Isavel nodded, pointing to the lowlands. “We get back to Deep Tharsis, and the next morning we’ll be there.” She hefted the hexapod on her arm. “Amber says that’ll be soon enough.”
“So we get going.” Zoa reached for the pile of guns, and turned to interrupt Dejah and Kelena’s conversation. “You think we should bring these?”
Dejah blinked at her. “There may come a day when we have too many guns to kill a god. That day is not today.”
Zoa grinned slightly at that, an expression Isavel wasn’t sure she could have gotten out of her. “Then let’s pack up.” The coder glanced at Hail, still silently leaning against the wall, then at Isavel. “We ran into a few blue stragglers looking for loot last night. I don’t think they realised how well Hail can aim in the dark.”
Isavel felt her back tense a little. “How many? What -”
“Relax, it’s fine. We’re all okay.”
Tanos shook his head. “Except you, Zoa. The way you took a sword to that last guy -”
“They killed my fucking brother, Tanos.”
Cowed, he seemed to scowl at himself and blush all at once, nodding and staying quiet this time as Zoa walked off towards the barge with an armful of weaponry. After a pause Sam and Tanos followed with more of the scavenge, leaving the three martians on one hand and Hail on the other. Isavel sucked in a deep breath, and stepped towards the hunter, whose expression read more tired than determined.
“Hail, you really don’t have to follow me anymore. I won’t force you.”
“Oh, good.” Hail flexed her palms, looking into the hexagonal light pearling there, and Isavel cringed internally at the thought of aiming her body’s weapons at her own face like that. “I’m glad I can choose whether to die on Mars now, or die on Mars later. Thank you.”
That stung, and she stepped back. This was a bad idea. “I’m sorry. Nevermind. I -”
“No, stop.” She let the light fade, crossing her arms and looking briefly at Isavel before looking off into the night. “What did I think was going to happen?”
She wasn’t sure what the change in Hail’s tone was about. “What do you mean?”
“I mean… when I started killing people. My world was so - so small . Everyone who crossed my path felt oppressively close . I felt caged, and when you feel caged you fight for space. I wasn’t the only one.”
She let the little hexagons bloom in her palm again, staring into them, and Isavel watched the frosty geometric dance in the hunter’s hand. “What do you mean, small?”
“The same people everywhere. The same villages. The same gods-damned life, every day. At some point you realize this is it. Nothing will ever change. Nothing new will ever happen, because the world died long ago and we’re just maggots in the corpse, and we breed and we die. And I wasn’t going to fucking breed, and I wasn’t afraid to get on with the dying.” She sighed. “So what else was there? I was caged. I fought back. I broke the bars. You know how I ended up in Hive.”
“I didn’t help.” Isavel knew that was true - if anything, she had made it worse, and that thought burned the back of her scalp. “Ever since you followed me out of Hive, it’s been more of the same.”
“Maybe. But for a while I thought that was fine. The gods willed it. Maybe they did.” Hail sighed. “But you know what? You’re wrong. It’s not more of the same. Sure, there’s fighting, but - that’s you , really. But you’ve taken me so damned far from those villages, Isavel. And everywhere we go, if I stop for a second and look …”
She shook her head.
“I’m glad I smashed the bars and got out. I just wish I’d stopped smashing and realized I was free. I still felt the cage.” She frowned. “I still feel the cage.”
Isavel risked a smile. “Are you saying fighting is the cage?”
Hail looked at her blankly for a moment, then smirked. “Maybe. Or maybe you’re the cage, Isavel. My excuse to keep doing the only thing I know how to do.”
Her smiled died, and she shook her head again. “You don’t have to.”
“You’re not actually giving me any choices. You don’t have any choices to give. I followed you onto a narrow bridge and it’s burning behind us. I can cross or I can jump.” The hunter’s eyes flicked to the stars. “So I’ll cross. I’ll try to help you kill a god that’s making the same damned mistakes I did, killing because he thinks he’s still trapped on a miserly planet and doesn’t know what else to do. I can’t unmake what I’ve done, but I can help things change . Azure is keeping things the same, so we tear him down.”
