by Alex Oliver
Mother Eleuia didn't look at Lali, but she felt the woman's presence reach out to her regardless. "I think you should at least inform Admiral Keene of this and ask him what he wants us to do. And in the mean time the child should be offered a last confession. It would ease my mind, if she was to be killed, to know that we sent her into God's arms and not into flame."
"She deserves the flame."
Mother Eleuia's smile looked worn down and ancient. There were scars visible on her ears and on the septum of her nose that spoke of small blood sacrifices, small offerings of life and pain. "The older I get," she said ruefully, "The more I believe that no one does. But look, it won't take a moment to call the Admiral. Please do this for me."
'Innocent' was not a bad word, Lali thought - the thought thin and shrill and supported by a mind that had gone a long way away to protect itself. The man's gaze now was that of a two year old denied a toy. "I want to kill her."
Though nothing would stop him if he chose to go through with it - nothing would stop him if he chose to shoot the abbess too, even if he chose to walk through the orphanage and shoot every child - Eleuia risked a soft huff of laughter and touched him again, soft as a falling feather. "Innocent, you are dead already and gone to rest, but what moves the body now? Has it not occurred to you to wonder what comes through? Is it an angel or a devil?"
The gun lowered an inch, letting Lali be conscious of the griping twist of terror in her stomach. "That's God's business, not mine," said the Innocent, a little surly.
"But don't you wish it was the first."
He met her eyes, looking shocked that anyone dared to hold his gaze, and for a moment Lali thought that he was scared too. Good. He should be. You shouldn't meddle in the affairs of gods as though it was a light thing.
"Make your call."
While they dialed, Lali checked the room again. Her hands were cuffed behind her back, and her elbows fastened together by a bar, her ankles on a short hobbling chain. Without the restraints, she might have stood a chance at jumping onto the desk, onto the top of the monitor, up to the high window and squirming out. With them, she knew she wouldn't make it off the ground before she was gunned down. The door was ajar, but two nuns and a further guard stood outside - she could see one of the sisters peeking through the gap, terracotta faced and obsidian eyed, and oddly familiar.
"He's busy?" Eleuia bent closer to her screen with a frown. "What do you mean, 'he's busy'? Too busy to come attend the welfare of his own child?"
From this angle, Lali couldn't see who replied, but it was a very junior sounding voice - a squire of the knights of God, or more likely a thirteen year old communications midshipman, his voice squeaking up and down his cracked register with nerves and distraction. "... and will come later."
Eleuia clicked off the connection with a dismissive huff, and with a scorpion-like clicking the Innocent's gun was back in Lali's face. "So I kill her."
"No, no. We can't do that now. We've told the Admiral we have her alive. Why don't you go back on guard in case the second one turns up - this one could have been just a diversion. We'll put her in a cell, and give her confession, and wait until he calls back."
The Innocent, the guard and the two nuns accompanied Lali to her cell, pacing slowly around her as she dragged her leg-chains ponderously across the white marble floor. Once, a door they were passing opened, and a blond moppet of about five years old came thundering out like a bullet, transfixing their whole group. The gun clicked into readiness in the Innocent's hand, and all three nuns - the two with them, and the one who had raced out in the child's wake - stiffened with shock. A moment of stillness, and then a flurry of brown wool as the third nun got herself between the child and the gun. Ushering him back into the room, she shut the door behind her with a bang.
Lali dragged herself on and into one of the nuns' cells, a windowless, single-doored mud brick space to which the marble had not spread. Barely larger than a grave, a platform to one side of the room supported a thin cotton mattress. On the wall, a crucifix, and in the far corner, a bucket. It had obviously been used as a prison or for punishment before - brackets had been hammered into the door-frame on the outside, and a large wooden joist stood upright beside the door, ready to be lowered into the brackets to prevent it from opening.
A small grill about the size of Lali's hand let in a current of hot, humid air from the kitchens. Despite everything, Lali raised her head and sniffed the aroma of beans and cornbread like one who knew what it was to starve.
