by Alex Oliver
Jai startled visibly at that suggestion, but then raised a hand to thoughtfully smooth down the curve of the left handlebar of his mustache as if he was actually considering it. Morwen grudgingly saw that perhaps she was not going to die today after all.
"And you could go somewhere safe. I know you can change your identity, start anew somewhere. You don't have to go back to that place to die with that woman."
If Morwen had a shuttle and a new start, where would she go? It didn't even require a moment's thought. "Yes, I do," she said, feeling it connect up with a satisfying snap, like one component against the next. "Because what they're doing to her is the same thing they did to you, only bigger. I wish I'd been there for you, I really do. I'm so sorry. But I can't let it happen again. Not to her, not to all those other people. I can't do that. I believe in God's justice and his mercy and his compassion to sinners. That's what I signed on to bring to people. Not judgment and condemnation and death. And if all I can do is die with them then I will die for that. I will not be forced."
"You talk like you really believe these things," Jai drifted away from the gun, coming over to sit on the sofa near Morwen. She shuffled away, putting herself in a direct line to sprint for the weapon. She did so almost unconsciously - at this stage she was willing to hope she would not need it.
"I do," she said, getting her knees under her so that she was not quite so abjectly huddled on the floor. "I don't know if we managed to release any of the recordings we made? If you've seen them?"
Priya nodded as she settled beside Jai. She took out a small hand compact and began to repair the tear streaked wreckage of her makeup. "They... sounded happy," she said, with a wistful note in her voice.
"And we have seen snippets of your captain's interrogation on the news," Jai added, looking troubled.
Morwen's already squashed spirit shuddered again with sharp unexpected fear. "Interrogation?" Shit, she'd only been off the grid for two weeks. What had happened? Was it all over already?
"Don't worry," Jai rolled his head in an 'it's not so bad' gesture. He seemed to be handling the appearance of his wife's criminal lesbian ex-lover with remarkable aplomb, but perhaps being the CO of a large defense company gave one practice at being unflappable? "She got away. 'God is with her, who then shall stand against her?' That's what they used to say, you know, before her disgrace, and it seemed to me that He hadn't exactly abandoned her yet."
Morwen's ironic laughter turned into a bitter strength within her, perhaps a little like Priya's 'been to hell and back' coldness. "Yeah," she said, "I've got to believe that's true. He's going to help her to live, or at least to die free, and all of us with her. I believe that. I need to go."
When she rose, Priya reacted by turning and taking Jai's hands. That hurt, but Priya followed up the gesture with pleading. "Jai. Is there nothing you can do to help? I know they buy most of their battleships from you. If you said something to the Synod, or if you said something to the Califate or the Temple and got them to put pressure on the Synod to leave them alone?"
This was not what Morwen had come to do, and the temptation to lash out, to shout "I don't want his help. Shut up! All I want from him is you," was like an ocean of black salt in her veins. But she held it, she held it for Lali and Aurora and all her other brothers and sisters of the crew. "Is there anything you can do?" she scoffed instead, half challenge and half dismissal.
"What does this colony really want?" Jai asked, clear-eyed, though his hand strayed to Priya's knee and gripped it possessively.
"We want to be left to live in peace."
"And you pose no threat to us?"
"Of course not!" Morwen stood and shook the dust from her ridiculous trousers. "How could we? Look at us. We're starving and we can barely clothe ourselves. War is the last thing we want."
He nodded, and leaned over to press one of the buttons in the arm of the seat. "Chandi, could you come in please."
Leaning back, he looked at Morwen as though he was in a boardroom and she had just made a funding pitch. Beside him, for all her jewels, Priya seemed to recede. It was a painful thing to watch.
"Whatever your captain's morals," Jai said, "It seems to me a shameful thing for that man Keene to use our holy forces to pursue a personal grudge against her. I will do what I can to intervene, but you must understand that what I'm talking about are negotiations that may take years to come to fruition. I cannot just raise a hand and stop this attack now."
