The room was green and growing, and empty save for Viv wrapped in wire on the throne, screaming, and for the golden Zanj, the Queen, who knelt before her, bent over her hand—
Gray’s ears were sharp enough to hear the crunch of bone, and Xiara’s eyes saw the spurt of blood in its many colors, and in infrared the blush of Viv’s swift heartbeat, and in Hong’s voice they said, “Stop.”
The Queen rose and turned, and swallowed. Blood streaked her chin and teeth. Her eyes raked them, and she smiled, and was a being of gold, and, with all Zanj’s speed and all her strength, she moved.
They were ready.
The Fallen Star tore through Xiara, and she felt it not merely as a blow, but as a hook catching at her soul, drawing her out of herself. The impact alone would have killed her, its catching buzzing queries driven her mad—but she became Gray, and burst to a whirlwind around the strike, and flowed up that point of contact to wrap around Zanj and harden into stone.
The Queen attacked the Graymites one by one, turning bursts of heat against them, but the Graymites were not alone either. Heat flowed through them into Xiara, and out through her into Pasquarai Station, and beyond that to distant Groundswell. If bodies were illusions, why should distance prove any more substantial?
Hong rushed the throne where Viv sat bleeding, needing him, needing them. The Queen flailed in her rage and boiled toward him, but Hong was Xiara now, clad in radiant fields, turning Groundswell’s engines against her, and still Hong ran, flowing from form to form, skipping through space.
They had no fixed bodies. They were suggestions, probabilities, each drawn through the rest. As the Queen tried to fight one, she found another: Hong’s clubs blurred toward her face with Grayframe speed, but when she blocked them the clubs melted into Graystuff to hold her while Xiara struck from behind.
But of them all, it was Hong’s job to fight toward Viv—in part because among them, he was the least fierce, and in part because his mind was the core through which they flowed, his the awareness that bridged their gaps, and he had little more to give.
He could not keep this up forever. The crowns burned him, spearing circuits of his mind. His overtaxed neurons dumped electrochemical waste and burst like dying stars. The body was dying—but the body was always dying, had always been dying, was just one piece of the unwinding world.
So close. So close.
Viv sat crisscrossed by small cuts upon the throne, bound in wire, pierced through the hand, blood seeping through the stump of her finger, furious beneath the weight of her fear.
She’d looked like this the first time he saw her—the first time they all saw her. Outfought by a Pride drone, or arrayed against Zanj, or marching into Gray’s paradise, unsure of victory but certain she would fight. And as Hong reached her, he loved her for that, loved that she could be this way in the world.
He set his hand to her cheek, and a buzz of Graystuff at his fingertip parted the strap of her gag. His hand slid down, and the wires snapped one by one and she was free, rising from the throne, her hand flung out, a warning on her lips. “Behind you!”
But they saw it coming. Of course they had. As the wires parted, as the trap broke and Viv surged free, the Queen turned and rushed toward her, full and furious, green light crackling around the Fallen Star, and a moment of calculation carried through them all, darting from mind to mind, the Queen howling, driven by the twisted logic the Empress had sunk into her mind, ready to kill herself to keep control, ready to kill them all. They could fight her, until Hong’s mind gave out and they fell one by one in pieces. But Viv could not. She was only flesh and blood.
The decision rippled from mind to mind, the part of Gray in all of them screaming no, the part of them that was Xiara pleading, there had to be a better way, without a suggestion. Only Hong said yes.
He turned as the Queen rushed on with blueshift speed, and stepped between her strike and Viv.
The Star slid soundless into his chest.
He had not expected the full texture of the pain, but he was pleasantly surprised, too: he had thought it would be harder to hold the bridge, to remember emptiness, as he was pierced by a weapon not even gods could bear. Strange, how strange, that it was not. He was greater than this already. The body was no more than matter, and no less.
Far away, Viv screamed his name.
Queen Zanj tried to draw the Star from his chest. It should have come easily, and blood-wet.
