In Extremis

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  “Curiosity?” Lisinthir offered. “It motivated you.”

  “It will not motivate Second.” The Emperor rose from the chair, still frowning. He crossed to the sideboard where Lisinthir kept tonic water on a tray far better suited to brandy. Unlike the healthy replacements Alliance healers had forced on him for the hekkret, he’d grown fond of the substitute he’d chosen for alcohol. He knew it was safe for Chatcaava to drink, but he wasn’t sure the Emperor was tasting it. The Emperor’s mind was elsewhere. “Second is an intelligent male, but not introspective, and not curious.”

  “And Logistics-East?”

  “Even less so. Detail-oriented. A very powerful mind, and precise, but he lacks the passion to stimulate warmer emotions, like curiosity. I would have also said he lacks the capacity for revenge or anger, but the throne may put paid to that.” The Emperor leaned against the sideboard. “I would suspect him of arranging for your capture so he could kill you. No loose ends. That would be his way.”

  Lisinthir lost a beat of his heart.

  “That distresses you.” The Emperor put his glass down and crossed the room to touch his arm. “This cousin. One of yours?”

  “One of mine?” Lisinthir repeated, smiling weakly. “Like a female in my harem?”

  “One of yours to protect,” the Emperor said. “And we both know how you feel about those you consider yours to protect.”

  “He is dear to me,” was all Lisinthir could say.

  “There is a hope.” The Emperor rested a talon on his lips, and that was gentle, a reminder of their earliest days. “They had so many bulletins about you that they surely would have announced your death had that been their aim.”

  “I must hope you’re correct.” Lisinthir tilted his head, forced his mind to resume thinking. “Though I admit it puzzles me that they might be so interested in my disposition.”

  “Does it? When you killed Third? Single-handedly arranged for the increased vigilance and aggression of the patrols on the border? Threatened us with our debts?” The Emperor snorted, nodded. “Yes. That would make sense. You acted like a male with power, and you are loose, gone back to the nation you would no doubt be rallying for war, when you weren’t spilling our secrets to the ears of the Alliance military. Some Chatcaava would have discounted that. Second, while incurious, is not stupid. And Logistics-East hates untidiness.”

  “I suppose I was something of an irritant.”

  The Emperor laughed. “You were a menace, and it was glorious.”

  “Was it truly?”

  The Chatcaavan smiled, reaching up to thread his fingers through Lisinthir’s hair and tug. “My Perfection. Lisinthir. Watching you work the court… do you know how many weaknesses you revealed in it by moving through it?”

  “No,” Lisinthir said, fascinated.

  “You knew I was gone, now and then.”

  “I recall, yes.”

  “It was my habit to visit the Navy.” A shadow crossed those fluorescent eyes, but the Emperor continued. “Several of my errands involved arranging for trouble for some of those courtiers. To take them from the court, or to destroy their power bases in preparation for their removal.”

  “Really,” Lisinthir said, startled. “Why did you not simply kill them?”

  “Even in the court of the Thorn Throne there were males it was not expedient to kill. Better to neutralize them more subtly.” The Emperor let the hair unravel from his finger. “That was how I managed some of the Empire’s politics. And why I lasted as long as I did.”

  “And why you fell?” Lisinthir asked softly, sensing it in his lover’s gravity.

  “Yes.” The Emperor smiled crookedly, showing teeth. “I was too dangerous, and too easily manipulated by the one loyalty I assumed to be unswerving, so much that I never questioned my reliance on its existence.”

  “We all have our weaknesses, beloved,” Lisinthir murmured.

  “So I have learned.” A pensive silence, brief but profound. Then the Emperor rallied. “These messages about you, they were ancillary to the packages put together by Uuvek. I would like to see if he can find more. It may hint at whether they have an Eldritch or if they are lying, and that in itself is information I need.”

  “Need?” Lisinthir asked, caught by the unexpectedness of it.

  The Emperor was drawing on a robe, sliding a wing through one of the slits in the back, then the other. “Yes. This situation with Logistics-East and Second… it makes no sense. The male who was Command-East should be on the throne. He was the one who betrayed me, who had the way into the court. He had access. Why then this puppet?”

