by Jenn Lyons
from the sucker punch of my twin brother’s proximity. My focus and deductive ability had been crippled. Now I could see.
Now it made sense.
The man in front of me had been acting strangely—entitled, jealous, possessive—because the man in front of me wasn’t Stewart Campbell.
Oh, he looked like Campbell, mimicked him so perfectly that I would have thought him Kantari if I hadn’t felt his mind, which wasn’t human, wasn’t Kantari. He’d seriously underestimated me if he thought I wouldn’t see through the disguise.
But he hadn’t underestimated me, I told myself.
He’d taken me seriously enough to kill me.
That had to count for something.
Zaladin ruffled out his hair and pulled it in front of his face. “This looks like it just came out of braids. I’m not fooling anyone.”
I swallowed. “You’re not fooling me, but most people don’t have my eye for detail.” I reached out and mussed up his hair a bit more, then drew my hand back, suddenly feeling like the simple touch was too intimate. “Okay,” I said, more for my own benefit than to communicate anything. I closed my eyes and told myself I could do this.
I had to do this. That self-destruct was no joke. I couldn’t afford to risk a confrontation.
He reached over and took my hand in his, lacing his fingers through mine. “Any advice for dealing with Kantari?”
“Normally they’re easy to deal with.” I forced myself to concentrate through my awareness of our hands touching. His skin was very warm. “Whisper Jack’s different. He’ll try to provoke you, scare you. You have to be very polite. No matter what you see, no matter what he looks like, be polite as if your life depended on it.” I paused and grimaced. “In point of fact, your life does depend on it.”
He looked confused. “I thought Kantari were pacifists. The Sarcodinay killed thousands of their species when they terraformed their home world—the Kantari did nothing.” He paused. “They did help the Rebellion start up, but I’m not sure they consider that retaliation.”
“They’re fascinated by other races, infatuated by individuals; consider any loss of sentient life but their race’s to be intolerable.” I squeezed his hand before letting it go again. “Deimos Station is an ugly place filled with ugly, dark thoughts and so much death—such callous death—and he’s been here for half a century psychically feeling every life slip away. Even the Kantari consider him insane.”
“But why would he stay—?”
His question was interrupted as the door opened, and a Sarcodinay High Guard entered the room. The Sarcodinay was enormous, dark-skinned, dressed in black, his eyes angry red slits. He looked like a wraith made flesh, a living, stalking, shadow of vengeance. I moved my arm to block Campbell as the man started to move forward, instinct overriding his cover.
Zaladin looked shocked, then confused. He swallowed uneasily, and I could see one hand reach for a sidearm I’d already insisted he remove. This was in fact the very reason I had insisted.
I shook my head at the intruder. “Ha ha, Whisper. Very funny.”
The Sarcodinay grinned, an evil, too-cheerful clown-like grin impossible for any human or Sarcodinay to make without radical surgery, and then his form shifted like oil on water until the figure was not Sarcodinay at all, but a thin, tall human male in top-hat and old-fashioned tuxedo tails, his flesh stretched tight and thin over his bones until his face was more skull than person. He removed his hat with a flourish and bowed to me, looking at me with eyes so bright and sharp I could feel their edges scrape against my mind.
“Ah, Pilgrim Girl. So good of you to visit.” His voice was rich and dark syrup; reminding me of Merlin’s voice in timbre but not tone.
He cocked his head and looked at Zaladin disguised as Campbell like a spider gazing at a fly. “And such interesting people you bring me.”
Zaladin’s face was ashen. “Whisper Jack?”
“Ay, little rabbit,” the shape-changer said to him. “Ripper Jack and Spring-Heeled Jack, Jack of Swords and Jack of Night, Shadow Jack and Whisper Jack.” He cocked his head the other way as he looked at Zaladin. “Come to ask my favor too?”
Zaladin swallowed. I couldn’t say I blamed him. Jack rarely tried very hard to pass himself off as human or Sarcodinay, and as a result tended to live quite firmly in uncanny valley, the Other about him worn close to the skin.
Nothing like my Duncan. I shivered. Maybe it was just as well.
“Yes, I—” Zaladin stopped and closed his eyes. “We need your help. Please.”