But it stuck.
Hong held it, held her, the Queen—not with his hands, but with his soul. If he was empty, then so, too, was the Star, and emptiness bridged them, bound them not just to each other but to the world beneath, beyond. He was in the Star, within the Queen, within the wall. His heart began to fail. Blood seeped out. The world contracted beat by beat, graying. But as it did, the circles of his mind swelled, sweeping broader in their liberation, through Gray, Xiara, and the Star, through Pasquarai Station and farther still, beyond the wall to the farthest reaches of the galaxy and past, as the throne room of Queen Zanj shrank, as the body kneeling within it, the Fallen Star buried in its chest, became just another passing form, another smudge on a mirror, and he reached up to wipe it clear.
* * *
VIV SAW HONG fall.
She forgot the agony in her hand, forgot the battle, as the monk slumped to his knees with Zanj’s weapon buried in his flesh. She had seen him move faster than she’d thought possible, and open his hand as if inviting the Star to rest. The Queen roared and hissed and spat blood, and tore at the Star, ugly and desperate, her eyes aflame with need.
Behind her, Xiara and Gray whirled apart and reeled, no longer flowing into and from each other, the bond between them snapped. And Viv understood, from the smile on Hong’s face, from his half-finished laugh, what had bound them together, what saved them from the crowns they wore, the crowns that matched in every particular the crown the Empress had fixed on Zanj to learn her, take her, and build this monster in her place.
As Hong died, the crowns burned black, and Gray and Xiara fell, unable to hold the trick of soul that let them fight. Hong had given his life to studying the transformations and emptiness of form, its limits and its liberation, and without him they tumbled back into themselves. And he had given all that at last to free her, because he thought Viv could end this. Rushing for his miracle. Just like when they’d met, so long ago on High Carcereal. He’d been disappointed then, too.
He must have thought she could command the Queen who once was Zanj. But she had tried, and failed.
He had not known that. How could he?
The Star began to slide from Hong’s chest.
Viv had seconds, maybe. Less. Time for one order, which the Queen would not obey.
But the Queen was not Zanj.
Viv had tried to free Zanj before. Hadn’t she? When she stood alone atop the moonlet carved like Viv’s face, fresh from learning what a terror she had become in the eons since the death of Earth, in those bleak moments when Gray was dead and Hong was gone and Xiara had left her and all she had was Zanj, when she placed her hands on Zanj’s crown to set her free—she’d felt the fear of death, of losing control. She had wanted to let Zanj go. But she had been tumbling and alone, and afraid.
What if the crown had listened to her, after all—not to her wants, but to her needs? And she had needed control back then.
She needed something different now.
“Break,” she said.
She heard iron snap.
She fell to her knees beside Hong, held him, and did not look up. If this was the end, she wanted to linger on what mattered. Somewhere the Queen stumbled back, Star in hand, her forehead crownless now, her face free from pain, her eyes no longer bloodshot. She cackled, first, with triumph.
And then she began to choke.
She dropped the Star and staggered, her hands at her throat. The skin over her fingers pulsed. The bare bones of her skull flexed. Lighting darted between her teeth. Skin and bone stretched at their seams, and
then, in a single motion, tore.
And she was Zanj again, Viv’s Zanj, sinking to her knees across Hong’s body, holding him as Viv held him, and holding her, holding him. Viv’s Zanj, saying, “I’m sorry,” as Xiara rushed toward them and Gray, as they tried what they could and nothing worked, as Viv had known nothing would, because he had made his choice and was now, truly and always, free.
67
IN A KINDER world there would have been weeks to rest, to heal, to love and grieve. Now they barely had space to catch their breath.
Viv tried to rise, and sank back to her knees beside the body. Her bones weren’t broken besides the obvious, and few of the cuts ran deep. Her hand was a mess of agony that might have belonged to someone else. Her palm wept blood, and the finger—the space where her finger had been—should have been bleeding worse. She was holding it, but her left hand wasn’t slick or sticky; she looked down, or thought she should, but her head did not move at all. Will and deed had come unglued. She moved herself like a puppet. Stare down. See it.
