by K. Eason
“Didn’t they feed you?”
“Through a tube. Gaer. Elements. I’m kidding. They fed me solid food in the usual way, with utensils and plates. The nanomecha burn through a lot, when they’re making repairs.” She crossed his room, back stiff, hips stiff, everything tight and brittle. She stopped by the window. “Turn off the light and come here.”
“What? Why?”
She looked at him, lip drawn up over her capped tusk in a grimace or a smirk (or both). “There’s an aethership in the courtyard.”
He switched off the lamp. The room sank into gloom, lit by stars in their ubiquity, the embryonic moon, and a blue-white glow coming up from the courtyard that Gaer hadn’t noticed before, from the very large flood-teslas on the very tall poles on the second landing pad, over which hovered an Aedian aethership.
Gaer flattened his hand on the window.
“Rishi 1701-A-TNC,” he said, as if reading the registry would magically reveal its point of origin, its purpose, its passengers. “Setat, I thought Tobin wasn’t telling anyone about the altar.”
Iari took a matching position on the other side of the window. She let the book drop and hang from her fingers like a weapon. “Yeah. Neither did I. Here they come.”
Rishi’s hull irised open. The ramp slid down. A set of two templars, human or tenju, obvious honor guard to a third templar, definitely tenju, wearing a voidspit battle-rig, met Tobin at the base of the ramp and clasped forearms.
Iari let out a breath with enough force to fog the glass. “I think that’s Keawe. She’s the Knight-Marshal from Windscar. That might say why the aethership’s here. Might be nothing to do with the altar. We’ve seen Brood action in B-town, and Windscar’s closer to the fissure. Maybe that’s all it is.”
“You don’t even believe that. But you want to.”
“You’re reading my aura.”
Fractured shards of blue and violet and a deep, throbbing maroon, a knot of greenish worry. He flared his plates, indignant. “Of course I’m not.”
Two more figures appeared on the ramp. Small, casting very long, narrow shadows, with another templar in their wake. Iari pushed her forehead against the glass. “Wichu? Maybe an artificer. Probably an artificer. That makes sense. If Tobin made a request to Seawall, they’d want to know why, and there’d be reports. Keawe probably asked why, too, but she’s . . .” Iari groped for words. “Windscar’s local. It’s us and them, front line to the fissure.”
“You mean, Keawe’s spacer like Tobin, not dirtsider like everyone else in command on this Brood-riven rock. And she’s not an alw.” Gaer puffed gently, laughter and exasperation together. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. You know what I am. You think I wouldn’t read reports on Aedian command? Keawe’s got a service record as long as Tobin’s, and she’s from one of the tenju spacer clans. I can guess that if she’s assigned to Windscar, and not commanding a voidship-unit, it’s because she’s got a reputation for independence, which is a diplomat’s way of saying she probably pissed someone off in the Synod and they dropped her off here.”
“I was going to say—she’s more interested in practicalities than in orthodoxy.”
“So she’s not here just to play escort to an artificer. Tobin did mention the altar.”
“Maybe. But I think she’s here for support with the Brood. Look.”
Keawe and Tobin had started back toward the administration wing, side by side, trailing Keawe’s escort trio of templars. The wichu and their templar escort aimed toward the barracks, probably for guest quarters.
More templars had appeared on the ramp. Only four; but add them to the ones already disembarked, and that made a whole squad. These were hauling gear with them, four crates of smooth-cornered metal, familiar shape and dimension. The templars crossed the courtyard at a brisk trot, the anti-gravity hexes on the bottom of the crates throwing a dim indigo glow onto the mostly dark stone.
“Battle-rigs,” said Iari. “Two rigs per crate. That’d be enough armor for all of them.”
“Oh. Well. That’s probably not good.”
“If they were looking for a fight straight off the ship, they’d’ve come wearing them.”
“Knight-Marshal Keawe did.”
