Empress of Forever

by Max Gladstone

  “It’s not nuclear,” Xiara said. “If that’s what worries you. You just get that cloud shape whenever there’s a big enough impact.”

  “Not great for the farmers, though.”

  “They’re a long way from town now. Zanj had a trajectory when she hit the planet’s shield; she bounced back when she landed. And now they’re—” The next flash made even Viv wince, and she wasn’t watching through Groundswell’s optics; Xiara yowled, and covered her eyes. Viv tried to put a hand on her shoulder to offer some comfort, but her hand passed through the hologram.

  “I don’t see any more explosions, at least,” she offered when Xiara managed to open her eyes again. “That’s probably a good sign?”

  “They’re—oh. That crater goes all the way through the crust. They’re inside the planet.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “It’s … not?” One orange-slice section of the planet’s surface shivered, cracked, and began to cave in. “Excuse me. I think I need to, I mean, someone really should do something about—”

  “Go.”

  Xiara blinked out. The cave-in opened a broad, smiling gash in Refuge’s green, but the rest of the planet remained more or less intact, all credit, probably, to Xiara. Certainly Zanj and company didn’t seem concerned for planetary welfare. She watched for another flare, for the gash to widen, the planet to collapse.

  Xiara reappeared after a long apocalypse-free interval. She looked tired and annoyed, which Viv decided was a good sign. “What’s going on?”

  “The planet,” she said, “will be fine.”

  “Zanj? Yannis? The Suicide Queens?”

  “They’re drinking.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

  “And singing.”

  Another flash from the planetoid below, and the gash widened. Viv glanced left, concerned, but Xiara was wearing sunglasses now.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ve taken measures. The locals are safe.”

  They watched the fireworks together. Viv tried to explain fireworks to her, but stopped when it got weird.

  Hours passed. The lights died down. A hole opened in the shield around Refuge, and a sole figure staggered toward them, bruised, reeling, grinning on the slant. “They’re in,” Zanj slurred before she passed out.

  59

  HONG WOKE ON the third night after their return.

  He gave no warning, supine beneath the sheets, statue-still, his chest rising shallowly and falling; when Viv tried to time her breaths to his, she felt like she was drowning. He’d not changed since their departure for Orn that she could tell. Perhaps his cheeks had more color. Or not. Or perhaps color would be a bad sign.

  But his eyes snapped open halfway through the long night of her watch, wide and staring and brown, and he sat up, hands half-raised to defend against an attack that was not coming. Viv’s heart jumped. The vicious joy she felt to see him move surprised her, scared her. Even after so long watching him she couldn’t think how to show that or speak it. So she drummed her fingers against the arm of her chair, and that drumming drew him out of his nightmares into the room.

  “Viv—you’re—” His voice wandered toward her, as if from a great distance. She wondered what he had seen in the depths of his trance.

  “I’m here,” she said gently, easing him back. “It’s all right.”

  “The duel—the Grand Rector—”

  “You won. More or less. You survived, and I talked the Pride down. They’re on our side now. Or, they’re on not-the-Empress’s side. The Rector’s in the crypt, and Archivist Lan’s in charge.”

  “I had such dreams.” He seemed so distant even awake, as if he stared at the world from saintly remove. He hadn’t felt his way back into his body yet. “I remember the Pridemother. You stood between the fleets of Pride and ’faith.”

  “Yes.”

  He touched the gray webs across his chest, exploring them gingerly as if they were cuts or surgical scars. “I—I didn’t save you. I wanted to—I had to make up for—”

  His not-quite-apology struck her in a harsh, raw place. She stood. “Do you really think that was the point?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Do you think I broke back into your stupid fleet, overthrew your Grand Rector, changed a religion, because I wanted to give you a chance to apologize?”

  Those big earnest eyes blinked once, and at last, she saw the Hong she knew. Sure, he was confused, when wasn’t he? “I don’t understand.”

  “I came back for you because we’re friends, you idiot. We both fucked up, but now you’re awake, and we’re going to save the world together or get blown up trying. Now, can you please stand down from battle stations so I can give you a hug?”

