She stood bolt upright. She didn’t want to talk about this. She was - they were several serious, major steps away from even needing to consider this. “Go back to camp.”
“I - sorry - I just want to know what you -”
“Tanos, you don’t know me.” She hauled him up by the arm and locked gazes with him. “But you’re right. I’m a runner. I’ve been running since I died - because everything behind me is burning . I don’t know if I’m fireproof or not, but one day it’s going to catch up. That’s the history of our whole damn dying world, fucking fires of every ancient sin constantly scorching our feet. So when it does - when I have to turn around and -”
She didn’t even know what she was trying to say - only that she wanted to get away. She let go and stepped back, gripping her temple in her hand.
“Thanks for trying. But I can’t - this is too stupid to talk about at all. It should be easy.”
“What should be easy?”
“Forgetting. Moving on.” She pointed. “Go away. I need time.”
“Forgetting isn’t easy.”
“How easily did you forget Sam is a ghost? That her people killed yours?”
His face darkened, he sighed deeply. “I don’t forget , I just… I look at what’s in front of me. She’s a ghost. She’s also a person. She killed people along the way. What would I have done?” He was starting to turn away. “If I were trapped in a screeching hell for five hundred years, because some olden day coders fucked up their magic, what would I do? I can’t say I wouldn’t kill one guy to get out. And she turned and helped Ada fix it, so it would never happen again. You don’t forget , you just… understand. You keep moving. You try to fix things.”
“The thing that needs fixing is me .” She turned away. “I’m too many pieces that don’t fit anywhere. And she was…”
The locator stone. She gripped it in her fist for a moment, wondering if she should throw it away. She had been thrown away herself, after all. She knew Ada had goals, had a mission, and she shouldn’t expect anyone to abandon something they had fought and bled for just for the sake of affection, no matter how deep and rare that affection seemed. But it felt no less like a betrayal anyway.
“Are you coming back?”
She let a long huff out her nose before responding. “Eventually. Tell them whatever keeps them quiet.”
“I’m sorry, Isavel, I didn’t mean to -”
She shook her head. “Don’t let Hail come after me.” She bolted, turning down a few different streets before slowing her pace and bringing her skin down to a cool sandstone that reflected the dark starlight about as roughly as anything around her.
Alone again. She felt no better than she had before, of course. Wasn’t the whole damned problem that she was alone? She leaned back against a wall, got her breathing under control. Looking for answers in the sky had rarely worked so far, but she looked up nonetheless.
Instead of that bolt of fire, that starship from the gods, that sign from Ada, a promise she had never given a second thought to - all she saw was empty space, distant stars, and that oddly misshapen moon. She stayed still and quiet, watching it, trying to slow her breathing. After a few long moments it eclipsed a star. It really was moving fast.
The vacuum around this lesser moon, and the absence of a ring, bothered the animal inside her more and more as she stared. Sam was right. There was almost nothing between her and a vastness so huge it could crush her so silently and utterly there would be nothing left to mark that she had ever lived.
She lowered her gaze, keeping to cover at first. But as the night continued feeling empty, she began to relax her guard, trusting her senses and her ability to hide her colours and break her shape. Part of her, coiling and scaled, also simply dared the rokh to become more than a campfire story.
She climbed one of the ruins, vaulting up the walls as though she weighed nothing. She snuck through old windows on the highest floor, and leaned against the pale stone, staring out across this place. Deep Tharsis. Why wasn’t it inhabited, the way Glass Peaks and Hive and even Campus were? Did the martians not have true cities?
Those were the kind of questions Ada would have asked.
She found her lips moving to the sounds of Azure’s words. “The power to fling you across the stars. For a fucking sword.”
She shook her head. She had to stop thinking about Ada. Why was that so hard? She had only met her half a dozen times at best, and yet the woman was seared into her brain. Nobody else had been so clumsily human towards Isavel, since her rebirth. Nobody else had that irreverent cunning Ada seemed to. Nobody else held her the way Ada did.
She slammed her palm into the old concrete. Gods damn it, these memories weren’t helping.
“I must admit, I know little of matters of the human heart. But there are things you cannot run from, Isavel.”
The sudden voice made her muscles seize up, and she spun towards the sound of the voice and couldn’t see or smell anyone . She raised her palms, crackling with the hunter’s gift, looking for her target. “Who said that?”
Something moved, but it wasn’t a person. The wraith? Too small. A small animal - no, a machine of some kind, clinging to the wall outside the window of the ruin she was in. It clambered onto the window ledge, and its diminutive size let her relax her a little. The small automaton had six legs, a metal body that shimmered with yellowish light under the joints of its shell. It spoke again, its voice androgynous and its tone oddly curious, like it wasn’t sure if it was actually having a conversation. “Another things you can’t run from. You’ve been marked - which I gather is not to your liking, but it is unavoidable at this point.”
“Me shooting you will be unavoidable if you don’t -”
“I understand this is unusual.” The voice’s tone was all wrong, like it was performing or joking. “But as such a strange individual, you can’t blame gods for taking interest. May I invite you to a more sheltered location for a brief conversation? Follow this hexapod, please.”
