The Exalting

by Dan Allen

  Dana held hands with Kaia and then grabbed Jet’s hand in hers. His fingers were strong, though there was no skin webbing them at all.

  The aliens would be terrible swimmers.

  Tapping Mirris’s gift as well, Dana reached into Jet’s mind. Even asleep, its complexity was incredible. Layers and layers of conflicted ideas and thoughts seemed tied together in an incomprehensible knot.

  She drew on more will from her massive reserves and delved further.

  “There—I can it feel it now.” The pain in Jet’s side seemed to transfer to her, as it did with animals.

  “You must slow the inflammation,” Kaia said. “Kazen Genua controls heat.”

  “Of course.” Dana found Kazen Genua’s mind not far from Ryke’s in her perception of the veil. Both were warlocks. She tapped the gift and cooled the area around his liver.

  “Now purge any foreign matter. Sterilize it. Burn it.”

  With Kazen Genua’s gift Dana summoned a lance of pure heat along the bullet’s path. She felt it burn inside her as well.

  “Healing hurts,” Dana groaned.

  “Now stitch the broken tissues together.”

  This part turned out to be easy. Under Kaia’s gift, the fibers of his tissues were more than ready to bind together and stay that way.

  “I’ve never been able to do that until now,” Kaia said. “It obeys me—does exactly what I want.”

  “I’m sure you will be able to do it on your own someday,” Dana said with a grin. “I think he’s stable now.”

  She looked up to see Jet’s helmet beside his body. “Hello Angel, are you there?”

  No response.

  Dana lifted the helmet and placed it on. A small light flashed in the glass over her eye, like something breathing slowly.

  “Wake up.”

  Nothing.

  Maybe I can will it.

  Dana tried to make the light stop flashing.

  It worked.

  “Hello, Dana. I was just dreaming about you.”

  “Hello, Angel,” Dana said.

  “It seems your neocortical patterns are compatible with Jet. You managed to wake me.”

  “Yes, but don’t tell him.”

  “Of course. How is he?”

  “I think he’ll make it,” Dana said.

  “What is that?” Kaia gasped.

  “A mechanodron mind,” Dana answered.

  “It has no body?” Kaia wondered.

  “No,” Angel said. “Not like the ASP simuloids. Wait . . .”

  “What is it?” Dana asked.

  “It’s nothing,” Angel said. “I just had to send a message to Monique. There was a bit of multipath interference from the cave, but I made it through to her.”

  “Alright,” Dana said. “You watch Jet. I need some food.”

  Dana returned to the ka’s chambers and found a platter waiting for her. She sat beside it and poured the bowl of cold porridge down her throat.

  Cold was perfect.

  “Not so loud,” Kaia said, wincing.

  “Did I slurp?”

  “No,” Kaia said. “You’re sharing everything. I feel like I just drank an entire bowl of porridge.”

  “Sorry.” Dana withdrew from the veil, quelling the sayathi urge within her to unite with the colony.

  “Better?”

  Kaia nodded. “I can’t believe you did it. You’re a supreme—the first our city has had in forty years.”

  “With your help.”

  Kaia’s eyes turned down. “I . . . I was wrong to treat you like I did when you arrived.”

  “No, you weren’t,” Dana said. “I was obnoxious—probably still am.”

  Kaia gave a wistful sigh. “Would it be a stretch to claim that I was your friend before you became the ka?”

  “Kaia,” Dana flashed a warm smile. “You will always be my friend.”

  “Thanks, Dana-ka.”

  Still, Kaia used the exalted form of her name. It was sacrilege not to, Dana knew.

  Then Dana’s mind clicked into gear. It had been nearly thirty minutes since she lost consciousness after leaving the cavern in Ryke’s arms. “Where is Korren?”

  “I finished patching him up while you were sleeping—I guess he was so excited he tripped and cut himself.”

  “He tried to kill me!”

  “He did what?” Kaia gasped, pulling back as if Dana were tainted by a ravage plague. “You didn’t pass first judgment?”