  He didn’t lower his arms exactly, but his fists uncurled; he looked at them as if only just aware they had been clenched. He still had a ways to go before he made it home. So did she.

  She hugged him hard, then harder. His hands settled on her shoulders. He felt smaller around than she remembered, or else softer to the touch. His temple rested against hers; she felt his eyes close, and the big racking breath he drew, not quite a sob, not quite a sigh. She didn’t mention it, didn’t push back.

  “I was so lost,” he said in the end. “In there. Nightmare after nightmare. I knew it was a dream, but I could not wake up. I could not stop myself dreaming. As hard as I fought, some part of me clung to the dream. Terror was all I had left. If I gave it up, I’d give up myself. Some monk I am.”

  He’d been plugged into all sorts of ancient evil hardware and hypnotic drugs, trapped in mental combat with the Pridemother. Of course he couldn’t just will his way out. But she listened to the tremor in his voice, and knew he knew all that, and it didn’t help. She held him tighter, and he stilled, and set his arms around her, too.

  “Come on,” she said when he steadied again. “The Archivist has news. I’m glad you woke up when you did—you’d be kicking yourself if you missed the whole war.”

  * * *

  ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, though, it was probably good that Zanj came late to the meeting. Since returning from Refuge 2.0, Zanj had taken her responsibility as war leader a bit too seriously—training the Ornclan in their ships, stretching their battle instincts into three dimensions and zero gravity. They flew as if born to it, because they were, and they fought well, but the Empress’s Diamond Fleet was no Ornclan enemy to offer mercy and obey rituals of war. Zanj gave no quarter in training; she barked orders and made examples. In skirmishes, she struck the Ornclan from the Cloud, she trapped them in simulations, she spoofed their sensors and twisted their target locks against them, she scattered their ships and burned their minds and sowed discord in their song. Gray volunteered to help, and, after draining a several-ton deuterium cocktail, joined the training exercise as a true representative of the Grayframe, scattering the Ornclan to the winds.

  Zanj cursed her students for morons in public, but in private she rehearsed their follies with a proud parental smile. But Viv saw the tension she hid. Zanj had raised one fleet against the Empress before, and lost. She knew how bad this rebellion could get. She channeled fear into workaholic frenzy because that way no one would call her out—who would ever complain that you were too dedicated to the cause?

  Viv knew that tune well enough to hum.

  The training exercises ran long, and Zanj was late.

  By the time she sauntered into the reception hall, the Archivist had shown them the map sphere, explained the weak point she’d identified in the wall, discussed their plan of attack after Viv pulled the linchpin. Gray, munching on a sweet roll, paced beneath the map, indicating defensive positions within the Citadel with a curve of half-chewed pastry. That’s a depot for the crystal fleet, and that’s another. These starspheres feed the wall, but they can churn out fleet drones when she needs them; this, here, is the heart. Here she sits, brooding over the egg of Viv’s world, which she’ll hatch to our destruction.

  “We don’t have
long,” Viv said. “A week, maybe two. She’s close. The dreams hurt.” Nobody wanted Viv to elaborate. The night before, Xiara had to force a pillow between her teeth to keep her from chewing off her tongue. The pain had been worse than she could bear, but behind the pain she felt the Empress’s thrill. She’d solved the problem, Viv’s maniacal otherself, with her lasers and her accelerators and her many, many arms. Now it was only a matter of time.

  Viv hoped she was wrong.

  Zanj walked in.

  The council turned to her: Gray and Hong, Xiara, the Archivist, sundry Hierarchs. Viv.

  “Hi.” Zanj waved, took her seat. “Sorry I’m late. Those meatheads—sorry, Xiara—they know what end of a ship’s forward, but they have too much spirit. Have to break that out of them. They learn fast, though. Maybe even fast enough. What’d I miss?”

  Nobody wanted to answer. Even the Archivist’s serene gaze shifted, slowly, to Viv.

  Maybe Viv would have grown up more trusting of others if others didn’t keep passing the buck to her.

  “Viv? Everybody was looking at me funny, and now they’re looking at you.” Zanj’s smile lost its humor. “What gives?”