  “A mistake?” Lisinthir murmured, frowning. “Or perhaps he wants something it is easier to obtain from a position of less scrutiny?”

  “Possible,” the Emperor said. “Probable, even. He is incurious, Second. But smart. He is playing a long game and I don’t know what he wants.”

  “Troubling.”

  “Very,” the Emperor agreed. “Will you come?”

  “No,” Lisinthir said. “I will remain here for the nonce.” He smiled. “You need time with your own, Exalted, so they will continue remembering who you are to them.”

  The Emperor snorted. “As if that male in particular requires it.”

  Lisinthir laughed. “Perhaps not Uuvek, no. But this is your work, Exalted.”

  A smile curved the Chatcaavan’s mouth, gentle and crooked. “’Exalted.’”

  “Beloved,” Lisinthir answered. “Kauvauc.”

  The Emperor leaned to him, cupped his face, lapped at his mouth with a cool tongue. Lisinthir lost himself there for several moments, breathing in the familiar smell, sinking into the dense and complex emotions that were still fermenting beneath the surface of the Chatcaavan’s mind.

  “Kauvauc,” he allowed when they parted, just enough for speech. And smiled. “Exalted Emperor.”

  The Emperor nipped his neck. “Insolent Perfection.”

  Lisinthir laughed. “Is there such a thing!”

  “If insolence exists, it must have been derived from its ideal. So. Yes.” The Emperor gathered the data tablet. “I return.”

  “You will find me here.”

  Alone, Lisinthir dropped onto the couch and rested his head on its back, eyes closed. Nothing in him could believe in the death of his cousin. Perhaps that comprised denial of what was, after all, far more plausible than that Jahir might have survived the calculus of a cold and precise personality weighing the dangers of a living Ambassador against the deflated potentials of a dead one. And yet… why would the Usurper forgo the power that would accrue to the male who claimed the Ambassador’s death? He rubbed his thumb against his temple, pinched the bridge of his nose in a gesture he realized he’d picked up from Jahir. Could he ruin his alimentary canal a second time with stress? Probably. What his surgeons would say in such case he could hardly imagine.

  The door chime was a welcome distraction. “Come.”

  Meryl stepped through the hatch and paused. “Bad time?”

  “Not at all, alet. Please, sit.”

  “We’ve hit the system limit.” Meryl settled on the chair across from him and folded her long legs. “I’ve authorized a Well transition in an hour, and we’re doing data dumps now of the information you and the Admiral-Offense have communicated to us.”

  “Is that wise?” Lisinthir asked. “To do so before we’ve left?”

  “I’m willing to take the risk,” Meryl said. “The information’s more important than we are, and it’s got decay. Fleet needs it as soon as possible. Besides, all indications show the Chatcaava are too busy to notice.”

  “Are they leaving, then?”

  “Not yet, but they’re forming up, which apparently justifies a lot of infighting. Maybe if it was Navy-only it would be a smoother operation, but the Admiral-Offense’s report makes it clear that they’re trying to integrate non-military units with their regular Navy, with all the predictable friction. Uuvek tells us that the Naval commbands are full of spit and vine
gar.”

  Lisinthir smiled, though he felt no mirth. “They are eager to be about their work, no doubt.”

  Her fur had bristled, a subtle thing with her uniform obscuring her shoulders and throat. He spotted it on the tail curled alongside her hips, and at the backs of her ears. “We’ll see how eager they are once they’ve crossed swords with us.” She sighed. “Which brings me to my visit.”

  “Not stopping by for tea, I assume.”

  She snorted. “They don’t brew tea strong enough to get me through most of my assignments. This one is up out of coffee and into the alcohol range.” She tapped her fingers on the arm of the chair, finally said, “The Emperor. Is he good for this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just like that.” She cocked her head. “This situation, alet… I can charitably call it disastrous. We’ve run the Admiral-Offense’s numbers six ways backwards and forth again and I’m not seeing a lot of scenarios that have a happy ending. For anyone.”

  “I know,” Lisinthir said softly.