The closed door would not even shake when she threw her weight against it. She could not dig through the walls. Fortunately she was wearing a skirt, so she thought she might be able to use the bucket when it became necessary, but otherwise there seemed nothing to do but sit on the bed-shelf and worry.
Her sister-in-law would notice when she didn't return, but what Xipil could do against an Innocent, she didn't know and didn't want to find out. The draft from the kitchens was uncomfortably warm, and sweat dampened her flowery shirt as she leaned against the wall, trying to stretch some ease into shoulder muscles that were beginning to cramp. She closed her eyes and listened to the hiss of the incoming air, soothing and regular.
And then kept them closed when the tiptoeing footsteps came, and the faintest whisper of a girl's voice. "Hello?"
"Xipil?" Too late to worry about implicating anyone else. They already knew who she was, who her family was.
"No, it's Sister Bonifacia. Do you remember me?"
"I.. I don't...?"
Bonifacia laughed, and it did sound familiar from somewhere, like the face of that young nun in the corridor. "Well, I used to be called Nelli."
That opened a window to carefree years she had almost forgotten. "Nelli Five-reed!" They had been to school together. Nelli's family raised dogs, little hairless ones for eating, and they had played with the puppies. Just the thought brought back the warm kid leather touch of skin that was too big for the animal who wore it. "I didn't see you as a nun."
"I didn't see you as a bandit!"
Lali managed a laugh at that, cast back briefly to a happier time. "I'm not a bandit. Not really. Just trying to stay alive. We asked for help and the criollos in charge left us to die. But we refused to die."
"I..." Nelli's voice grew even softer in her doubt. "I don't think I blame you for that. But they say you're here to steal one of the babies. You can't agree that that's a good thing."
Nelli - they'd been children together and there had been nothing since to turn that relationship complex. It was easy to forget the nuances and go to the heart with her. "The child's mother loves her. She wants the daughter that was stolen from her body. I'm not going to come between a mother and her child."
"Just because she is the mother doesn't mean she has a right to the child. If she loved it, she would want the best for it."
"Do you think so?" Lali asked. She knew that was the way it was supposed to be - that love let go for its beloved's own good. "I think it's more basic than that. The blood yearns and you have to obey."
Nelli snorted behind the wall. "You always were a terrible heathen, Cualli. But I can't let them kill you. I'll find a way to let you out, I promise you. But on one condition. I will let you out, if you promise me you'll leave the baby alone."
Lali tried again to ease the position of her shoulders, already growing distractingly sore and sure to keep getting worse. For effect, she hissed out loud at the pain, as much to cover up her own uncertainty as to elicit sympathy.
Escape, without the baby. Her life if she agreed to leave the Captain's child in perfectly safe hands.
"Are you all right? Did they hurt you?"
How having her arms free might enable her to get out of this room on her own, she couldn't yet see, but it couldn't hurt. If she could just get the elbow bar off, then she would be able to thread her feet through her arms and have her hands in front. After which there might be something she could do about the cuffs and the irons.
"The spa
cer bar behind my elbows? It's really hurting. I'm not going to be able to sleep, or even use the bucket."
A rustle and a thud as somewhere in a corridor overhead Nelli thumped down to sit on the floor. "Then agree. Please. They could get through to this Admiral any time, and if he says 'just kill her' what can we do?"
"Nothing, I know." Lali sighed. She should say yes, and then come back again later with greater stealth, but she valued her given word, and if she promised Nelli to leave the baby, it would pain her to break that promise. Just as it would pain her to break the trust Captain Campos had put in her by choosing her to bring her daughter home.
Home to what, though? Kingdom forces already hung in the sky above Cygnus 5, and if the colony somehow escaped being wiped out by war, it still ran the risk of slowly starving to death. Did she really want to take a child into that? She couldn't blame her captain for wanting her daughter - it was a mother's ferocity and her instinct - but it might be the duty of others to put the child's welfare first. Nelli might be right about that.