Iari shrugged, as if that knowledge would slide off her shoulder. “Tobin would’ve too. That’s a war-commander thing. We’re short-handed. Peshwari’s people are guarding the altar. It makes sense they’d bring rigs.” Iari paused. Took a short breath, held it. Said, with a resolution Gaer didn’t entirely believe: “It makes sense Tobin would ask for more troops, too. I mean—a boneless killed four people. We had a tunneler in a residential neighborhood.”
Gaer’s stomach knotted around a fistful of cold spikes. “Or they’re here for me. I mean, I know they can’t arrest me, exactly. But I could be detained. Questioned.”
“No.” Iari made eyelock. “Tobin wouldn’t. Listen. He’s given me oversight of the whole investigation. I’ve got two people on my team now. If Keawe and her templars have anything to do with what we’re doing, I’ll find out.”
“Which two people?”
“Char and Corporal Luki.”
She didn’t mention Brisk Array. Gaer supposed someone had told her. It seemed . . . wrong not to acknowledge the loss. “About Brisk Array. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. Me too.” Iari dropped her gaze to the book she was carrying. Meditations, the cover said, just that word. She touched the letters like they were fragile, brittle, prone to breaking. Then she stopped, and made a fist of that hand, and eyelocked him again.
“You still have Sawtooth’s chip?”
“Of course. In there.” He turned his head partway, jerked his chin back toward the bedroom. And realized, as her eyes widened, that he’d left the door ajar, and that she could see his shrine from here.
It was habit, that shrine to the Five; it was custom, not faith. Shame made him want to step between her and the door. Block her view. Explain—words already crowding behind his teeth—that he was an arithmancer first, but you went through the religious motions, if you wanted to get anywhere in the Five Tribes. You performed. But Iari didn’t perform, so maybe that wouldn’t impress her. Might offend her. Might—
Iari was already done looking, one blink, no comment. “Well. Just keep it secure. Deny that you have it, if someone comes and demands it that isn’t me or Tobin. No one from the Aedis can touch it. No one with nanomecha. Priest, templar, doesn’t matter. Whatever’s on that chip isn’t just dangerous to riev, it’s dangerous to the Aedis at large.”
“Wait, what?”
“Listen. Iffy brought me the voidspit medical report. A battle-hex attacked my nano, probably through contact, probably from Sawtooth. It took a large percentage of my nanomecha temporarily offline. That’s why I didn’t have the syn. The nanomecha turned it back—there’s nothing left of it, not even fragments, to reverse engineer. But they changed some of their own basecode in the process. The report calls that a proper response. I just don’t know.”
There were members of SPERE who’d very much like that information. If Gaer delivered it, he’d be able to choose his next assignment (a bigger Weep fissure, on a less backwater planet). But SPERE wasn’t void-sealed. The Protectorate had agents inside. Everyone knew that. And dear dark lords, what would they do with a code that could take the templars offline, even temporarily?
Iari had to know all of this, so, “Why are you telling me this? They can’t want you to be telling me this.”
“My discretion. My command. And you’re the only arithmancer I’ve got right now.” Iari crossed her arms, pinning the book against her belly. The motion tugged her skinsuit collar askew. Bared a smudge of green-purple bruise just below her collarbone. Same color as her aura. “I do know neither you nor I sensed any Brood emanations where Pinjat died, and we know that Sawtooth was there. And yet a day later, that riev set off every alarm in my
rig. So clearly the infection progressed in him, and it didn’t in me. Or that basecode change is the infection, and it’s just going slower in me.”
She was asking, without asking, if the report could be wrong, if what happened to Sawtooth could happen to her: oozing Brood-slime, going mad. Asking him, because he was the arithmancer who’d examined that chip. Her arithmancer.
Reflex, instinct, said say no, reassure her. That was diplomacy, wasn’t it? She would believe him (probably). And he would be right (also probably). But she deserved more than a one-word platitude.
“Brood effluvia gets into a body, the body breaks down. That’s Brood-rot. You know this already. Sawtooth could—probably did—have that direct contact, from the chip if nothing else, so any infection could’ve gotten into the hexes that way. In theory. Point is, you never came in direct skin-on-slime contact with Brood. If this so-called infection needs an organic vector you should be fine. If it doesn’t—well. Your nano have recovered. They rewrote their own basecode. That’s like throwing off an infection, isn’t it? And if there was a danger, would Tobin have given you a command?”