  “And given how hard a slog we’re looking at, I need to know if he can go the distance. Because otherwise, you have to understand… we might be forced to cut our losses.”

  “You’re talking about killing him.”

  “I’m talking about eliminating him,” she said. “Yes. If Fleet Intelligence tells us that gives us our best chance for surviving this. If keeping the current power structure is more likely to destabilize the Empire enough that we could beat it. If he becomes a liability by splitting our attention. Or if he isn’t the ally we think he is.” She met his eyes. “Is he?”

  “He is our only ally,” Lisinthir replied. “And, I begin to think, our only hope. Your worst case scenarios… they involve the two fleets smashing themselves to such pieces that pirates and criminals can pick off the remains, yes?”

  “That is one of the possibilities, yes.”

  “We need someone to reshape the Empire into something more in keeping with our ideals. That man is in your conference room now. He wore a human shape to your meeting. He has been a slave in his own people’s harems.” Lisinthir lifted a brow. “I will make clear to you, alet. If not that man, then no one.”

  Meryl held his gaze a heartbeat longer, then nodded. “From my personal observations, I’m inclined to agree with you, which is what I’m going to advise Fleet Intelligence. But I also need to tell them whether he can handle the strain.”

  “He will.”

  She studied his face, then leaned back and laced her fingers over her ribs. “Then I’ll take you at your word, and hope you’re right.” Her expression became more closed. “You’re remarkably calm for someone who just heard me say I was capable of killing his lover.”

  Lisinthir snorted. “I lived through the court, alet, where everyone was considering whether to kill everyone else. Even I considered it. And I did.”

  “Kill someone?” Meryl asked, ears splaying.

  “Did they not tell you?” Lisinthir wished idly for a smoke, resigned himself to yearning. “Yes. I killed two members of the government. They were involved in the slave trade. I wanted to send a message.” He smiled crookedly. “You forget that the Emperor came to power in this environment. I don’t doubt that he is also considering whether you’ll feel obliged to kill him or not, and doing what he feels necessary to prevent it.”

  “That sounds… like a threat.”

  “It would have been before.” Lisinthir shook his head. “He has changed. When he says he wants to work with the Alliance, he is sincere. I can tell.” He lifted his hand, moved the fingers through a piano exercise as Jahir would have. “Skin doesn’t lie.”

  “I guess if anyone would know, you would.” Meryl grimaced. “I can’t imagine what it must have been like.”

  “It was…” What could he say? “Immaterial,” was what came out. “As the court that was will never be again. Everything is changing, Meryl-alet. All we can do is try to guide the change into the channels that save us all.”

  “At least the job is never boring.”

  He laughed. “No.”

  The comm chime was an arpeggio, different from the door’s. Lisinthir frowned. “Yes?”

  The Emperor’s voice: “Perfection. We have something for you. Come.”

  Meryl stood. “Something I need to know?”

  The briefest of hesitations. “Yes. Both of you.”

  “Never boring,” Meryl said again as they left.

  The Emperor was in the quarters assigned to the Knife and Uuvek, bent over the desk where the latter was tapping away at the computer interface. “What did you find?” Lisinthir asked as he entered with Meryl at his heels.

  “We’ve got a pingback from our contact on the throneworld,” Uuvek said. “They’re in the palace. They’re willing to relay data. But there’s a line in the message that doesn’t map to anything in the scripture, though it sounds like a piece of poetry.”

  “What’s it say?” Meryl asked, leaning over the desk.

  Uuvek quoted, “So long as there is breath in me, I will serve life.”

  Lisinthir closed his eyes, head dipping just a touch.

  “It is him, isn’t it,” the Emperor said softly, watching him. “Your cousin.”

  “It is,” Lisinthir said, aware of a trembling in himself that was less his body and all his spirit. Thank you, God and Lady. “He’s there. Wearing…” He paused and smiled lopsidedly at Meryl, “My missing roquelaure.”

  “What?”

  “The roquelaure I misplaced,” Lisinthir said. “I gave to my cousin. He appears to be using it to impersonate me, and he is now in the imperial palace, captive of the Usurper.”

