“It took us a while,” I said with great care, “to understand your customs.”
“And indeed, that was war, and you are barbarians. This time, however, you have no excuse.”
“I’m not out for revenge.”
“What are you doing, I-Chen?” Nicolai said, staring at the Spiny who’d been closest to his killer.
“What I have to,” I murmured low.
I bundled up my nerve. It was surprisingly easy, now that I sat beside the Sancho. “I didn’t want you for vengeance, Omz. I need you. As a bridge to the firelife.”
Omz’s eyeslit bulged a little around the middle, which indicated interest. Or maybe disbelief. Nicolai’s shock was easier to read.
“I want Nicolai to meet the one who killed him.”
* * *
The Memory Craft was a filigree behemoth, a ponderous double-hull sprouting teetering wooden towers like thurik, aquiver with sails and crisscrossed with rigging dangling flags and skulls. From a distance it resembled a Spiny brain (much like ours, but more oblong) as if sculpted out of twigs and spiderwebs. The structure seemed doomed to collapse, but this was a misperception. In the first place, Tornfar’s lower gravity assured the ragged fantasia held up better than it appeared.
In the second place, the thing was doomed to be torched.
No one hires a Memory Craft alone, so the evening after the fracas at the House of Flame and Spirits, Omz and I boarded with twenty-six other Sanchos, plus the friends and family of various deceased Quixotes. Our little band stood apart beside a lit brazier, as did the other knots of celebrants. Our steamer tug pulled us seaward in a twilight ruled by a dance of auroras beneath the gargantuan stormy disk of Tornfar’s gas-giant primary. Motes meandered like swarming fireflies.
The carnival kaleidoscope of the Spiny harbor and the cool subdued grid of Earthtown slipped past, and I hefted the Spine Flutist weapon required of my role. It was an obsidian sword somewhat reminiscent of an Aztec macuahuitl, but instead of a long blade studded with subsidiary spikes, it was one serrated triangular wedge with sharp flanges like a pair of mumwolka-wings. Obsidian blades are fragile but sharper than steel. If I knew what I was doing, I could behead an enemy. If I didn’t know what I was doing, I could behead myself. I was more in the latter category. I said as much to Omz.
He played a few trial notes on the flute made from Mnat’s spine.
“Cut your foe,” he said. “Do not get cut.”
“Thanks.”
“Also, we are more vulnerable than you to a spinal strike. Much of our brain is distributed down the upper vertebrae.”
It occurred to me the flanges might facilitate a back blow. “Thanks. Really.”
Omz snorted, which I believed amounted to a Spiny nod. Then he played graceful, eerie music, notes like pebbles plunked into still water, much of it barely tingling my eardrums. The tune was echoed in over two dozen places by the other Sanchos. Weirdly warbling, the Memory Craft sang its way toward the deep. Wood creaked beneath my sandals. I was dizzy, and my head throbbed. I’d rested the whole day in my narrow Earthtown lodgings but still felt sick. Humans lived in this alien city, after all, sharing food with the Spinies, and sharing microbes as well. Note for the future, I thought, only fight in the sewers of previously undiscovered planets.
“Foe?” Nicolai interrupted my thoughts, appearing on my left. “What foe?”
Here it was. “Mnat. You know. The one who killed you.”
He appeared to rest his hand on a nearby mast. “How does that work?”
“I’ll perceive an illusion of Mnat. Sound familiar? We fight. If she lands a blow, I’ll feel pain. Maybe worse.”
“I don’t like the sound of this.”
“If I understand right, I don’t have to win, so much as prove my spirit, my worthiness to commune with the dead. The Spinies respect courage as much as prowess. And it’s not all about combat—the Sanchos can enter the firelife too, becoming immortal through song.”
“The firelife again....”
I couldn’t put him off any longer. “Spiny Valhalla. The celebrated dead live on. In the Motes.”
Slowly he nodded. “I’m no Sancho. What am I supposed to say to Mnat?”
“That’s up to you....”
“Great. Very helpful.”
I shrugged, not wanting to add more. The imprint of Nicolai couldn’t read my thoughts. But he was still inside my head. “All right,” he said, searching my face, “but if I think you’re in trouble, we bail. Understood?”
