his stomach. Calligos rolls away, sending a kick under his legs to topple him again. The knife darts up to his face and Calligos grabs the man’s wrist, locking him in a struggle that will decide the knife’s final destination. He’s nearly got it in the man’s neck when he gets pulled off, two pairs of arms dragging him back, pushing him into the cold marble floor. His head makes a sickening crack against it and he has to pause, breathe, think if he’s bleeding from his head. A cloth closes over his mouth and nose. Stinks of something sweet and promethium-like. It makes the edges of his vision fade into a fog.
“How long?” One of them asks the man who jabbed him with a needle.
He checks his chrono, “Fifteen minutes.”
Calligos kicks, trying to get his boot to at least one of these bastards’ faces, but his legs are heavy and leaden and they won’t answer no matter how hard he screams.
“It’s going to be night soon, Rogue Trader Winterscale.” The man with the chrono smiles placidly at him, but why can’t Calligos make out his face?
The deeper the poison pulls him in, the more his thoughts pare down to the most basic of instincts. An awareness of how his body won’t move, the animal fear of death that every man has, no matter how powerful or wealthy he gets. He’s always had that fear. Has come close to the real thing more times than he can count. But he’s never thought it would end like this. If he were a young man, Calligos would have seethed at the thought of dying without a fight, but that’s not what concerns him now.
Calligos thinks of Evayne. Wonders if the boy, who is aware and deadly in his own way, has a suspicion that someone is trying to kill his father. But he doesn’t care whether Evayne and his whisperers find him now, no. The only thing Calligos wants is for him to have his autopistol ready for when they come for him.
The only thing he wants is for Evayne to make it out alive.
He’s about to fall into it entirely, the dark chasm of sleep. In his fading vision, Calligos sees a spot of red, beautiful bright red, on chrono guy’s forehead.
Bang!
The hands holding him down all fall away. There’s a scramble of boots, the sound of autopistols flicking their bullets into the air. A loud crack as an elbow finds a rib. Calligos manages to get himself on his side, jerking against the floor, sweating, panting as he holds on for his life. He turns his head. It’s the heaviest thing in the world right now, but he turns his head. Lifts it up to look behind him, towards the other end of the hall where Rana’s bedroom door had closed on his face and—
Have you ever seen a thunderstorm?
Calligos was forty-one years old when he saw one for the first time. He was already Rogue Trader for the better part of a decade when it happened and thought, fool that he was, that he had already seen it all. It was too easy to think the galaxy offered little new wonders when you’re too jaded by a life of filth and blood. The kind of life he lived on Footfall since he was a boy, a life of faulty atmospheric controls and a sky that always opened to infinite night. That’s why it amazed him, that first thunderstorm on Quetza Temer. The sky opened her palms and let her tears fall on the earth, wetting the ground around Calligos’ boots. Then a peal of thunder, a deep roar laughing through the clouds followed by a long strand of light, threading its fingers into the atmosphere. Slowly, then all at once, a thunderstorm unfurls itself over a planet.
He held his breath then. He holds his breath now.
Tonight, lightning is red and bright and laughing. It’s the violent sweep of a blue dress swirling behind Rana as she swings the butt of an M36 Kantrael Pattern Lasgun — he would know that make anywhere, Astra Militarum standard issue — into the face of one of Calligos’ attackers. It's Rana’s arm redirecting the sweep of a lasknife, forcing the hand that held it to stab into the face of its comrade. It’s the flawless evasion of her feet – more graceful than any rigaudon — pulling away from the two men before they can close around her. It’s her right foot sweeping over their heads, a shot popping one’s head off, while that foot finishes the other with a loud crack of its neck.
The monsoon season is dreaded as much as it is welcomed on Quetza Temer. The planet’s long, humid summers could set the world on fire twice over, making thunderstorms a benediction. But they’re also dreaded. Feared. Because they try to overcompensate for the long heat with an endless outpouring of rain that swept away the nests of the Temerian phoenix and drowned the long-snouted tarsier in its den.
But it’s beautiful. When it starts and you’re standing on a cliff, watching the River Istan devour the rocks and trees below, it’s beautiful as it is fearsome. His old pit buddies on Footfall never understood it when they were still alive and he still bothered to visit. They thought it was horrific that Calligos could speak so lovingly about a force of nature powerful enough to bleed a planet. But they were all station-bound, the lot of them. They didn’t see it like he did, didn’t feel the thrum of thunder under their pulse like he did.
Calligos understood what it meant to stand before the God Emperor’s magnificent wrath, look it in its red, red eyes, and watch it grin.
Now that is a new wonder of the galaxy.
“Cal!” Rana runs to him, her black, sweat-drenched bob now sticking to her face, “Are you–”
“Five minutes.” He had been counting. He looks to the syringe on the floor, at his feet.
She reaches to her ear, “Abelard, yes, yes, shut up for a quick sec, will you? We’ve had an assassination attempt — no, not me! Just hurry up and bring a chirurgeon.”
Abelard. Where had he heard that name before?
Rana gets on her knees beside him, fingers flying to his pulse, “Okay, that’s not good. You still with me Cal?”
He nods, he thinks.
“Great, great. You just relax–” She pulls a small plasteel case from under her dress, likely strapped to her thigh, “I got you.” Rana pries what looks to be a small pill from it and puts it under his tongue. The effect is immediate. Sharpens the edge of his vision, makes everything a little brighter, a little louder.
A little better.
“Feels great don’t it?” She winks, “Topaz. Little secret between you and me. Don’t tell Abelard, okay?”
He could feel the poison and the topaz fighting for his heart, for every limb in his body and how, in their struggle, they seemed to meet halfway. Already, he could feel his fingers coming back to life. He can feel with them too. He can feel Rana’s hand closed around his, thumb rubbing the back of his hand.
Footsteps. He hears them too. Several pairs, all steel-tipped boots. Von Valancius armsmen. The guess is confirmed when the men in blue round a corner and swing into his vision.
A much older man in a blue officer’s uniform leads the group, breaking into a run at the sight of them, “Lady Renata! Are you harmed?”
Renata.
Calligos freezes, fingers clamping around those of the hand that held his own.
“Me?” Rana follows it with a psshh. Arrogance of a young fighter never beaten before. “Did you bring the chirurgeon? Cal’s been poisoned. The attack was for him.”
The old man finally looks at Calligos and when he does, his eyes are wide as dinner plates, “Rogue Trader Winterscale!” He turns to his men, “What are you lot staring at? Move! The Rogue Trader Winterscale is dying on our Almeria’s floor. Chirurgeon, get the Rogue Trader to the bay, now!”
Hands grab at Calligos, pushing him onto a stretcher. Something gets shot into his arm, followed by empty platitudes and apologies for the breach in security.
It’s all a blur of noise and hands. Only thing he’s thinking of are those red eyes looking down on him, her face so close her hair is touching his cheek.
“Winterscale, eh? Were you ever going to tell me that?”
"Only if you told me you were Renata von Valancius.”
She laughs and Throne the sound. Forget the poison, that sound alone could stop his heart.
“Get some rest.” She lays her hand on his hair, threading her fingers through his curls, “I’ll wash your handkerchief. You’ll have it back before you have to leave.”
“Evayne—” The topaz was fading and with it, the clarity. Around him, shadows nibbled at the edge of the world.
“I’ll let your son know personally.” Rana pulls away and nods to the chirurgeon, “I’ll visit later. Vox me.”
“Rana…”
“Later, Cal.” She pats his head.
Calligos has a passing thought about the amulet tucked into his right breast pocket. And then the world goes dark.