  “Of course I did. He tried to kill me so he could take the stone for himself and serve the Pantheon. He’s in league with them.”

  “But—” Kaia whirled. “I saw him bleeding and made him let me bandage him. He said it was an accident. Nobody told me that he tried to . . . to . . .”

  Dana searched further in the mass of minds and found Mirris’s nimble mind nearby. “Korren didn’t get past me. He’s being taken to the city prison.”

  “Mirris got him.” Dana smiled. “She must have sensed him panicking and fleeing.”

  Dana drew herself back into the present circumstances of the room. It was like shrinking from the size of a cloud to a mouse.

  “I can’t believe he tried to take the stone for himself,” Kaia said. Her gaze was distant as she offered Dana a chalice of water.

  “It is the way of the Pantheon,” Dana said. “It seems Shoul Falls is the only bound city whose ka is not directly controlled by their alliance.”

  The concept had its merits. If the Pantheon was united, there would be no war in Aesica. But without their independent voice to elect their ka, blood-bound cities would be even less free than Norr.

  But just because you could take power and wield it safely didn’t mean it was the right thing. It was a lesson Dana had learned many times in the past few weeks.

  Dana drained the cup of water before noticing it was the same one that had held the molten bloodstone, the same one Korren had tried to murder her with.

  “Yes. It is yours, Dana-ka,” Kaia said. “Get used to being served from it.”

  “You also have a private bath.” Kaia opened a door to an adjacent room and opened a valve to fill a copper tub. “Sorry, it’s cold.”

  “Cold is fantastic,” Dana said. “I don’t want to be hot for as long as I live.”

  “Probably a good thing for your—” she gestured at Dana’s forehead.

  “True. Don’t want it melting.”

  Dana pulled off her shirt.

  She froze at the look of shock on Kaia’s face.

  “What is it?”

  Kaia could only raise a finger and point.

  The image from Kaia’s mind hit her at the same moment.

  Dana stood in front of herself wearing only her stolen trousers and a tie-top. She looked closer, through Kaia’s eyes, as the alchemist’s gaze drifted from the opalescent jewel in the center of Dana’s forehead to her temples, where two small jewels glinted, almost like earrings—half-hidden by her long bangs.

  Dana grinned. The ruling sayathi had spread out, forming multiple bloodstones.

  Mercy!

  There were three gems along the sides of her neck, three on her breast bone just below her neck, and six more stones running over each of her shoulders and her arms.

  Dana looked down and found tiny gems glinting from the backs of her hands.

  “Oh, my ka,” Kaia whispered.

  “Is this . . . bad?”

  Kaia shook her head. “The greatest ka have three, maybe five stones. Dana, it’s . . . it’s . . .” Kaia never finished her sentence.

  Dana summoned the senior kazen with a mental prompt. A minute later—modesty forgotten—Remira, Ritser, and Genua stood in her room.

  Genua gaped. Remira held her hand over her mouth. Ritser shook his head.

  “She’ll need a new gown,” Genua concluded, “with cutouts on the sleeves. I’ll have one prepared for the unveiling ceremony tomorrow. And it will make her power more evident to the Pantheon.”

  Kaia frowned. “I’m not sure the w
ay to win friends is to make them all feel self-conscious.”

  Dana laughed. “Your opinion has been noted, Kaien,” Dana said, using the kazen form of her name for the first time.

  “Kaien?” she repeated hesitantly, “But—”

  Dana gave a small nod of acknowledgment and then broke into a wide smile. “Ryken and Mirrisen, too.”

  Kaia looked to Remira. “Can she just make me a kazen, without any tests or—?”

  “She just did.”

  “If we may be excused, Dana-ka,” Ritsen said. “We have many preparations to make.”

  Dana nodded.

  The kazen all bowed and exited, and Dana was left to wonder at the sensation.

  Absolute trust.

  But in Kaia there was something new. Fear.

  She turned to leave. Dana grabbed her arm.

  “Whatever happens,” Dana said, “We’ll face our enemies together.”

