In Extremis

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  “Is it confusing to be in two places at once?” Sediryl asked.

  The D-per smiled. “I guess it would be if I didn’t process external stimuli so quickly. But I do, so it’s all good. What are you up to? Writing your will?”

  Sediryl’s fingers seized on the edge of her tablet.

  “That was a joke,” Maia said, coming closer now. “But it’s also not a bad idea, if you haven’t already.”

  Sediryl swallowed. “Everything I have devolves onto the next heir of Nuera, absent instruction otherwise.”

  “Right. So what was engrossing you?”

  “I am choosing my character.” Sediryl lifted her chin. “I can’t go to this pirate nation and proclaim myself Sediryl-Liolesa’s-ambassador-maybe-heir. I need to be… someone else. Someone angrier.” She looked at the data tablet. “More like what I used to be, rather than what I am.”

  “Good start?” Maia sat across from her, on the chair by the desk.

  “And also, I must be attractive, but forbidding.” Sediryl managed a smile. “I’ve learned the hard way that if you are caught too quickly, you lose your allure.”

  “I suppose it works that way, sometimes.”

  How did romance work among D-pers? It didn’t seem the time to ask. Though Sediryl did briefly wonder about the communications between Maia and Uuvek…. “Anyway. So my only question is… red, or white?”

  “Pardon?”

  Sediryl turned the data tablet to projection mode. “Red, or white.”

  Hyera had designed her only two costumes that suited her purposes: one in all white leather, lined in white fur, with boot heels that could gouge out an eye; and the other in dark red suede, with a train. Also with boot heels that could gouge out an eye. Hyera had defaulted to spikes when striving for intimidating and attractive.

  “Well,” Maia said. “Those are… assertive. I’m surprised at the lack of black, though.”

  “Black would be trite.” Sediryl folded her arms. “And it makes me look washed out.”

  Maia eyed her. They both started laughing. Once they started, they kept on, too, until the knot in Sediryl’s stomach loosened a little.

  “This is ridiculous,” Maia said, still snorting.

  Sediryl wiped her eye carefully. “I hope not. I’m trying for ‘above your touch,’ not ‘ridiculous and easily dismissed.’”

  “No one’s going to dismiss you in either of those get-ups,” Maia said. “Especially if you add a gun. Make it a human one, nice and obvious.” She drew a line from one shoulder diagonally over her breast to her hip. “On a holster everyone can see.”

  “Like a baldric,” Sediryl said, uncertain.

  Maia paused, laughed. “I guess, yes.” She eyed the two outfits. “That train… you’ll trip on it.”

  “I’ll have to shorten it,” Sediryl said. “I remember the trouble I had with it initially.” She eyed the projections. “White, I think. But suede, not leather. And without the fur. The fur is vulgar.”

  Maia nodded. “Your pirate leader might be Pelted, after all.” She glanced at Sediryl. “You’re certain you want to do this?”

  “No,” Sediryl admitted. “But it doesn’t change that I must.”

  Maia sighed. “All right. Daize’s prepping a room for you over there when you’re done here.”

  “Daize is the one thing I’m not sure how to explain,” Sediryl said. “A Faulfenzair? Surely that will look suspicious when they’ve just captured a Faulfenzair vessel in-system.”

  “Maybe. But we’re closer to their homeworld here than we are to the Alliance. You can pull it off if you decide to pull it off.” Maia eyed the white outfit. “Put her in a matching collar or something. You can say one of the benefits of working with slavers is access to their stock.”

  Sediryl inhaled sharply.

  “Arii?”

  “My cousin’s beloved, and the Chatcaavan Queen,” Sediryl said, and saw that Maia understood. If Sediryl presented herself as a slave-owner, she might be able to ‘shop’ amidst the pirate king’s wares…or even get him to give her one as a present.

  “Yes, that will work,” Sediryl made herself say. “If Daize is willing.”

  “I’m sure Daize will find it distasteful,” Maia said. “So will we.” And paused. “Are you going to try on one of these things?” At Sediryl’s arched brow, the D-per said, “I’m curious now.”

  Sediryl laughed. “Are you? Very well then.” She twirled a finger. “Back turned, if you would.”