With that, the thing skittered back out the window. So it wasn’t a mind itself - it was an appendage of someone else. Perhaps another damned god, if the suggestion was to be believed. Some kind of god of Deep Tharsis? Maybe that was why Azure wouldn’t follow them here.
She huffed. It did seem unavoidable, at this point, that gods should be lining up to talk to her. And if they had the power to fling her across the stars… She should see what she could get out of this one. She glanced at the sky, hoping the rokh had other things to do than add further complications to her night.
She scampered after the hexapod just in time to see it fling itself across a ruined street, nimbly defying its stout and awkward form. She followed it across one rooftop, then another, and another. She briefly noticed something off about the air - a smell, maybe, or a sound; it was too subtle to tell. Why were they avoiding the ground?
After a few buildings, a door opened atop a ruin - an unusually clean-looking door. The tiny six-legged machine scampered inside, but the door remained open for her, a warm glow spilling out onto the rooftop. She approached cautiously, ready to defend herself, but from what she could tell the inside was actually quite small. She stepped in and the door gently shut behind her, which she realized with some satisfaction did not worry her as much as it might someone else.
She was in a room split down the middle by a counter, and on the other side of the counter were displays and controls she didn’t understand. Things Ada would have been delighted by. There was a watcher, too, its spherical metal form hovering at the opposite end of the room - it briefly flickered with yellow light, as though noticing her, then settled down on a mechanical table again in silence, growing dim. Isavel realized she had never seen a watcher rest before. Did the ones on Earth do that too? Where?
The small hexapod climbed into an open drawer, and settled into a slot that seemed designed to fit it almost exactly. It clicked in place as the drawer withdrew into the wall.
She frowned. “Hello?”
A swarm of tiny, warm yellow sparks burst into the air on the far side of the room, and she jolted, but it quickly coalesced into a vaguely human shape, androgynous and indistinct in every way. She backed into the wall.
“Whoever you are, I’m not in the mood for -”
The avatar shook its head. “Isavel. The martians of this region call me Amber, for reasons so unimaginative I hope I don’t need to explain them. I am one of the martian gods.”
She crossed her arms, twitching. “Of course you are.” Perhaps she should be respectful, but so far she had little reason to be any more reverent of the gods of Mars than those of Earth. “I should have expected all three of you to court me sooner than later.”
Amber cocked their head sideways. “Courtship is an interesting metaphor, considering your apparent difficulties in this domain.”
She clenched her fist. “I’m curious, Amber, do martian gods bleed?”
The god made an almost amused gesture with their avatar’s head. “We are all very well aware of your presence, yes, though you won’t be hearing from Crimson any time soon. You can’t outrun the fact that you’ve been marked as an asset for your gods. We have fairly strict rules on interacting with most humans, but once an individual has been marked an exception to those rules, well, there are so many things a human can be good for.”
“Let me guess, you want the Red Sword too? More petty squabbling over ancient artifacts? On Earth that’s humans’ work.” She crossed her arms.
“That artifact has caused much more trouble than it is worth. Even gods are not immune to its allure, sadly.”
She tensed her fists, keeping her arms crossed, but there was something odd about that statement. When had a god ever expressed… regret? Fallibility? She wasn’t sure what Amber intended by that. “What about you?”
“If anything, I would be happy to see it destroyed simply to end the trouble, but it ultimately does not interest me. I have a simple question for you.”
She huffed from her nose, biting her lip for a moment before responding. “I need to get my party home, Amber, before they’re killed so far from our gods that they disappear forever. Can you get me off this world? If you can’t help me do that… I’m sick of gods being interested . You’re much more trouble than you’re worth.”
The amber figure seemed to nod, and a hint of humour actually crept into their voice. “Well, I’m afraid I cannot be of immediate assistance. Azure controls the few spaceworthy ships we have, and has occupied most of the fargates.”
Of course. That made her decision to follow the martians with the Red Sword feel even more futile. Where could they possibly be bringing her? What could they offer her? Then again, Amber had just said most of the fargates… “Azure promised to tell me why my gods created me. What they hid from me. Can you at least do that?”
“Did he.” The voice fell oddly flat. “Interesting. I received no such information from your gods, and having just asked them now, they are evading my questions rather doggedly.”
She blinked. “What? That was too fast.”
“Human language is far too slow for us to use amongst ourselves. Even your ancestors grew impatient with the time it took them to even learn it, though they found ways around that.” The figure paused, and reached up to stroke its chin. “We share information, or we do not. Normally, on these issues, we share - though a martian on Earth remains their problem, and an earthling on Mars remains ours. It has always been so. But about you, Isavel Valdéz, they are not sharing like I would expect. Do you have any idea why your gods might hide secrets about you?”
Isavel was baffled to be asked such a question, but it was a relief, in a way, to be spoken to by a god in such a direct manner. “No. I thought they cast me out, sent me here to get rid of me after I… I desecrated a shrine.”
The figure nodded. “Azure tells me they did cast you out.”
Her heart sank, but Amber’s tone was more quizzical than anything.