“Understood.”
All the Sanchos stopped playing at once, a Mote-enabled synchronization that made my heart skip. They all began chanting in Warrior’s Voice, speaking of their lost Quixotes. I had to tune out the babble, focus on Omz. I opened myself to the Motes, and as I beheld the gold intensity of the Sancho’s mind-flame, they whispered a translation.
“To all who watch, here or ashore, or scrying through the Motes.... Welcome. We commune with Mnat the warrior, my sister in spirit. Born in the lowest slagtown of Gwumnok, she was the humblest of free women. For most slaglings, passage to the firelife is but a dream. For how many of us know, let alone celebrate, the downtrodden? Yet Mnat had the spark which ignites the fire.”
The spark which ignites gunfire, you mean, I thought. But I controlled my bitterness when Omz stretched his rubbery third arm across the brazier and splayed wedge-shaped fingers over the flames. In Chinglése he said, “Alien visitors, take my hand.”
Visitors. He was talking to Nicolai directly. I unwrapped my bandaged hand and took Omz’s cool, suckered grip, and Nicolai’s joined ours. Nicolai winced right along with me as we lowered our grasp to just above the dancing flames. The cuts from the sewer-thing screamed at me afresh. I held still.
“Mnat,” Omz said in Warrior’s Voice. “We call to you. You who labored long hours at the darkblade. You who struggled to pilot a Legacy Ship. You who sacrificed all for a chance at renown, to become a Quixote of the Outer Crusade. When we met aboard ship, you were all purpose and fire, and I knew you a worthy subject for song. We made a fine pair, you fighting duels all through the vessel, I your Sancho, drunkenly composing sagas to make you famous.”
I squelched my anger, concentrating on Omz’s voice, further opening myself to the Motes and the firelife. I sensed Omz’s mind, felt his proud ideals crackling like crazy orange lightning-strokes. Elsewhere, the other knots of Spinies celebrated the newly-dead they wished to install in the firelife or the honored dead they wished to summon.
I let Omz pull me and Nicolai closer to that other realm. Omz’s inner world burned into ours. All around us, sheets of rippling light, like luminous sailcloth, shuddered and seethed. The forms of Spine Flutists puckered the radiance like smothered things, yet I felt their exultation like an electric shock.
Then a shout arose in the ordinary world. It crossed the water from Earthtown.
Peering through all the glory, I spotted the source. A Spine Flutist wielding a darkblade rushed along the last of the docks, paralleling the Memory Craft. Blue-clad human security raced after.
It was Omz’s current Quixote, Awo()nom. He hadn’t been invited.
Awo()nom sprinted, made an extraordinary leap even for Tornfar, and caught the side of the Memory Craft. I had to give him points for style. He even managed to keep the blade. The humans lowered their weapons, forbidden to fire outside their territory. I caught the looks they threw me and didn’t need them to be Mote-Dancers to understand their thoughts. I was on my own.
Awo()nom screamed at his mentor, and with my mind so close to the firelife, I received voice and translation as one. “Blasphemers! Siblings, do you not see? This human will poison the firelife with her madness! Help me!”
As he scrambled onto the deck, some of the Quixotes took up the cry.
“Okay,” Nicolai said, “this is where we bail. Good thing you’ve got gills.”
I shook my head and saw Omz look disoriented, still reaching for the firelife. We were so close. Soon Mnat
would manifest, and I could beg her for a boon. Just a few more moments....
“I-Chen,” Nicolai said. “Go!”
“Not yet....”
“What’s wrong with you? What does he mean, you want to ‘poison the firelife?’”
“Nicolai....”
“It’s me. Isn’t it. You didn’t want me to talk. You wanted to turn me into ‘honored dead.’”
He yanked his hand away from Omz’s and mine.
Omz reeled back.
I snarled, schemes unravelling.
I wouldn’t give up now, not after light-years and burns and fever.
Awo()nom rushed forward. He wasn’t going after me but after Omz. Of course—I wasn’t going to breach the firelife on my own. He could finish me off later.
I interrupted his plans, by stepping in his way.