But Captain Campos was the Angel of the Phoenix Nebula - the warrior blessed by God who had turned the tide of battle against overwhelming forces, when Tierce had tried to take its colonies back from the Synod. If Lali could just believe enough, Captain Campos might do it again - she might still defeat Cygnus 5's enemies, whether those enemies were battleships or famine. And what a mother that would be for a child.
Autumn Campos would be loved by every member of the Froward's crew, if they survived, because to a certain extent she would be their daughter too.
Lali sighed again, more deeply. This was all above her pay grade. "Listen," she said, slowly thinking things through as she spoke. "Captain Campos? She's one of us. Her people came from Brazil, on Earth. She's pardo, and this admiral, he took advantage of her and he stole her child, just as his people have always stolen everything from us. Just as they're trying to steal our land now. We are fighting, fighting to be allowed to keep a place of our own, and that means not letting them take our sons and daughters. Not letting them grow up thinking they're mulatto bastards - always being ashamed. Autumn belongs with her people, Nelli. We should live or die together. We should not be prizes and servants and guilty secrets."
Nelli's turn to sigh. She wormed her fingertips through the grille, and Lali climbed laboriously up onto the bed so that she could press her forehead to her friend's hand.
"Did you know," Nelli whispered, "that the sisters used to have a convent in the caves at Chaco Canyon?"
"Oh," more childhood memories, "These are the sisters of Our Lady of Zapopan? What are they doing here?"
Nelli gave a rueful laugh, "The criollos bought the caves. They moved us here to this ugly concrete place and gave a donation which seemed generous at the time. Until we discovered that they had found gold in the Canyon, and they had already knocked down our shrine in place of a mine. So..." a silence and her voice was thick with mingled anger and tears when she began again. "They took our holy place and made us their nursemaids. So, I know what you mean, but... I still don't want you to die! I want to let you out."
"Then let me out," Lali insisted, putting all her wish to live and her conviction and trust into her voice, her heart leaping up like a flame. "Please."
"I..." Nelli's voice was unsure, full of dread. "I'm going to talk to the Mother Superior. What if he goes on a rampage, that man? I know he's supposed to be innocent, but that doesn't seem as comforting as I once thought."
The mother superior had a duty of care to her sisters and to all the children. She would never go along with anything that might endanger them. The only hope was the hope of friendship, personal and perverse. "Please, don't--"
"No, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to tell Mother Eleuia. She'll know best." Nelli's voice had firmed up, was accompanied by the soft shuffles of her rising to her feet.
"Nelli!"
"I'll be quick. Just wait there."
Right. Her voice trailed away and her footsteps grew silent. Lali slumped down to sit on the sleeping pallet, flopping onto her stomach to try to smother the despair. 'If you can't do anything, sleep,' Sergeant Major Cabot had told her in training, so she tried it, closing her eyes, trying again to relax her aching shoulders. Even that eluded her.
With no way to tell the time, it felt like fifteen years later that footsteps sounded outside the door, and the clunk of the locking bar being lifted was like the thud of the executioner's ax. She swallowed fear, again, rather than throw it up, and struggled upright to meet what would come.
Not the Innocent, thank God. Mother Eleuia, and Nelli, and a third nun with a face as wrinkled as a linen shirt, washed and put away damp. There was no guard, though someone remained outside, to shut and bolt the door again with the four of them inside.
Eleuia nodded. Nelli and the old lady seized Lali by the upper arms, making her cry out in shock and some pain. "Ssh!" said Nelli. "Turn around would you?"
She did, and with some fumbling behind her back they unlocked and drew off the elbow bar. She pulled her wrists up and flexed her shoulders, and the wave of achy pain and relief traveled all the way down her spine and made her knees weak. "Ooh," she groaned, and sagged down to sit on the bed.
"Admiral Keene has deigned to reply to my message," Mother Eleuia said, sharp as a squeeze of lemon. "He is sending an aide to interrogate you. Since the aide will take a couple of days to arrive, I did not think it was necessary to keep you in distress."