  “The Archivist decrypted the map,” she said. “We found the linchpin system.”

  And she gestured to the glyphs rotating beside the hologram.

  Zanj read them. Read them again. And without a word, she stood, and walked, pace steady, eyes front, out of the chamber.

  The others looked after her, confused. Viv raised one finger and waited. When the roar came, followed by the crash of a collapsing bulkhead, shattering glass, screaming metal, an electric fuzz of broken wires, and the ting and roll and crack of something expensive and round, she was the only one who didn’t jump.

  The ship didn’t lose pressure, and no one died, so all things considered the conversation went better than expected.

  Zanj marched back into the room, her hands carbonized and smoking with destruction. “Well.” Her voice was even as a knife’s edge—smooth when seen from far away, but a magnifying glass revealed serrations. “I guess I’m going home.”

  60

  ZANJ’S MOOD DARKENED as they flew toward Pasquarai.

  They set out in the Star, which could slide swift and unnoticed through the Cloud while the great fleets trundled along behind. Viv, nervous, wondered if she was in for more days of drowning, not quite dead, while the others drifted formless in the Star’s memory. But they did not need to move quite so fast now as they had when chasing the Empress, and Zanj, silent, dour, rebuilt the ship to a form Viv could ride. On a bare hangar deck, she shook the Star like a rolled-up bedsheet, and it unfurled into a flat oval of swirling black. When she shook the oval once again, it swelled into three dimensions, slick lines, curving manta wings, a tail. The lightning of thought pulsed along circuit lines beneath its skin. A clap of Zanj’s hands opened a door into the belly of the beast.

  When the Star took solid form, so, too, did Viv’s vision of the future, of what they were about to do or try: a war in heaven, a revolution. This was real. She felt as if her lungs were too close to her heart: she could not breathe, and her heart could not quite beat.

  She’d heard Zanj describe her home—the purple cliffs at dusk, blowing palm fronds, flowers, the creeping vines where she played when she was young and queen of nothing, the joyful ghosts and punk gods who drifted through and away again; Pasquarai, an island in a sea of storms. Their path led through it now. Or, through whatever it had become.

  Gray’s silver tongue darted out to lick his thin lips. He was hungry and bound for home, not a prodigal child anymore, but an enemy, a liberator. He marched aboard. Hong shouldered their luggage and followed him. Xiara gazed ahead with an expression as simple and steady as any joy Viv had ever seen her wear. She gave herself no room for doubts. Before she boarded, she breathed in deep, and when she exhaled, the silver mazes on her skin faded, collapsed, the wheels in her eyes ground to a halt. They would run silent for now, and Groundswell and the fleet would follow, and with them what had come to be the greater half of Xiara’s self. Viv reached for her, ready to hold her up, but Xiara did not collapse. “Come on,” she said. “We have work to do.”

  Gray made dinner on their first night out from provisions the ’faith carted aboard, the harvest of their garden ships, fresh fruits and vegetables, nutflesh dense and textured as meat. Zanj flew, brow furrowed; Xiara lounged on cushions across from Hong and tried to play a variant on Go, but she kept drowsing off between moves, and as she dozed she snored with a pleased cat smile, curled on sheets. She lost the habit of sleep when she was one with the ships. Hong reached across the board, poked her in the shoulder, and as she snorted herself awake and jerked and glared around, glazed, trying to understand, he returned to his spot and settled as if he’d never moved in his life.

  Viv helped Gray cook—he could build a space station in hours, and he could mince onions with a slap of his hand, but he lacked instinct for when you added vegetables to oil and in what order, when meat, when salt, the touch for a good sear and the timing of garlic. The flavors shifted on her, since the ’faith didn’t cook with brown rice vinegar, and the soy sauce was darker than she liked, with a citrus tang, and the nutflesh seared more like halloumi than meat despite its texture—but she couldn’t argue with the result.

  They ate, trading stories from their work with the fleets, coordination, jokes. Then the door opened, and conversation stopped. Zanj walked in, sat down heavily, filled her bowl, took a small bite, chewed. Swallowed. Her head sank, and she breathed, then ate some more. The silence lasted.