“Maybe.” She curled her lip over the capped tusk, a not-smile that made her scar twist like k’bal script. “My new authority means any meetings that touch on this investigation, I’ll be part of, as a courtesy. So I’ll know if there’s voidspit about to come down on Char, or if someone from Seawall or offworld decides to lay claim to that chip.” Her eyes went back to that book, to Meditations. “Then it lands on me how to react. Whether or not to comply with any orders I think run counter to the Aedis’s interests.”
“Tobin’s put that on you. Defy your superiors, if necessary. Defy his superiors.” That was, Gaer thought, all five hells of a burden.
“If something happens. Doesn’t mean something will.”
In Gaer’s experience—mandatory military service, then SPERE—the unexpected had a nasty habit of happening if there was a large bureaucracy involved. Let some nebulous Aedian superior, already upset about riev, discover the Five Tribes not-really-just-an-ambassador was hip-deep in proprietary arithmancy—all that data, everything he hadn’t sent to SPERE command, that was right there, on his tablet and his turing, and that would let loose a political firestorm. The Confederation could charge him with espionage, just for having that.
Let his mind travel this road long enough, he’d have the plot for a vid series (involving expensive hex-effects) and an ulcer. What was true: Iari was here when she did not have to be, warning him about an aethership, claiming responsibility for the investigation, and, obliquely, for him. And if someone sent people for him—templars, high-ranking priests with their wretched implants and alchemy—well. Cross that fissure when he came to it, and hope he didn’t fall in.
Trust Iari. That’s all he could do.
* * *
—
The bells rang end-of-prayers then, interrupting conversation. People streamed out of the temple’s double-wide doors. Iari couldn’t really see faces from this height and distance, with the contrast of light and shadow. Couldn’t see expressions. Could see how everyone paused or detoured past the aethership, on an inefficient and cold autumn outdoor walk to the mess hall.
“Why are you still here?” Gaer’s voice was quiet. His burnt-sugar smell was much stronger now, sharp enough to sting the back of her throat.
“Because I told Corporal Luki to meet me here with my armor.”
“With your armor.”
“They might not call for me. Or for you. But if they do—”
“They. Tobin.”
“—then I want to be in uniform.”
“Ss.” Gaer moved away from the window. He didn’t seem angry. Anger, on Gaer’s face, was a sunset spangling. This time—smudged by the reflection, but still bright against the darkness outside—his chromatophores flashed like plasma, like stars. A faint whiff of hot metal joined the burnt-sugar nerves. Might’ve been fear, or anger. Might’ve been, oh, just how vakari smelled. Might’ve just been Gaer.
Iari’s gut ratcheted tight. Vague scenarios played out in which battle-rigged templars appeared at the door, sent by someone other than Tobin. Those templars—strangers from Windscar, people she didn’t know, insisted that she go with them. That the investigation had been turned over to someone else. That she no longer had a unit to command.
Which was all absurd. She’d done nothing wrong, first; and second, she’d hadn’t even issued an order yet, except get me my armor, so the idea of losing a command she’d barely had shouldn’t make her guts turn to cold jagged shards. She had nothing to protect, here. Nothing really to lose.
Except Char. They wouldn’t do well under another commander.
And Gaer, if someone (who? Keawe?) decided another templar should be assigned to escort him. Or—ungentle Ptah, Hrok, every Element in their most martial aspect—they decided to arrest him, or detain him for questions. She didn’t believe Tobin would order that, but Tobin might not (be able to) stop Keawe if she had Seawall’s orders behind her.
Her vague scenario acquired details: putting herself between any arresting officers and Gaer. The syn tingled down her spine and into her fingertips and offered itself as an option. Iari wished it back, down, impossible. Templars didn’t fight with each other. Brood was the enemy.
She flicked a glance at her own window, just visible from Gaer’s. Impossible to see if there was anyone inside, moving shadows that would say Char or Luki. They should be arriving soon, they should be—
The door chimed.