"Thank you," Lali managed, relieved now in a second sense. A couple of days meant other chances to at least talk her way out of this.
"I have sent to inform your mother of your situation," Eleuia continued, as commanding as the captain. She had indeed a similar air of authority, but there was something deeper and stranger in the darkness of her obsidian eyes. Aurora carried a certain potential of violence that added a weight to her words, but Eleuia carried something else that Lali couldn't name - a kind of active serenity, the calm heart of a great storm, far more like what she might have expected of an Innocent before she met one.
It was easier to think about that than it was about her mother. Would it comfort nantli and tatli if her body lay in the land, close at home as she had not been in life? She recoiled from the tearing sensation that thought gave her. It wasn't going to happen, because she wasn't going to let it.
"Thank you," she said again. "An attaché? Did, did Admiral Keene ask about his daughter? Did he ask you if she was all right?" Eleuia's non-expression did not falter, but the elderly nun beside her gave a derisory snort. "Sister Nazaria..." Eleuia cautioned, but the warning was ignored as Nazaria plunged straight on.
"That poor mite. She's cried ever since she arrived. Everything strange around her and they didn't even retain her nursemaid. Not one friendly face that she recognizes. I know she won't remember it when she grows up, but right now she is lost and scared."
"Nazaria!"
"Mother Superior," Nazaria was stooped over, her back curved in a great bow. It meant she had to angle her head to the side to look up at her prioress. "I am too old for politenesses. You know it's true. That child is not an orphan. Why is she here in a place for those who have no parents when she has two, one of whom at least wants her very much?"
"It is more complicated than that," Eleuia straightened the fall of her wide outer sleeves, earth colored and elegant as a newly furrowed field.
"It's politics and spite," Lali agreed, sensing that she was among friends. "But whatever the admiral's behavior, the child's mother loves her very much. That's why I'm here - to bring her to her mother. Don't you think the child deserves to be raised by someone who loves her?"
Eleuia's expression altered marginally. Hard to tell, but Lali thought it seemed weary and perhaps slightly disgusted. "I'm sure he loves his daughter in his own way."
"In the way where she's a prize and a game piece he can use to humiliate her mother, yes," she pressed. "He was jealous of the great hero and he brought her down, and now he's st
ill trying to rub her face in it using the child as a tool."
Nelli looked a little shocked at this, but Nazaria was nodding, and Eleuia's expression of contempt had become more defined. "It is a very ungenerous reading of his actions," Eleuia said, without much conviction.
"But a true one," Lali insisted. She felt emboldened in this room of her sisters. Irons or not, she felt free and supported and heard. How could she torque this situation into something they could all live with? Something they could all be proud of? "Here's a thought. Why don't you demand that Keene at least look at his child, and then show him one of the orphans. One who really does have nothing. If he doesn't even recognize that this is not his own daughter, then you let me take Autumn. Autumn gets a mother who loves her, and the other child gets a rich father and all the luxuries money can buy."
Eleuia pressed her hands together as if in prayer, and touched the tips to her lips, but her mouth had tilted up at the ends. "I am responsible for everyone in this place," she said nevertheless. "And that human shark is in the midst of us. How are we to be delivered from his indiscriminate wrath?"
Lali's spirits had caught Eleuia's smile and soared with it. "As long as he thinks Autumn is still safe here, why would he punish you? He'll stay to guard her. It will be as though I'd never come at all, except perhaps they'll be a bit more vigilant in future in case I come back. But I won't need to come back, and you'll know that the threat will be over and you'll be left in peace. If they kill me, though, the captain will probably come herself, and then there'll be a battle for sure."
"You argue like a snake," Eleuia laughed, "And I will consider your words. In the mean time, Nazaria here will hear your confession and absolve you. She is from a time before they took that right from us again."
A female priest? The synod had put a stop to that fifty years ago, but Nazaria would probably have been thirty then, and the synod was still debating whether priesthood could ever be taken away.