  “But you’ll do what you must to protect the stone,” Kaia said. Was she implying that Dana’s life was now more valuable than hers somehow, that she was expendable?

  “I’ll come up with something,” Dana said. “I always do.”

  Nothing could be more terrifying.

  Dana found a towel and small dish of vinegar soap beside the bath.

  “Should be perfect,” Dana said to herself, speaking aloud to avoid accidently broadcasting her thought. “Miners use it to clean sayathenite.”

  After washing, she discovered several vials of perfumes, all of which smelled divine.

  Divine.

  Dana laughed at the thought. Then she reached out to Ryke and shared it.

  “Oh brother.”

  A second thought echoed back.

  “Are you supposed to be using the collective will for private messages?”

  Party pooper.

  Dana sighed and caressed her hands gently along the luminous bloodstones that ran down her arms. “I’m glad I haven’t changed on the inside.”

  “I hope you never do.”

  Chapter 35

  After the others went to sleep, Dana paced the floor of her bedroom. She wasn’t the least bit tired, except for an ache deep inside her to reach out to the colony. But she wanted to reserve that for the following day’s ceremony.

  Dana walked through the great hall during breakfast, stopping to greet people at each table and only occasionally opening her mind to them to avoid awkwardly having to ask their names.

  With some guilt, she recalled her first reaction to having her mind accessed—her mother’s prompting to tell her everything.

  Mother.

  She wondered if her family would come to Shoul Falls and become blood-sworn, or if they would stay in Norr, alone and separate from their exalted daughter.

  It would make things a lot simpler if Norr would simply join the colony. Then her parents could stay there, where her father’s work was, but still have all the advantages of a ka’s protection.

  Who was she kidding? Norr would never bow to a ka.

  Would the people of Shoul Falls even revere her?

  The closer it came to the revealing ceremony, the more anxious Dana became.

  Where is Ryke?

  There.

  He was waiting outside the hall.

  She smiled.

  For me.

  She drifted away from the crowd, marveling at how easy it was for a supreme to not even be noticed when she didn’t want to be. She backed into the side corridor and closed the door.

  An arm wrapped around her waist from behind, familiar and dark.

  Dana’s hand touched it gently as she turned to face Ryke. She put a hand to his cheek and caressed it.

  “How many do thanks do I owe you now?”

  “Honestly,” Ryke said. “I’ve lost count.”

  “Really?” Dana replied. “How convenient.” She leaned forward and suddenly pressed her lips against Ryke’s, silently ticking off each gentle press of their lips, one for each time he had save her life. With each touch, warmth stirred within her, a product of her transition, the physical contact, and the fact that she was feeling every emotion in Ryke’s body.

  The feeling of being loved was so utterly satisfying, so soul-fulfilling, it literally carried Dana off the ground.

  Ryke held her as her feet lifted.

  Feeling a rush of emotion she could not control, Dana drew back, dropping slowly back to the ground.

  Ryke’s eyes met hers, a mix of love and painfully suppressed doubt.

  “Yes, that just happened,” she whispered, answering his unspoken question. “You just kissed a ka.” Dana could feel her sifa spreading with the moment of intimate expression. She blushed from the tips of her ears to the nape of her neck. Within her, Dana could feel the sayathi collective attempt to anchor itself against the foreign wave of emotion that rushed through her. She swished a single finger toward him playfully, as a sob caught in her throat. “It doesn’t happen every day, you know.”

  Ryke’s expression showed everything she was feeling.

  And perhaps never again.

  Dana wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him close, holding him against the tide that would carry him to a nearly anonymous distance from her, the new exalted supreme of Shoul Falls.

  “You are the ka,” Ryke said, his neck stiffening against Dana’s insistent hug. His thoughts completed the unspeakable truth. “This cannot be.”

  “I don’t think I start officially until after the unveiling ceremony,” Dana said, quickly wiping a tear from her eye and smiling it away.

  “That’s . . . a load of hogwash.”