She nodded, cautiously reaching out for Hail, and the hunter didn’t shrug her hand off her shoulder.
“Then I go back to the places I left. I find the ones like me, the ones with killing gifts who feel like they’re in cages, even when they’re not. I tell them… something. Show them they’re wrong. That there’s a world waiting out here, and that if they spend all their time trying to fight their way free of something that’s only in their head, they’ll end up like me. I don’t know. But I think it’s worth trying to get home for.”
Isavel couldn’t help but wonder. “I was ungifted, at first. I never really… didn’t anyone warn you? When you came into your gift.”
Hail looked at her. “Sure. Didn’t help. You can answer any insult with a shot to the knee, go out and take what you want by force… I was a kid, and I wasn’t a lucky kid, so I got angry. Ungifted people - hell, even pathfinders or coders - you don’t have weapons on hand all the time. The only coder who does is Ada Liu. She never even had to try to learn restraint because that gift is so damned soft, and look how she turned out. You’re a blood-drinker, Isavel, but I do admire that even though you came of age ungifted, you didn’t just start butchering people once you figured out you had three damned gifts in you all at once. Or once you figured out you could eat even more.”
Isavel wanted to say a thing or two about Ada, restraining herself from reaching for the locator stone - there was more to it than that, she felt certain - but she couldn’t deny that youth with killing gifts by necessity learned to restrain their violence or were outcast or killed. That coders never learnt the same might be part of a more whole understanding. “I was too busy trying to figure out why it was happening to me.”
Hail nodded. “And now?”
“Now I want the gods to figure out why I’m happening to them.”
The hunter’s lip curled. “You actually want Azure to figure it out?”
Isavel felt herself redden. “No, gods, I just thought that sounded good.”
Hail put her own hand on Isavel’s shoulder, still not quite smiling. “Well, I know how this goes. Onward.”
She nodded. That was all there was.
“And when this is over.” She glanced at Isavel’s locator stone. “We should say goodbye.”
She was almost certainly right, but the words still hung uneasily around her shoulders. “If we live that long.”
Hail gave her a wry smile, not warm but at least not hostile. “I don’t know why you’re worried about killing a mere god, Isavel Valdéz. Death itself came for you once already, and only has a bloody nose to show for it.” She glanced towards the barge, patting Isavel on the shoulder and setting off.
She breathed a sigh of relief once Hail was a few steps away; that had gone better than she had expected. Maybe the time apart had done her good. Hopefully more time apart would do her better.
Zoa and Yarger had also marched off at some point during her conversation, leaving her to witness the aftermath of the martians’ conversation. Dejah looked pleased with herself and winked at Isavel, as though they shared in some conspiracy, and Kelena had come some way in recovering her stony expression when she quietly stopped alongside Isavel.
“She was a Red Sword’s lover, wasn’t she?”
Kelena glanced at her. “Yes. He was a bit of a fool, and let her hold the sword once or twice.”
The expression on the martian’s face was an odd one, somewhat frustrated, and Isavel
thought she understood. “That went against his duty, doesn’t it?”
“No. Well, yes . But that isn’t what shames me.”
“Shames?” Isavel frowned, glancing back and forth between the martians. “What do you mean?”
“She held the sword in her hands, felt its powers; used it to kill, once, even.” Kelena looked at her. “And then she would set it back down, and continue battering drunkards with sticks or gunning down pirates in a pinch. She never asked for the Red Sword. Barely even looked at it. Even though she knew what it was, what it could do.”
“I thought you said it eats people.”
“It does.” Kelena sounded somber. “But perhaps it did not like the taste of Dejah song Olympus.”
“Well, it hasn’t eaten you, has it? You seem to manage.”
Kelena smiled, only faintly. “Why, just because you see me still standing? It eats from the inside out.” Her eyes flicked towards Isavel, pale grey reflecting the starlight. “Or does your blood eat you, too?”