  “I’m not interested in you that way!”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t change that I don’t like to be stared at while changing.” Sediryl’s mouth twitched. “Besides, I’ve had a female lover. I no longer think of women’s eyes as necessarily neutral.”

  Maia stood so she could settle on the chair backwards, her eyes facing the wall. “That must be a pain.”

  Sediryl began the modifications to the white outfit. “It can be.”

  After a moment, Maia said, “You do realize that I can see everything that’s happening on this ship whether I’m looking at it with my avatar or not?”

  “Hush, you.”

  Maia laughed. And then sighed. “Well. There’s that. I can still laugh when we’re about to do something this insane.”

  Sediryl made a noncommittal sound as she pulled on the layers. This costume, had it been made by Eldritch hands, would have been a baroque nightmare in need of at least two lady’s maids to get it onto a person. The Alliance, thankfully, had better fasteners, more forgiving fabrics that still looked like their sterner counterparts, and no respect for the traditions that would have prevented shortcuts. The corset was still a pain, but she’d used them for decades at home, and putting one back on was at least unsurprising.

  The spikes on the boots remained irritating, however. Even with the technological gimmicks that stabilized them and prevented fatigue. But Hyera had insisted they were stunning, so… Sediryl turned, the ankle-length train rustling around her. “There. Observe.”

  Maia faced her, and in vain Sediryl sought some reaction but the smooth Seersan face didn’t change. Her ears remained pointedly erect, her eyes hard, her cheeks immobile. And she stared for… a long time.

  Sediryl didn’t mind, though. She’d forgotten how Hyera’s crazier costumes affected her. It hadn’t taken her long to abandon Eldritch costume on arrival to the Alliance, and for years now she’d eschewed fancy garb in favor of simpler, more comfortable things: still pretty, of course, but not complex and not showy. But there was something about being showy, and she knew an Eldritch in white—especially the white Hyera had designed, faintly pearlescent—was stunning.

  “Well,” Maia said at last. “The train’s still longer than I’d think comfortable. And the heels look improbable, but they’re artificially steadied by something, aren’t they?” At Sediryl’s nod, the D-per continued, “River help you if someone cuts power to them somehow. I hope you can still walk in them.”

  “I can. I just find it irritating.”

  “I bet you do.” Maia sighed finally, ears splaying. “The truth is… you pull it off. Like bitter royalty.”

  The words echoed in her head. Bitter royalty. Is that what she would have become, had she not been careful? If she’d let her mother’s actions poison her?

  “But I’ll add my own touch, if you allow?”

  “Please,” Sediryl said.

  Maia drifted to her, and in her arms as she stretched them out materialized a white harness. She stopped in front of Sediryl and looped its insubstantial straps over one of Sediryl’s shoulders, another around her waist, and slowly the thing became material as the D-per adjusted it around the costume and fitted it. Only then did she add the white holster. The gun in it, though, was black, and somehow far more real than anything else Sediryl was wearing: more real, and more symbolic, as if Maia had buckled a knot of death to her hip.

  “But how do I use it?” she asked, tentative. “I have never.”

  “It’s easy,” Maia said. �
�Unfortunately. That’s how people die so quickly. But yours in particular has a laser sight. Point the muzzle at whatever you want dead. Make sure the red dot is somewhere lethal, like their heart or their head. Pull the trigger. The gun won’t respond to anyone but you.”

  Sediryl stared down at it, disturbed. “It won’t accidentally discharge?”

  “It’s got an automatic safety.” Maia looked at it. “They only put those on training weapons, but it should serve for this. If you’ve got it up and pointed at someone, the safety’s off. If it’s anywhere else, the safety’s on. There’s a physical switch if you want to turn it off. I’ll show you—”

  The ship twitched violently and stilled just as fast. Maia’s face whipped up, eyes blanking to white orbs. Sediryl stepped back from her, startled.

  Then the D-per grabbed her by the wrist. “We’ve been hit. They’ve found us.”

  “But how...”

  “Later,” Maia said, and they were running up the corridor to the bridge. The stabilization on the heels worked fine, she thought, breathless. It was the panic spiking her bloodstream that was making her legs shake. “No time. You’re on. Make it work, arii. Sell it hard.”