  Dana poked Ryke in the ribs where she knew he was ticklish. “That’s for being so . . . you.” She slid her hands down to his shoulders and stepped back.

  The distance between them seemed to grow by the moment. It was as if she had crossed the Sayathi Sea or stepped off Xahna entirely. Ryke stood in front of her, a man, a friend, a subject.

  “I’ve made you a kazen,” Dana said, breaking the silence.

  “Kaien told me.”

  “I should have told you first.”

  “You’re a busy person.”

  “But I have time for you, Ryken.” His kazen name rolled perfectly off her tongue. It seemed even more natural than his original name. Dana looked at him fiercely, her gaze burning with the intensity of desire that consumed her.

  “Not always,” Ryken whispered.

  Dana bit her lip. Not always. The unspoken agreement echoed in her mind.

  As ka, Dana would outlive Ryken by more than a century. Of course, at the moment, parting with the bloodstones seemed like treason against life itself, but she had little difficulty imagining what had made her grandfather eventually give it all up.

  Love.

  Ryken nodded and turned toward the common room. He opened the door and stepped through, his mind and emotions closing to her like a door.

  Dana leaned her head back against the wall and let out a sigh.

  “Dang it.”

  For several minutes, it was all she could do to breathe.

  Chapter 36

  With his aching arm in a sling, Jet looked out over Shoul Falls. The soon-to-be besieged city lay in a semicircular valley—almost a dead end. It wouldn’t last long against Vetas-ka’s army.

  But at least it was still around.

  And now it had one heck of a ka.

  With luck, Decker’s dropship would arrive before the unveiling ceremony.

  A hand rested on his shoulder. Monique.

  He smiled, glad she hadn’t greeted him with the usual punch.

  “Feeling any better?” she asked.

  “Yeah, but Xahnan medicine tastes like puke. Anyway, my arm hurts worse than my gut. Can’t wait until Decker gets here with some stem cell therapy and pain blockers.”

  She ruffled his hair. “Whiner.”

  Jet looked over. She was wearing a Xahnan-style jacket, some type of wool, probably from the thunder bison. It looked good on her.

>   Pretty much everything did. He took a breath and asked the question he’d been waiting to ask. “Why did you come with me on the shuttle?”

  “Well every time you mention an ambush, we always end up in one,” Monique said. “I figured you would need backup.”

  Jet laughed, then winced at the pain that flared in his side. “Seriously?”

  Monique shrugged. “And I was getting a little stir crazy on the Nautilus.”

  “Oh.” Jet had hoped for a better reason than that.

  Monique squeezed his right wrist. It was about the only place she could touch that wouldn’t hurt. “The company wasn’t bad.”

  “Not bad?” Jet smiled. “Anyway, thanks for saving my bacon.”

  “Not that you deserve it.” The helmet under her other arm buzzed, and she put it on. She nodded and then pulled it back off. “Kayden says the Nautilus will be here in about fifteen minutes. I’m going to get some things ready.”

  “I’ll stay here and try not to feel useless.” Moving was currently on Jet’s list of least favorite things. Just riding to the landing site on the greeder behind Ryken had been a teeth-gritting experience.

  As she swaggered away, Monique called back without looking over her shoulder. “Still checking out my butt?”

  Busted.

  “Just checking it for scorpions.”

  “Better check your own.”

  Jet tried not to but couldn’t resist the growing urge. He turned his head and twisted—painfully—to inspect his rear.

  Behind him stood a Xahnan girl, her eyes bright with interest. “Hi.”

  Jet returned her greeting in Xahnan.

  “What do you think?” she held out her hands.

  Jet wasn’t sure exactly what she was referring to. “Xahna? It’s great.”

  “No.” The girl gave a precocious laugh. “What do you think about me?”

  Jet shrugged and gave the teen another once-over. “Aren’t you cold in that dress?”

  She shook her head.

  Jet furrowed his eyebrows. “You . . . aren’t from here, are you?”

  “Correct.” She took a step forward. “And I know some things about you.”