Her trembling hand sank to Hong’s sash—to a pouch she remembered, that held a silver patch. It wriggled as it neared her pierced palm, the stump of her finger.
She remembered his hand pressing hers down, and felt it now, in memory.
The patch burned. It wrapped around her hand like a glove. She sobbed, and held him close. He had not wept, much, back then. And he had risen. Why wouldn’t he rise now?
Zanj closed his eyes in the end. “He stopped her.” She sounded distant, wondering. “It was all sick and green inside her, writhing with the Empress, like maggots. But she was as strong as me, as fast, as fierce, as mad. And he stopped her.”
“He was more than himself at the end,” Gray said. “We were all part of him. He was part of all of us. Even you, I think.”
Xiara touched his still hand. “I don’t think it was just at the end. I think he always was part of us. Or we were part of him. Maybe—” But she could not finish what she had been about to say.
Viv heard the rest. Her heart filled it in. Maybe he still is. Maybe we still are.
Beneath them, the tower trembled. There was a war going on down there—worse than war. Pasquarai’s stunted children all growing up at once. The bonds that held their hearts snapped, and they flailed with wills they had never used before, as the world began to break.
“Let’s go,” Zanj said. “Let’s finish it.”
She set the Star upon the floor, and spread it to a disc of black. They stood upon it and it rose, swift and soundless, from the fires of Pasquarai toward the station’s false sun.
When they stood between the station and the star, Viv asked, “What do we do with him?”
“We’ll take him home,” Zanj said. “To the ’fleet. After this is done.”
Viv looked at her, black eyes into red. Do you think there will be an after? But she held the question in herself, and did not ask it, for all their sakes. So she said, “He’d like that,” and watched as the Star closed over him like the waters of a lake over a sword.
Viv’s hand ached beneath its bandage, and each breath was a knife. There were few words. They did not need them.
Xiara took Viv’s unmangled hand, but could not look her in the eye. Zanj placed her hand on Viv’s right shoulder, ready for anything. Ignore that twitch of her tail. Ignore that ready for anything meant ready to die. And Gray held Zanj’s hand, and Xiara’s, too. He’d worn so many forms but this one seemed to hold them all, the pale starved child, the monster, the work-hardened young man of the Refuge fields, and beneath all that, held by his skin, the flame.
And in Viv’s heart Hong stood beside them still, and she could see him telling himself the story he always told, that this moment should have no more meaning than any other, that the world was always changing and any claim of significance for changes in which one participated was just a failure of perspective. Telling himself, and believing it, and living it, and scared anyway.
He had been part of them. She wished she’d been able to share that, at the end, the souls melting into souls.
But the teaching was not a thing of the Cloud. It expressed itself through every tool available, but it was not through the Cloud that she felt him in her now, inside them all, passing from touch to touch, glance to glance. She had fought her way back from the edge of the universe to save him, and so had Xiara and so had Zanj.
She’d half hoped Gray might make some joke to break the silence, yes, look at ourselves, how funny it is that broken things like us can stand here as if we matter, a pirate who was caught, a servant who refused to serve, a pilot without wings, a woman without a soul, all watching one another so severe, set to do a thing that, if we’re lucky, will change the world forever.
There were no jokes to offer.
Viv gripped Xiara’s hand, and they kissed like continents.
“We’ll win,” Xiara said.
It was a young woman’s answer. A young warrior’s. Viv hadn’t much felt the difference in their ages before now—she had so much to learn, and Xiara so much to teach. But for all the loss Xiara had seen, for all she’d fought, she had not yet lived enough to give those losses weight. Nevers and onlys and forevers grew as you did. The sky went on forever, but if you had no context save the height of the nearest trees, you could fool yourself into thinking the blue hung just beyond your reach, when in fact it was never there at all, and what was, was deeper than you could dream.