Empty promises, Morwen thought, edging towards the gun on the mantel as one of the women from the surveillance desk came in and bowed. Now would be the point where he either brought in the police or proved himself sincere by letting her go. She would be going to death either way. She was glad of that.
"Chandi, please take the woman and give her our second-best shuttle. Then you can delete all records that she was ever here."
"Yes sir."
"I did not consent to be made a rapist," Jai said unexpectedly, beginning by addressing his clenched hands where they lay on his knees, but then raising his gaze to meet hers. "I believed she was mine by her choice. If she chose to go, I would let her go, but since she chooses to stay, I free you for her sake. Don't make me sorry for this."
Morwen huffed a small laugh, recognizing when she was beaten. "Oh don't worry. You won't ever see me again. I know how to hold to a bargain too."
She tried to look in Priya's face one last time as she turned to go, but could only make it to the black droplet of mingled tears and kohl that was dripping off her chin. All Morwen's internal organs felt like they had shriveled to nothing. She couldn't raise her eyes that last couple of inches, couldn't believe she was still alive at all. Her heart should have stopped on its own by now - it hurt as though it would - but maddeningly, it still beat on.
Not to worry - she knew how to fix that. "Goodbye," she choked, and fled.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The Festival of St. Yolanda de los Angeles
Over the next day, while Lali waited for Keene's attache to arrive, Nelli brought Xipil to speak to her, and Xipil brought Lali's parents.
She expected to be assailed by tears and guilt, but instead, her father just laid a hand on her head and said, "You are an adult now, and I will respect your judgment and your strength no matter what you choose to do."
"We're very proud of you," said her mother, beaming through tears as she drew back in the interval between two hugs. "If we were younger, we would come with you to make your new world, but--"
"This one needs fighting for too," Lali agreed, getting a glimpse of why the Kingdom was trying so hard to wipe Cygnus 5 out. If they succeeded in making a new land where there actually was justice for all, other people might start demanding it too. The message she had recorded that day in Carrow's studio was being heard all over the galaxy now. If it couldn't be silenced, who knew what might happen?
"I love you. You do know that?" she said, hugging them as best she could with her bound wrists.
"We do." Her father smiled a bright, brave smile which she tucked away in her heart for use as a talisman later. So strong and so resolute in doing what needed to be done. "And we love you."
"And we've been talking to our neighbors, and their friends, and their relatives," her mother said, smoothing her huipil over her knees as if to stroke an absent cat. "And Nelli and Xipil have been talking too. We are not completely without our uses. You'll see."
Confessed, made sinless and ready for anything, supported by her parents' love and her community, Lali waited in surprising contentment to find out if Keene could tell his own child from someone else's - to find out if she would be leaving with a child or without.
She had the answer the following morning, when the door opened early and Nelli and Nazaria came in together, Nelli with keys in her hands and Nazaria with a swaddled baby lying quiet but observant in the crook of one elbow and a large basket dangling from the other.
"'Excuse me,' he says, 'I have a battle on my hands,'" Nazaria rep
orted, rocking back and forth on her heels so that her tart tone didn't distress the child. "'I can't possibly take a moment out of my important schedule to attend to my daughter.' I didn't say to him 'Well her mother can clearly handle both,' though I was tempted."
Lali laughed with disbelief and joy. She hadn't honestly believed they would go along with her suggestion. She had largely resigned herself to fleeing when the opportunity arose and letting Aurora try again later if she was still alive. Grinning wildly at Nelli, who had bent to unlock the shackles at her feet, she said, "You're really going to let me do this?"
"Don't sound so surprised. It was your idea."
Lali flexed her aching feet, stretched the kinks out of her limbs and bounced a little with the sheer excitement of the moment. "You make me wish I could come home," she said, watching with some surprise as Nelli unpinned the veil from her head, took off the wimple and cap underneath, revealing silky dark hair, shorn short. "My people are the best people in the universe."