“ They tell me no such thing, however. Their data suggests this may all be happenstance. Perhaps there has been a mistake.”
“A mistake?” Isavel was starting to wonder if she really was speaking to a god, or if this was some other ancient thing that had delusions of its status. Since when did gods openly wonder what was going on?
“Yes. Azure is not immune to poor counsel.” The figure gestured towards the door with a pointed finger. “Interesting as you are, Isavel, I should not keep you for long. Your friends will need you. But I still have that question.”
“What do you mean, my friends will need me?” Her muscles tensed. “Are they in trouble?”
“Soon. But my question. Everything I need to know about you, I know from your gods, or from the vast information your body is providing to me simply by being in this room.” The yellow silhouette stepped forward, and she was suddenly very aware that the avatar’s eyes were surely not the god’s only eyes. “But this is a deeper puzzle. There is a dark cloud following you. I would like to understand it.”
Her mind boggled at the scale of that question. Yes, there had been an absurd series of events following her since her rebirth - danger, death, chaos of all kinds. Why would a god be asking her about it? “How should I know? That’s what I’ve been asking my own damned gods! It’s just been disaster after disaster since I died and was reborn, and I can’t escape it. You said it yourself! It’s like I’m a walking spark and I set everything -”
“My apologies.” Amber tilted their head. “I meant it literally. A creature composed of what you call code - but apparently alive. It moves a bit like a fish, or a bird. It is unlike anything we have seen before, and your gods know far less of it than I would like. I am alarmingly curious about it. Please tell me what you know. Where does it come from? What does it want?”
She blinked. “The - the wraith? You’re asking me about the damned wraith? Ada made it, I have no idea - wait, what do you mean following - is it -” Her heart was already beating faster as she eyed the door, wondering if she could break through it.
Amber sounded pensive. “ Arbiter Ada Liu. I see. It was created as a weapon? But what is it doing now?”
“I don’t know, following me apparently.”
“Through a fargate. Which you could only have reached through your thousand worlds, since the last Earth gates were destroyed long ago.” Amber’s arms were crossed. “It entered the walk? Fascinating.” The door snapped open, and Amber’s tone changed softly as they gestured towards it. “I will not hold you any longer. I have all the information I can ask for, and alas, I can offer you none of what you want.”
“What -”
Gunfire echoed across the night, gunfire and the wailing battle cry of the wraith. Amber was not lying - it sounded close. Was it attacking someone? She threw herself out the door, bounding across the modest gaps between buildings back towards the campsite, ready to call up shields or dragonfire if necessary.
Her assessment changed when she saw a hooded shape scamper across a rooftop. There were no war barges here, no blue banners or drones. What was going on?
A few buildings over she saw movement, and flicked out her wrist for a single, sharp shot that pierced a figure taking cover from another angle. She darted over, keeping her skin fluid and melded to her surroundings, and crouched down next to the stilled shape. She pulled aside the hood, looking for blue armour to make sense of things.
It was an outer.
She dropped the cloth and stared at that furry alien face, a kind of face she had seen more than a few times on Earth. A pronounced but snubby snout, sharp front teeth, dark grey fur all across the body, triangular ears. What were they doing here on Mars? In Deep Tharsis? Were they the reason the martians had abandoned these ruins? Was there no end to the strange creatures infesting the corpse of this dome city?
The outer had no heartbeat; her shot had hit them through the chest. But continued gunfire told her there must be more, and she saw flickers of weapons only a few buildings away, includin
g a fiery orange beam of destruction that she recognized as coming from Ada’s - Tanos’ gun.
Suddenly somebody was shooting at her. She ducked behind the rooftop wall; their aim was poor compared to a hunter’s, but surprisingly close for an ungifted shooter in the night. She darted into the old building through an opening on the roof, eyes and ears open for danger. A window on the third floor - just below the roof - let her peer out.
More inhuman shapes were moving through the darkness, several crossing roofs across the road. Outers. Here, on Mars. Did this mean anything, or was this one more baffling coincidence not even gods could account for?
Isavel reached around with her palm, trying to conceal her skin against the ruins and the night sky, and fired lances of light at two of them.
Both lances bounced off nothing, flung up into the sky, with the briefest flicker of something just a moment too quick for her eyes to truly grasp. What?
Then it rose from the ancient ruins like a sudden gush of black blood, blocking her path in a tentacular mass and warbling out a strange coo, sounding like what charming springtime birdsong must sound like to the worms and insects those birds would go on to devour.
“Wraith.” She lowered her hands. “What are you doing? They’re attacking -”
The wraith bubbled up out of the street and over the rooftops, away from her and towards the outers. The gunfire stopped, and though her gifted eyes could see the outers, she grew increasingly confused as the wraith did not apparently attack them. Instead, it approach them, and…
Her ears must be failing her. She darted across the gap between the roofs to try to hear better, but that only confirmed her gifted senses were working as they always did. Something was speaking , but a chill went down her spine when she heard it. It was… off. Unnatural. Halting and barking.
Fourth Under Sol (Digitesque Book 5) Page 10