Viv heard Xiara hear how hollow those words were, how deep the sky.
There would be so much more to learn, if they made it through. So much to find. Stories they loved; tics in each that pissed the others off, leaving beds made or unmade, laughing too loud when drunk, a tendency to grump when beaten in an argument or game. Missing an item on the shopping list. What did Zanj do for fun, aside from cosmic larceny? Did she even know? What was Gray’s favorite meal? Did he read?
What had been Hong’s name, before he was named?
They were galaxies, all of them. More than galaxies: brighter, older, and deeper.
She had all that to lose, if they failed. And all that to gain.
Had Viv never left her home, had the Empress not come for her, had she never woken to this war, had she never been to space, there would have been no end to the glories of the world.
When afraid: live.
She told them now, told Gray and Zanj and Xiara, too, on the round platform before the star. “We’re here for our sky. Our homes. For freedom from collars and crowns. That’s what we’re fighting for. And him. Whatever happens.” They each said yes in their own way: Zanj with a nod and a tightening grip on her staff, Gray, shifting weight, nervous and trying not to seem so, Xiara with a warrior’s glint in her eye.
And Hong said yes through them.
“I want to live. I want to know you all without this hanging over our heads. I want to make you watch me get old. I love you. Let’s do this. And when it’s done, let’s do something else.”
“Dance party,” Gray said. His voice was raw. They all were. “We can get those spider guys to do the music.”
Xiara laid hers on top. “You’ve never seen an Ornclan dance.”
“Better than you sing, I hope.”
Beneath them, the rings of Pasquarai burned.
Viv turned, at last, to Zanj. “You haven’t said anything.”
She shrugged. “We hit her where it hurts. What was the kid’s line, anyway? For the liberation of all sentient beings?”
“For the liberation of all sentient beings,” Viv said, and each of them echoed it in turn. She thought she heard another voice join theirs.
They held their hands together, and looked from one, to the other, to the next, to the last. And as one, they broke.
Xiara left first—faded like mist through the Cloud, to Groundswell far away. Zanj unrolled the Star into a sleek single-cabin needle, shaped for speed. The ramp descended. Gray was first aboard, and Viv followed. Zanj lingered, watching the rings of Pasquarai aflame an
d the fake sun overhead.
“You coming?” Viv asked.
“Yeah,” Zanj said. “Just … this place looked so much like home.” She raised the sun-gold bar before her, in both hands, and breathed out. “Here goes.”
She broke it.
The sun went out.
The wall fell.
The stars came back.
And Zanj marched down the ramp, toward the rest.
68
THE WAR MET in the deep places of the sky.
Their attack had many prongs, but its goals were simple. Deny the Empress capacity. Strike the starminds that anchored her grip upon the Cloud and the manufactories that built her fleet. Fight on many fronts at once.
The Empress, looking up from her work, would see a daring raid, and dangerous, and might feel a stab of fear at her sudden exposure to the Bleed. She would devote spare resources to crushing them, and securing the border where Bleed chewed the unprotected edges of her sky. But she would not halt the complex machines at work on the Rosary bead that held Viv’s world, her grail, the secrets that would render all this bother irrelevant. Distracted, she would not notice the needle stitching toward her through the Cloud.
Unless, and until, she did.
No plan’s perfect, after all.
* * *
XIARA STOOD AT Groundswell’s heart. The ship hung around her, and the fleet beyond that, however many planets’ worth of metal and rock and flesh she could not guess, all waiting. The crèche, lined with sensors facing in, with arms to hold her, with phosphorescent status lights that winked like eyes, looked like the instruments of torture the Ornclan had inherited from its previous chiefs—those the Chief her mother had broken and fed into the fire when she took office.
The ship breathed, and waited for her.
The first time had been so easy. She had not known what she was doing. She didn’t know how wrong it could go, or how hard it would be to leave the ship behind. Knowing, she ought to be ready now.
It was not pain that made her pause. Pain could be borne.
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