"Of course we are," Nelli agreed, pulling her scapular and then her robe over her head. "Throw your clothes in the corner there and put these on. You're going to go out with Nazaria and I'll stay here. When that attache person arrives, I'll say I came to bring you food. I didn't think you'd attack me because I was your friend, so I just nipped in. I shouldn't have left the door open behind me but I didn't think... And then you knocked me out, and locked me in. Hopefully you'll have a full day before they find me, but even if they come straight away you should be able to lose them in the festival of St. Yolanda de los Angeles."
"The festival of who?" Lali asked as she pulled on the scratchy linen shift and many-layered heavy wool garments of the nun's habit. "Yolanda de los Angeles is new to me."
"New to everyone, isn't she, petal?" Nazaria was now swaying from side to side, balancing the baby on her hip, and talking to it rather than to Lali. "Who's a silly made up saint then? Yolanda de los Angeles is." She raised her head and fixed Lali with a look that brimmed with hilarity, enjoying her defiance in a way only the very old could afford. "Did you know it was customary to celebrate her day by wearing extravagant capes and masks? You'll find yours at the pottery, underneath the soup cauldron.” She brought a small bottle out of her sleeve and uncorked it. Dipping her middle finger into the viscous pale green liquid inside, she brought it out coated and gave it to the baby to suckle.
Autumn sucked desultorily – she was obviously not hungry – and let out a small mewing sound of protest at the taste. Then she yawned, pink tongue curling up like a dog's, and a moment later she was fast asleep and limp.
Nazaria recorked the vial and passed it to Lali. She put the large basket down on Lali's sleeping shelf and tucked Autumn inside it, covering her with a veil of gauze to conceal her at a casual glance from anyone that might glance into the basket's shadowed interior.
"What's this?" Lali asked, uncorking and sniffing at the bottle in her hand.
"It's a poppy distillate," Nazaria said. "Sometimes when they have toothache or colic it's the only way to get them to sleep. Don't give it over an extensive period, but two or three doses should be fine. You don't want her to cry and give you away. Now quickly. Let's not stand here discussing things. Let's go."
Lali hugged Nelli tight, trying to express how good it was to come home and find that your friends are just as wonderful as you once thought they were. "I can't say how much--"
"Don't," Nelli grinned. "Maybe you can help us some time."
"I'll look forward to it."
"And now you need to knock me out."
Lali didn't like the sound of that. She wanted to protest, to say 'can't you just tell them I did it?' but obviously they wouldn't believe her if there were no bruises, and it was better that she did it herself - since she had been trained to know where to hit, how long to hold, to produce unconsciousness without injury. It would be no pleasanter for Nazaria to do it than it would for her, and the old lady would be likelier to cause accidental harm if she tried.
"Sorry about this," she came up behind Nelli and caught her unresisting throat in a choke hold, throttled her as scientifically as she could, with Nelli's hands scratching at her wrist and her feet drumming the floor. Though Nelli’s pulse still beat strong and steady when she checked it, she still felt wretched about letting the girl slump to the cold floor and lie sprawled, attacked and abandoned in nothing but underwear and a slip. But the bruises on her throat at least looked convincing.
Lali reached for the blanket to cover her, but Nazaria slapped her hand away. "Come on."
They closed the door behind them, fitting the bar into its joints to keep it locked. Nazaria led Lali down into the cool, buried basement, where grain bins and cheeses were racked, their scent like a heavy liquid in the air. They passed the wine storage to the day pantry for the large kitchen and then up to the kitchen itself.
"Xipil is waiting across the market square in that moss-grown flitter of hers," Nazaria whispered under the cover of lids being slammed back on the nunnery's large cauldrons. "As long as we can get you past the guard here, you should have plenty of time to be long gone by the time the alarm goes up."
"Please tell Mother Eleuia that if you get moved on again, there is always a place for you on Cygnus 5. I can't say how much this means--"
"You just be good to this girl," Nazaria chided, passing the basket over to Lali. "I am holding you personally responsible for her now. Don't disappoint me. I am not long for this world, and the ghost of a vengeful nun is not what you need in your life, I promise you that."