She didn’t think so. She was fine. Wasn’t she? “It’s crowded in here. But we’re still standing.”
“Good.” Kelena hefted the Red Sword, resting its cool blade with its oddly warm reflections in her other palm. “It’s crowded in here, too. And it’s difficult, already crowded on the inside, to endure the world outside. But it is a good thing, sometimes, to be a city of one. An army of you. You’ll never stand alone.”
She did not doubt that the Red Sword’s perspective on such things was different from hers, but it was close enough that she welcomed the words. It was odd, how reassuring they were, as they rode the small barge back through the night and through the morning above Deep Tharsis. As the outers and their rokh - for they did indeed have a few - formed up with the fleet, and set they out east across the rusty scrubland. As she was surrounded on all sides, again, by a mass of beings ready to strike, for once, against the samenesses and inevitabilities that structured their world.
She was far from alone, but the more she considered it, the more she thought her most comforting company might be herself. It wasn’t the best company she could ask for, or the best she had known; but it was the best she could get, for now. She held the locator stone in her hand, watching day fade to night, listening as the barges settled down to rest for the morrow - whatever rest meant for these machines.
In the morning, the last morning, she woke to find Kelena and Dejah standing silently at the prow of the barge, watching the sun rise blue. They were quiet, so she did not feel like she was interrupting until she stepped right next to them and Kelena shot her a tired look.
Dejah noticed this, too, and broke what had apparently been an intentional silence until then. “Oh don’t worry about her. I already know what you want, Kelena.”
“Do you. And?”
“I think it’s a bad idea.” Dejah smiled at Isavel, recalling what she had said before - she clearly respected a woman with bad ideas. “What is it you people practice, damn near from childhood? Water over stones, wind through the leaves, flowing and empty? That isn’t me, Kelena.”
“No.” Kelena shook her head, somehow in agreement. “You’re a freewheeling drunk and you’re old enough to be my grandmother.”
“Then why me?”
Isavel had an inkling of what this was about, but only now did Kelena confirm it. “Because you’ve wielded the Red Sword before, and you were unmoved. That is what matters most. That, and I have not trained a successor.”
“What about Yarger?”
“He...” Kelena’s voice trailed off. “If I die, the Red Sword goes to you. If you die, or if you abdicate your responsibility, it will not go to him. He understands. I have spoken with him already.”
Dejah raised an eyebrow. “Surely you mean at him.”
The Red Sword did not answer that. “He was not training for this. I do not think he is fit.”
“So if the two of us die, Crimson forbid? Then where does the damned thing go? And after that? Or did you just stop thinking past that little future?”
Kelena’s face slowly turned to a grin. “The chain stops there. If the two of us die, it will be a day of dying all around.” She glanced at Isavel. “There is only one of us I trust will survive to see nightfall no matter what happens.”
Briefly, Isavel panicked, wanting to pull out of the two women’s gaze - but then Kelena leaned against the railing, looking away from her, and shouted.
“Sulakaz!”
The wraith ribboned down towards them from its early morning vigil, hooting and warbling incoherently as it bobbed in front of them. Isavel was only more confused - what, exactly, did Kelena want from the wraith?
“Sulakaz.” Kelena hefted the ancient artifact, morning light catching on its strange metals. “If I die, and Dejah dies, you must take the Red Sword. You must kill anyone who would claim it instead. Do you understand?” The wraith extended tendrils on either side of its inchoate shape and hooted, for whatever good that did. Kelena nodded. “I’ve seen what you do, Sulakaz. To machines, to bodies. So take the Red Sword, tear it apart, consume its essence and its secrets and powers.”
Dejah gaped at her, and for once Isavel thought she knew enough to share the same feeling. “Kelena - isn’t it your job to safeguard the Sword?”
“No.” She looked a little sad, almost, that it wasn’t. “It is my job to ensure it does not harm Mars, and that it is ready when it is needed. Ready for an unimaginable need. That, quite specifically, was the design of it when it was created. That was the memory the first of my lineage, the first Red Sword, rediscovered when she plumbed the Sword’s depths. That is our calling.”