  What did she know? They’d been struck by a weapon, it was pirates. How large a vessel? Did it matter? She couldn’t fight them. Discovered, they were helpless, surrounded by a sea of their enemies. Maia was right. Their only chance was this one, and it didn’t matter that she wasn’t ready, hadn’t prepared a persona or a backstory, was frightened, was sure now that this was the worst plan of all the ones they’d discussed. It was what they had. At least she was dressed for it.

  “Broadcast,” she said, clipped. The ship chimed and she said, imperious, “Who dares strike my vessel? I come to resume the work of my confederate, only to be met with insult! Speak now!”

  A long pause. The ship didn’t shake again. Maia remained invisible and Sediryl wished she’d manifest, if only so she’d feel like someone would be with her in her last moments if they destroyed the ship.

  A falling arpeggio as her broadcast channel went realtime. “This ought to be good. All right, stranger. Who the rhack are you?”

  Sediryl said, “Visual on,” and felt her chin lift. She stared into the projecting cameras and put all her arrogance into her body, all her anger and resentment, and all her hauteur. Everything Eldritch were purported to be... and everything she’d been, in her worst days, exiled and embittered and left to rot. Trained to command a house—chosen to perhaps rule an empire, one day. If she survived. She would survive, and she would bring her people out of this, and save the Alliance and the Eldritch and yes, even the dragons if any good ones could be found, in the bargain.

  “My name,” she said, “is Sediryl Nuera Galare. And I have come to make good on Baniel Sarel Jisiensire’s promises of plunder and conquest.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It remained perilous and strange, to be alive and in his right body, like handling a sharp-edged knife with numb fingers. That he could have been delivered from a hell he’d deserved back into life, and even more, into the life he’d left with all its privileges and responsibilities… it was surreal, like a dream from which he could not fully wake. The rings on his horn—they were weights that drew his head down from its proud arc. When he didn’t catch himself, he found himself bent, awaiting the blows he’d come to expect. He was no longer naked, and yet the clothing felt less real than the weariness and uncertainty that mantled him, dragging at his shoulders and wings.

  The Emperor knew his state was worrying his lover and the Admiral-Offense. He was glad, then, of the Knife and Uuvek. Particularly the Knife. Because the Knife was here, and not with the Queen, and the Emperor had not yet heard this story. It reminded him that even before he’d been crushed he’d been struggling to grow straight, toward the sky and the Living Air.

  “It was her doing,” the Knife said. The Chatcaavan was wearing his rightful shape now rather than the convincing guise of the Seersa he’d been in when they returned to this Alliance vessel. They were in its conference room alone; the Admiral-Offense and the Ambassador had withdrawn to answer the questions of the female trying to guide the ship out of what had become enemy territory.

  “The Queen’s,” the Emperor said now.

  “Yes, Exalted,” the Knife replied, earnest. “She discerned Second’s heart and arranged for our escape. Which meant all your harem, Exalted. The children and their nurses, and all the females of each harem.”

  “But not herself.”

  “No.”

  “Because….”

  “Because she wanted to reconnoiter.” The Knife’s words now were hesitant, as if fearing they would sound presumptuous. “She thought… she could stay, and learn things that could help us.”

  “She did already,” Uuvek pointed out. “She learned that Second truly has betrayed us, that Logistics-East is now on the Thorn Throne, and that we are in league with the pirates coreward of the northern border.”

  The Knife shuddered. “I am sorry, Exalted. I failed. But you tasked me to obey her and to protect her. I could not do both. I had to choose.”

  “And you chose the former because?” he asked, quiet.

  “Because she had the right to ordain her own destiny,” the Knife said, wings sagging. “No less than any of us.”

  The Emperor studied the fretful gaze of the male he’d watched for so long before lifting to the title. Smiled, at last, and if it was a small and tired smile, it remained genuine. “You could have done no less.”

  The Knife shuddered and closed his eyes, head dipping.

  “She did magnificent work,” Uuvek said.