  “You can say it,” Viv said. “Whatever it is.”

  Zanj set her bowl down, and the chopsticks beside it. The Star’s walls thrummed deeper than cellos, a sound so soft any other blocked it out. Viv wanted to tell Zanj everything would be all right, but she didn’t believe it. She let Zanj have this time: to grin fiercely at nothing funny, to still her mouth, to stare at each of them in turn. Gray looked down. Xiara turned away, toward Viv. Hong met Zanj’s gaze straight on. And when Zanj turned to Viv at last, she saw the pit behind the red-gold discs of her eyes.

  Viv couldn’t stop herself from talking then. “Whatever we find there, we’ll handle it.”

  “You don’t know my home,” Zanj said. “You’ve heard me talk about it, that’s all. When the Empress seized me, tortured me, when she walled me up inside that star, no amount of pain would satisfy her. I had stolen worlds from her, captured warsuns, devoured the hearts of ships so I could walk her worlds unseen. She wanted to make me suffer. But she never told me what she did to my people. She kept that to herself.”

  “Whatever you’re imagining is probably worse than the truth,” Gray said, filling his bowl again. He took a bite of the nutmeat with chilis and chewed philosophically. “She never told you what she did, because she knew you’d stew and sweat trying to guess. Just enjoy the trip, if you can. We’ll deal with what we find when we find it.”

  “I’ll enjoy what I please. Or not.”

  Gray swallowed, but didn’t take another bite.

  Hong tried next. “We have to move fast when we get through the wall. You’re tense. You need meditation and rest.”

  “See to your own mind, monk. Mine’s clear enough.”

  Hong set down his bowl.

  “Well,” Xiara began. Zanj speared her with the honed skepticism that did double service as her listening face. Xiara paled. “Never mind.”

  Zanj left the table, and climbed a ladder that had not existed before to a hatch that hadn’t existed before either, and slipped through. No one tried to stop her.

  Viv finished her meal and followed.

  The hatch opened into the Cloud. Zanj sat beneath the mottled hyperdimensional purple, cross-legged, glaring out into the murk. Viv closed her eyes by reflex, flinched all through her body, prepared herself for the rack of vertigo that had always washed over her when she looked into the Cloud. It did not come now. Maybe she’d grown used to it.


  The Cloud was strange and beautiful above them. Purple and shining, it shaped itself to Viv’s thoughts as her eyes tracked through it, the ink-in-water billows molding friends long gone, the face of her mother, a childhood horse they’d burned when it broke, in a small boat on a lake in camp. Before any form became itself, it split and unfolded into another, memories opening on memories until she felt she could not look anywhere without watching everywhere at once. The Cloud usually made her feel sick, but this time it just felt vast and empty, full of nothing but herself. She wondered what Zanj saw out there, why she peered so fiercely into the depths.

  “Go away, Los Angeles. Before I kill you.”

  Viv settled to the hull beside her, and hugged her own legs. “You haven’t killed me yet,” she said. “A bit late to start.”

  “I know they want to help. I know everything you’re about to say.”

  Zanj’s voice cracked and roughed around its edges, half words, half groan. Viv rested her hand on her shoulder without speaking.

  “I’m afraid.” Zanj had to stop twice in framing the last word, heave a breath, and start again. “Okay? Don’t fucking laugh.” She hadn’t. “I didn’t realize it before. She spent thousands of years hurting me, and I would have borne thousands more. I know my strength, and I have few illusions. If I break, I break. But my people—they’re not like me.”

  “You haven’t talked about them much.”

  Zanj scratched the spaceship’s macromolecular skin, leaving no mark behind. “I was never one of them. Not exactly. When they first touched the Cloud, when they built their primitive networks to play in its shallows, I stirred, a ghost in their web. I learned to think from watching them. When I was young, I made myself a body and passed myself off as one of them, hiding, afraid—people can be cruel, when you’re the only one of your kind. But one day some monsters came from beyond our system’s edge, primitive mind-harvesters, some dumb god’s craft project, and all of a sudden the people I studied, the people I feared and loved, they were about to die. So I saved them.”