She reached out to Sulakaz, and the tendrils reached back, though they did not touch.
“The Red Sword is old. Incredibly old. And Sulakaz is new, newer than anything I have imagined. Sometimes the new must devour the old. Perhaps, if we fall, that is the need the Red Sword will meet. I don’t know. But I can always hope.”
They watched Sulakaz flicker and bob, and Isavel couldn’t help but wonder at the idea. She was strange and different, perhaps - but she was enough of something similar that the world knew what she was. Even the gods didn’t know Sulakaz - and to think, there were even more of these back on Earth.
“Well.” Dejah breathed a sigh of relief. “I suppose that makes sense. I was worried for a second you would offer the Red Sword to the damned earthling.”
Isavel snorted. “I have enough weapons in me already.”
Kelena smiled at them both and said nothing at all.
They left soon thereafter. A fleet full of humans and mirrans and beasts and machines could not be reasonably expected to be stealthy, even with a god such as Amber shielding them from the sharpest eyes. But they still needed to conserve as much surprise as possible, to unleash it at the right moment. This was apparently a challenge Dejah had faced before, and she did not hesitate to keep her barge low to the ground, the rest taking cues from her. Through the morning they brought down their banner poles and skimmed the brushland and sand itself, weaving between hills and dunes that might have exposed them otherwise.
Isavel kept her eyes on the wraith and the few rokh, but the latter melded to the sky and the former hid under barges, and both had the good sense to remain quiet. She silently commended the mirrans who had trained the terrible raptors to be so obedient, but who she should thank for the Sulakaz’s good sense she might never know. Amber did what they could, providing Dejah with celestial awareness of the surrounding terrain to aid in navigation, mostly by projecting a map in front of her face.
She looked beyond the sky too, a few times, wondering if she might catch a glimpse of these so-called battleships that would bring down godfire. She had to assume Amber’s deceptions were the only thing preventing Azure from destroying them directly. She saw distant specks in the ringless sky, but even she couldn’t make out whether they were vessels of some kind, or something else entirely. They could simply be bright stars or shattered bits of moon, for a
ll she knew.
When Amber warned them they were in Azure’s territory, just after the sun was reaching its zenith, the crews grew even more absurdly quiet.
“His drones will pass over this basin shortly.” The golden map Amber was projecting showed a single crescent-shaped series of ridges, and beyond that a vast plain separating them from the City Azure. “You currently outgun his local fleet, which includes only two war barges he just finished assembling in his foundries. That will not last when he visually marks you and recalls his deployed fleets, and he has patrols that will return here soon regardless. You will need to array your forces and advance within half an hour. Azure will have reinforcements arrive in no more than three hours that will outgun you. That is your window of opportunity.”
Isavel saw Dejah’s face in a rare state, devoid of its usual mirth. “Well, we weren’t planning to sit around. We’ll spread out - two war barges can slash a fleet our size if we’re too packed. Even if we knock them out quickly.”
“It sounds like it’s time to unload the galhak.” Isavel could hear the animals cawing below the decks; their relief at being free would probably be short-lived, unless they happened to enjoy the din of battle.
Dejah nodded, and began a quick conference with representatives from the other fleet groups; smaller ships were assigned to escort large war barges. They would need to time everything according to signals, and visually distinctive hunterfire from Isavel was the easiest way. A blue shot to advance over the ridge, after which Azure would shield himself and Amber would try to trigger the godfire, breaking the shell. A red shot to advance into the plains and charge the city. A yellow shot when - if - they were forced to retreat.
Isavel considered for a time where she wanted to be. Being on a barge was tempting, but powerful war barges may well be the first fired upon, and any novel weaponry Azure might deploy would hit them as well. Dejah seemed to know this, nodding with silent understanding when Isavel declared her intention to face the battlefield from the ground. She had wings, after all, that could carry her far and fast.
Fourth Under Sol (Digitesque Book 5) Page 33