  “Yes!” the Knife exclaimed. “It’s true, Exalted. She inspired the females to follow her. She shifted shape so she could speak to the minds of the tongueless servants in the nursery and won them that way. She arranged the escape with the Alliance by contacting Laniis and the Eldritch sovereign’s new ambassador. She… she did things.”

  And such things…! “Where is she now?”

  “Alive, as far as we know,” the Knife said slowly. “She was to be gifted by the Lord of the Twelveworld to the pirate nation. She said she would find out what she could.”

  The part of him that had been dormant during captivity woke, murmured warnings. “The pirates on the Twelvelord’s border, then. Not the ones on the eastern border.”

  “As far as we know?”

  The Emperor’s wings quivered once. “And they call themselves a nation now.”

  “Or the Twelvelord does, to please them,” Uuvek said.

  They had not been privy to the reports brought back by Third, when Third had been marginally useful. There were pirates in all the unclaimed parts of space, but the ones coreward of the Empire had been particularly erratic and violent. Slavers were endemic to lawless areas, but they were far worse on the northern border… and it was only that area that produced sentient furriers. He’d never had an opinion on the furriers. Now he thought of Simone and Emlyn and Dominika… oh, how beautiful the Harat-Shar’s pelt would be to someone who thought of her as only an animal to be stripped of it. He didn’t realize he was growling until he discovered both his subordinates staring at him.

  “You see,” Uuvek said to the Knife. “It’ll work out.”

  If the Knife had had Pelted or human flesh to blush with, the Emperor thought he would have. Strange that it had become easier to read mortification in aliens than in his own species, but at least the Knife’s expressions were exaggerated enough. “I don’t doubt it!”

  “Don’t lie,” Uuvek said. “He can tell.” Eyeing the Emperor. “Can’t you?”

  “Yes,” the Emperor said.

  “And he won’t punish you for it,” Uuvek said to the Knife. “Don’t you see it yet? This is the male we’ve wished we could serve. Finally.”

  “You shouldn’t be so forward, still,” the Knife hissed under his breath.

  The Emperor watched this byplay, remembering a time when he’d expected it. Th
ose first days in the Navy—he’d always recalled his impatience, his breathless need to excel, to fight his way to the top. But there had been camaraderie, and he’d held it dear even if he hadn’t held it dear enough.

  They both stared at him now, the one guiltily, the other almost daring him to disagree. What he said, at last, was, “That will be enough. You may go.” And hearing a whisper in himself, added, “Uuvek is correct in that I won’t punish you for what others would perceive as insolence. The obedience of unwilling males is worthless to me.”

  “We should still respect you,” the Knife insisted.

  Why, he wanted to ask? What had he ever done to earn respect? Even if the respect attached to the title… what had an Emperor ever done for the Chatcaava to deserve it? What he said is, “You respect me with deference, Knife. Uuvek respects me with fearlessness.”

  “You see?” Uuvek said, unperturbed. “I’m right.”

  “You always think you’re right.”

  “Until I’m proven wrong,” was the amiable response. “How else can you live?” Uuvek rose and bowed, stunted wings spreading. “Exalted.”

  “Uuvek.”

  The Knife rose and repeated the obeisance. “Exalted.” More hesitant. “The Queen…”

  “Do not apologize,” the Emperor said. “If you give someone a knife, you must trust them when they choose not to use it.”

  “But when she wants it, it will not be there,” the Knife murmured.

  “She is a resourceful Chatcaavan. Don’t doubt that she will find a weapon if weapon she needs.”

  “Exalted,” the Knife said, and bowed deeper before letting himself out.

  For a long time, he didn’t move. It had become habit, stillness. Some might have kindly called it conservation of strength, but it wasn’t. He’d come to the end of his strength. Somehow, now, he had to find his way back.

  Perhaps that need is what finally impelled him to his feet, and from there to the clinic. Because someone had given him advice on finding his way back, and she was there, sitting on a stool with Dominika. They were talking, and stopped when the door opened for him. The pard’s expression was interested and noncommittal, which made it comprehensible. It was the happiness that welled into Andrea’s eyes at the sight of him that broke his world into deeper cracks, because how could she be glad of the monster who’d ruled the nation that had tortured her?