The weight of the child did something strange to Lali's arms as she clutched on the woven reed handle of the basket. Something so light should not feel so momentous. She reached down to draw back the gauze blanket for a moment and look at the child's sleeping face. Autumn lay limp as a rubber doll, her tiny arms up by her ears, and her lashes like half moons against her round cheeks. She was very faintly snoring.
A squawking clang and clatter made her jump, as the percussive sound of a metal spoon hitting the floor mixed with the outrage of captive chickens flapping to pull free of the tethers on their legs. Lali looked up with a lurch to see a round-hatted peasant man at the door. He had a brace of chickens upside down in either hand, and he was staring at Autumn's face - eye and slice of nose and mouth revealed by the blanket, the little fist.
"Why are you carrying a baby in a fish basket?" he asked, apparently only puzzled and a little slow. Lali's spike of adrenaline settled back into a humming in her spine - they might talk their way out of this yet. "Are you taking it to the market?"
"Come inside!" Having retrieved her spoon, the cook grabbed a handful of chickens and tried to bodily haul the little man inside, where he would not attract any attention. "Don't stand there shouting like an idiot. Come inside and talk quietly like a civilized person."
Lali twitched the gauze back into place and headed for the door that opened onto the heavy warmth and brightness of the gray concrete square.
"Don't put a sheet over her face!" the peasant exclaimed, trying to intercept her, "You'll smother her. Here! Stop that!"
The cook gave Lali a furious, terrified look and let go of the chicken salesman. Not expecting this, he lurched forward into the rack of metal plates that were drying in the warmth of the open door. The rack tipped up, and tin flatware bounced from the kitchen's flagstone floor with a clatter like an alarm bell. Aware that they had a cover to keep up, both Nazaria and the cook made clumsy lunges as if to intercept Lali. She pushed past them both and re-tripped chicken man as she went past, putting him down on his arse among his flapping wares. A guard - apparently alerted by the noise - leaned round the scullery corner and gaped at her for one long moment of stillness.
Shit.
The plan of a quiet getaway and a long head-start was wrecked already. The guard turned his face into his collar, obviously calling for backup from the com embedded in his insignia. Lali hitched the basket over one arm, picked up the skirts of her habit with the o
ther, and ran.
She sprinted up the kitchen path, her stride horribly hampered by the basket, only to skid to a halt as the door in the outside wall opened and a second guard came through. She didn't think she could fight the two of them hand-to-hand in these skirts without dropping the baby, but maybe they would be reluctant to shoot at her, in case they killed the Admiral's daughter in the process.
Since there was no going out that door, she swerved again, and ran into the kitchen garden and then the orchard. As she'd hoped, there was a tall orange tree against the outer wall. She scarcely paused before throwing the basket into the crook of a branch and scrambling up after it.
A laser gouged a smoking hole in the trunk close by where her foot had rested while she swept the pigeon-deterring broken glass off the top of the wall. Basket on top, then her bottom, and she was looking down for a split second. She registered an awning over a shack of second hand clothes. Wrapping herself around the baby, she rolled off the wall and fell into the sloping hammock of fabric. It's supports cracked and gave way. She tumbled with it, falling the last five feet but managing to uncurl and land on three points, the child still tucked between her belly and her thigh.
Gently setting the still sleeping baby on the ground, she pushed the hateful wimple and cap off. She wrenched the scapula and gown over her head and dropped them among the threadbare clothes being offered for resale. She couldn't go out there in just a shift, so she picked up a huilpil and pulled it on. The shop owner got over her shock enough to shout, but her voice was muffled by the sound of distant trumpets and guitars. The faint music, Lali thought with glee, was surely the sound of the festival of Santa Yolanda de los Angeles. Leaving the clothes and the basket behind with some thought of compensation for the awning, she wrapped Autumn firmly in her gauze blanket, tucked her into her elbow and fled.