The Kantari grinned with a mouthful of sharply pointed teeth. “You said please!” His arms and legs suddenly seemed too long and spindly for a human body, and there was no warning as he leapt at Zaladin. All I could do was pray that the man wouldn’t panic and lash out. I was sure the Kantari was just testing the waters, and didn’t actually mean any harm. Well, I was reasonably sure.
Okay, I hoped.
[We do need your help, Jack. It’s Kaj-Shae Threllis. We need to stop him from escaping.]
The Kantari landed behind Zaladin, who was still standing in the same position but looking like it was costing him all his concentration and focus not to run. The Kantari put both his hands, more like claws really, on Zaladin’s shoulder, his mouth full of sharp razor teeth hovering right above Zaladin’s neck. Jack’s red eyes looked into mine.
[Ay Pilgrim girl. And will this little rabbit do more than that?]
[No, I won’t let him.]
[But can you stop him?]
Whisper Jack moved a claw over Zaladin’s head, a petting gesture. He was so tall at the moment that it looked like he was stooping to rest his elbows on Zaladin’s shoulders, his chin resting on Zaladin’s head. Zaladin looked like he wanted to scream.
“He’s not saying anything,” Zaladin said. “Shouldn’t he say something?”
“He’s talking,” I said. “Just not to you.”
“Oh.”
[Will you help us?]
[Romeo has found his Juliet, but you tell me that our star-crossed lover plans to make a getaway at the cost of all these lives. I will help.]
[Romeo and Juliet...what do you mean?]
“What’s he saying?” Zaladin shifted under the weight of Jack’s arms.
[May I keep him? He’d feel no pain.]
I shuddered, not least of which because I knew that while Whisper Jack was technically telling the truth...that did not mean he killed quickly. I shuddered too because, well, in that moment, in that one crystalline moment, I faced down a temptation the likes of which it has seldom been my displeasure to experience.
Zaladin didn’t know I knew his real identity, and formidable as he was, he couldn’t save himself from a creature like Whisper Jack. I could have signed Zaladin’s death warrant. He’d feel no pain. Whisper Jack claimed not to believe in killing, but he also believed that anyone whose memories and experiences he absorbed wasn’t really dead.
I could have ended it all, but if I did, I would be on my own when it came time to disable the self-destruct on Deimos—Whisper Jack was too unreliable in a crunch. If I did, I would never know the reasons why Zaladin was doing all this and I would never understand what could make a High Guard turn against his own emperor.
If I did...
If I did, I would prove that pragmatism and ruthlessness were superior to morality and ethics, that the ends justified the means, that I truly did possess the self-appointed right to decide whose life was more worthy to continue, that in the philosophical battle between Zach and Duncan over a young girl’s soul, Zach’s teaching had gotten the better of me.
Zaladin would die, but he would win, and I realized he would deem those conditions acceptable.
[No, he’s mine.] “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”
[Much like Kaj-Shae Threllis. He’s taken a human lover too.]
[He what?] Then came my embarrassed protest. [That’s not what I meant. He’s not my lover—] I paused as I saw the picture in my mind: a human woman.
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The Kantari leapt over Zaladin and me both then, his spider legs disjointed and facing the wrong way, a nightmarish distortion of bipedal proportions. He landed by the door, and an instant later he was a beautiful, dark-skinned human with long wavy red hair, mustache and a black silk suit, top-hat and cane. He tapped his cane elegantly on the door button, then spun, took my hand, and kissed it as he bowed to me a second time. “I will help you. This way,” he invited as he released me.
Zaladin walked up next to me and I felt his hand slip into mine again and squeeze. I thought to snap at him that I didn’t need to be coddled, but I looked up at him, saw the haunted look in his eyes, and realized that he hadn’t necessarily done it for my benefit. I had no real way to know what Whisper Jack had said to Zaladin telepathically, what he might have shown him, but I knew Jack’s proclivities and I knew the offer that he had made me.
“Someone must witness,” Whisper Jack answered a question I was not aware of asking. “Someone must remember the lights in the darkness.”
As he walked down the hallway, Whisper Jack changed into someone who looked a lot like a station security. [When I say follow, you follow. When I say hide, you hide. Do as I say, when I say it, and I will lead you safely through the maze. Only one rule, one rule above: never kill. Never, ever kill.]
Zaladin gave me a perplexed, confused look. “But he—”
“He doesn’t consider that killing.”
I was still holding his hand as we entered the elevator heading towards the outer ring of the space station, and the