Darkblade in my right hand, I grabbed my pistol with the left. Awo()nom couldn’t be sure it was out of juice. He stopped and raised his own blade.
At least he was after me, now. I backpedaled toward one of the spindly sails. Judging the wind, I slashed lines with the darkblade.
A boom spun and smacked Awo()nom over. Three legs quivered in the air as he struggled to rise.
But now a trio of Spinies advanced on Omz.
There was no hope now of meeting Mnat. It seemed I should simply jump. I’d be safe enough in the Sigil Sea, and Nicolai came with the package. Really, how bad could madness be?
I shook my head and rushed back to Omz. Sometimes that’s the only real freedom you get in life: to choose your own craziness.
I toppled the brazier with my foot, sparking the ceremonial conflagration an hour early. Hot coals scattered across the deck, igniting the wood. That distraction bought us a moment, so I got an arm around Omz and tugged him toward the rail. Born in higher gravity, I had raw strength at least. Omz protested but came along. Nicolai paced us, shouting warnings. He seemed to perceive things I couldn’t, as if he was spreading out his consciousness via the Motes.
“Watch out!”
Awo()nom was back, intercepting us at the rail. His darkblade lashed, and Omz, teetering at the brink, blocked with the bone flute.
The polished spine of dead Mnat shattered, and a streak of turquoise blood appeared on Omz’s chest, just above the mouth.
I tackled Awo()nom, losing my pistol overboard.
We each struggled to position our blades. I was a higher-gravity fighter, but Awo()nom had six limbs to my four. It would have made an interesting wrestling match, but unfortunately it was more a knife-fight. There came an almost gentle slice, and then a searing line of pain burned my right arm. Confused, I thought for a giddy moment I’d managed to cut Awo()nom too, as I spotted blood all over him; but it was red.
He scrambled away, balanced himself on one foot, and kicked with the other two. I whoofed and groaned and fell. Things went hazy. Disoriented, I heard my blade clatter, and I was mighty annoyed with whatever idiot had allowed herself to drop it.
Awo()nom raised his.
As he began the killing blow, Nicolai got in his way.
The Spiny didn’t appear to see him, but Nicolai screamed, “No!”
Awo()nom paused mid-swing, looking around for the source of the ghostly voice.
Screams erupted behind him.
I made myself rise, wobbling, clutching my bloody arm. The blaze crackled along the deck, hissing up the masts and roaring amidst the sails. Awo()nom, Nicolai, and I stood within a lucky pocket of safety, but everywhere else surged the dancing weave of fire. In my sight it intermingled with the Mote-visualized veils of light and the radiant ribbons of the aurora, until it seemed all the world ahead and above was a hysteria of light while behind and below writhed the dark chuckling sea.
In the midst of luminous chaos the three Quixotes who’d joined Awo()nom’s cause paused in shock. For beside them a spectral curtain of light intersected a wall of fire, and at the conjunction a figure emerged.
It was a Spiny, luridly lit by flame and sunset, an eerie gold nimbus all around.
“Mnat,” I heard Awo()nom gasp.
As if the spoken name were a signal, the ghost-Quixote raised a darkblade and slashed at one of the living. Her target fell, unmarked and yet quivering in pain.
The other two dropped into sudden three-kneed genuflection. I had never seen abasement so perfectly executed.
Mnat ignored them, strode toward us.
“You cannot approve!” Awo()nom screeched. “Humans must not defile the firelife!”
Omz, crouching by the rail, said, “It is dishonor that defiles the firelife, not the forms we are born with. You have proven that, my former student, by attacking a Sancho.”
Awo()nom looked all around him and snarled, swinging his weapon toward me. He reminded me of Toothsome, dying back in the sewer. I couldn’t move.
Simultaneously, Nicolai punched him and Mnat speared him with her darkblade.
There was no physical wound, but Awo()nom convulsed from this assault of ghosts. He staggered to the rail, toppled over.
Mnat took Nicolai’s hand.
“Yes,” Nicolai said. “I understand.” He turned to me. “I-Chen... she says I’m honored dead now. They’ll take me....”
“Nicolai,” I managed to say, “I can’t make you go. It will be an alien place. I don’t know if you’ll be happy. Do you want to stay?”