Gaer crossed the room in a fluid bound that reminded Iari why the Confederation had been losing the Expansion war until the Aedis developed the syn.
“Gaer,” she said. “Easy. Let me.”
He ignored her. Drew himself up to his full vakar height and wrenched the door open: chest out, plates mostly flat, teeth bared in an etched blue grin.
“Corporal Luki. Do come in. You, too, Char. Or should I say templar-initiate? Congratulations.”
“I’m here,” Iari said, before Luki could manage more than a dry-voiced Good evening, Ambassador. She stepped into line-of-sight. It was, yes, Luki and Char at the door, and only those two. Char had Iari’s gear balanced in the crook of their prosthetic. Chestplate, gauntlets, greaves. Not the battle-rig, Iari hadn’t expected that—but still, her gut dropped. The templars on Rishi had rigs. They’d’ve had time to outfit themselves by now.
Luki managed to come in without flinching, though Iari worried she’d roll an eye out of her skull, trying to watch Gaer without turning her head.
“Lieutenant. We’ve got your armor, sir. And, ah. The Knight-Marshal wants to see you at your earliest convenience.”
“Thank you, Corporal.”
Char ignored Gaer. Marched straight to Iari and offered the uniform with a murmured, “Lieutenant. We did not close the window in your quarters, as you ordered.” The riev paused. Then, thoughtfully: “There was a black cat on the bed.”
“That’s Tinycat,” said Iari. “Thanks, Char.” She cast around for a place to put Meditations. Ended up offering it to Char, in trade for the armor.
The riev took the book carefully, balanced it in their massive palm and tilted their head to look down at it.
Luki, having no convenient book to stare at, was pretending not to watch Gaer. Pretending not to watch Iari putting on armor. Pretending, and failing, and probably giving herself a headache, trying to stare all directions at once. She was taking little breaths through her mouth. Well, sure. It smelled like vakari sweat in here (burnt sugar, hot metal), and whatever voidspit incense it was Gaer burned at the shrine he had in the bedroom. Templars got briefings about vakari, learned about them, but no one ever said they came with odors.
“Corporal,” Iari said, and Luki’s eyes snapped to hers with something like relief. “What do you know about that aethership’s business?”
Luki mad
e a face halfway between wince and grimace. “Nothing official, sir. On the way back from your quarters, we ran into Sister Iphigenia on the stairs. She was looking for you, too. That’s what took us so long.”
Iari raised a brow. Well, that was interesting. Maybe she’d managed a better ally in Iffy than she’d thought. “She say what she wanted?”
Luki licked her lip. “I think she wanted me to tell her where you were.”
“Oh,” Gaer murmured. “I’m sure she guessed.”
Luki did not look at Gaer with every fiber of her discipline. “I thought if you wanted her to know, you’d’ve said something. So I told her that. She didn’t seem upset. She did want me to tell you there’s a pair of wichu on the aethership, along with the Knight-Marshal from Windscar.”
Iari made a sound a lot like an irritated vakar, air squeezed through her teeth. “We saw from up here. The wichu, I mean. One of them an artificer?”
“I don’t know, sir.” Luki’s face decided on frown as its default and settled accordingly “Sister Iphigenia didn’t say. She also wanted me to tell you that the Knight-Marshal from Windscar came with Knight-Marshal Tobin to the hospice, and that they talked to Sister Diran. She didn’t say about what—”
“Oh,” Gaer murmured again. “I’m sure we can also guess the subject.”
“—and then while we were in your quarters, the comm went off. I saw it was the Knight-Marshal’s ID, but I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to answer.” Luki side-eyed Char, who managed to convey a casual blink despite having no eyelids. “Char thought I should. So I did.”
“That was the right call. The Knight-Marshal was looking for me, and this time of night, with the Rishi out there, you can guess it’s important.”
“Yes sir.” Luki’s shoulders relaxed a jot. “Sorry, Lieutenant. I just—I’m new to this.”
“Yeah. Me, too. All right.” Iari jerked her chin at Luki’s belt. “That for me?”