He watched me silently, then finally reached out and touched my shoulder. “I think, deep down, you know the answer, I-Chen. I was a navigator on Nightgift, remember, before you talked me into settling down. I like seeing new places.” He smirked. “But you have to tell me what you want. For your own sake.”
I closed my eyes, then made myself open them and meet his gold-brown gaze. Like the sunrise. “Nicolai. Please. Go into the firelife.”
He kissed me gently, feather-light.
Then he turned and followed Mnat into the conflagration. She raised her blade toward me as she back-stepped into the fire, blurred, and vanished.
I pulled off my ring and hurled it after them. It tinkled as it skittered into the flames. It seemed to me Nicolai knelt beside it within the blaze, as he too faded from view.
It was like a spike come loose from my skull, that reeling moment upon a hulk shaped like a burning brain when I gave my husband to another world.
* * *
In the dark before firstrise I sat dozing in the House of Flame and Spirits, wrapped in bandages, draped in intricately embroidered blankets portraying ancient Spinies and fanciful Glyph Lords. Our table nestled beside the kitchen, and the vinegar smell from the greenish soup Omz held beneath my nose made me gag, and gagging made me alert. Everything, body and mind, ached.
“Thank you ... Omz,” I was finally able to say. Rubbing my forehead, I looked up.
There was Nicolai, smiling beside the Sancho.
“No,” I said. “No....” Had it all been for nothing?
“I-Chen,” Nicolai said, “just stay calm.” He winked. “You forgot that the Motes aren’t really telepathy, and I’m not really a ghost. I’m a manifestation of your own thoughts. I belong to your brain. The most you could do is copy me, imperfectly, into the firelife.”
Omz said, “Now there are two of Nicolai, yours and ours.”
“Damn you,” I said to Omz, knocking the soup away. “Spiny bastard. You knew this would happen all along—”
I sensed Spiny minds nearby, flaring to red attention. But this time no one rose to throw me out. They were waiting, watching, giving me another chance.
“Yes, I-Chen Fisher.” Omz offered me a human nod. “You deceived me, secretly planning to offer Nicolai to the firelife. When I understood this, I chose not to enlighten you of the result. For I realized we had a chance to bring our peoples together, if only in this small way. I took that chance, for the sake of much more than your sanity.”
“I-Chen,” Nicolai said, just as kindly as before, but stopping me from striking Omz, before I got myself killed. Which maybe was what I wanted
, just then.
“Look at me.”
I did. Now that I watched him carefully there was something different. There was a glow about him, not otherworldly glory of the firelife but a gentle haziness that smoothed away the snarls of his hair, straightened his posture a little. He sat carefully, like he was posing for a painting, and it was hard to imagine him wiping his nose.
“I’m not the same, I-Chen. You copied me, true. But you did more than give the other Nicolai to the firelife. You told him to go. You said goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” I whispered.
His image softened some more, and when he smiled, it was like Nicolai, yes, but it was also a little like my first love when I was eighteen, and like an old classmate from the academy, and maybe just a bit like a hunky model I’d seen in Epsilon Indi advertisements. I was losing him, had lost him years ago, but the message was now catching up to me like the final light from a dying star. My hands began to shake. I braided my fingers, feeling for my ring and finding only skin. The shaking moved up to my chest.
“I’m still here, I-Chen. But not like before. You broke something in me.” There was no recrimination in his voice, and no regret. “I’m less of an imprint and more of a memory, and I’ll get more that way all the time.”
I made myself breathe, slow and deep. It might be true. It might be terrible, maybe for a long time, but....
“It’ll be terrible,” Nicolai said, “maybe for a long time, but you will get better.” And I knew for certain then, that he was right about this.
That I was right about this.
I stood, somehow keeping my balance. Nicolai kept sitting, making no move to follow. To Omz I said, “I need to go look at the sea for a while. But I’ll come back. And if you’re still here I’ll buy you a drink. And then, if you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to you. About... people we’ve shared.”
Omz snorted. “It would please me.”
“And—Nicolai.”
He looked up, and I said silently, I’d like to talk to you again too. Just for a while. But not right now. I want to be alone, now.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies #90 Page 2