  “How is that even possible?” Meryl exclaimed. “They should have keyed it to you. It shouldn’t work for anyone else!”

  “It is working for him,” Lisinthir replied, since the idiosyncrasies of Eldritch biology were not something he cared to explain… even if he’d understood them completely.

  “So you mean to tell me we have a plant in the palace and someone willing to relay his data out of it,” Meryl said.

  “Yes,” Uuvek said. “And that’s not all.” He leaned back in his chair to look up at Lisinthir. “There were some delayed bursts waiting for me. Your nestsister is on her way to the pirate lair to rescue the Queen Ransomed and someone with an unpronounceable name, and to find out how the pirates might be neutralized.”

  Had his faith flagged? He should never have doubted them. “I have no doubt she will accomplish all her aims.”

  “God Almighty,” Meryl breathed. “Is this what it sounds like?”

  “Alet,” Lisinthir said. “The hunt is calling, and what we hear…” He inhaled, smiled, all his blood singing. “We hear the horns.”

  All the Chatcaava looked to him at that, and the Emperor, meeting his eyes, gave a slow nod.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Can you make sure her suite is secure once I’m in it?” Sediryl asked, her arms full of fabric.

  “Yes,” Maia answered into her ear. “Though I would prefer to communicate only through the earrings.”

  “That’s fine.” Sediryl paused in her antechamber. Vasiht’h had fallen asleep, and something about his cramped position troubled her, and the way he was holding his limbs. Had they done something more to him than enslave him? And would he tell her, if they had?

  At least she’d managed to secure him shelter, no matter how precarious.

  The Faulfenzair was awake, but he didn’t speak, only watched her as she made for the door with her unlikely burden. Strange alien. She missed Daize, who hadn’t been half so enigmatic. Sediryl had never had the patience for mystics and mysteries. The concrete world of soil and growing things, of storm and wind—the world where silent understandings were conveyed not by faith but by the brush of a hand on skin—that was the world she was most comfortable with. Perhaps it was because she’d been born without the facility of every other Eldritch, to pry under the veil and see into the secret hearts of others. But she
wasn’t sorry, or she hadn’t been until she’d landed here to confront the inevitable end of a philosophy that valued the carnal over the spiritual. Slavery could not co-exist with the belief that a body was more than animated meat.

  Consoling herself that she’d never questioned that everyone had a soul didn’t help when she also knew she hadn’t thought it material either. Literally.

  Stepping out of her suite activated her guards, like clockwork toys. “The Admiral gave me permission to see the Chatcaavan Queen,” Sediryl said with the regal disdain she’d seen far too often at Ontine. “Take me to her.”

  “Stay,” said the first guard, eyeing her warily. To the other, “Call and make sure.”

  “Do you always question your betters?”

  “The Admiral pays our salaries,” the first said. “You’re just her guest. Until you’re not.”

  Sediryl pretended that didn’t chill her. She waited with the most supercilious expression she could muster while the second guard confirmed her words. “She’s good to go.”

  “As I said.”

  They ignored her to lead her down the hall; the Queen had quarters cater-cornered to hers, with their own set of guards. The first of that pair opened the door without announcing himself and called into it, “Guest to see you.”

  None of them were masters of their own rooms. She’d thought that license only applied to Kamaney, but her guards also felt they could make free. She would remember that. Sediryl swept past them into the Queen’s suite, and Maia whispered into her ear, “You’re clear.”

  “Sister,” Sediryl called. “I’ve come.”

  For too many heartbeats, Sediryl waited, wondering if she’d overstepped herself or if something had befallen the other woman. But then a face parted from the shadows shrouding the opening into the bedchamber, and then a body, and there was the Queen of the Chatcaava in the flesh at last. So small—Sediryl expected the Chatcaava to be taller, to present a picture more suited to their notoriety. Cruel and large, like dragons out of legend. But they were more like snakes: slender and lithely muscled, quick and elegant. Even the Queen—maybe particularly the Queen—with her androgynous body and her deliberate grace. So slim and so small to have changed the worlds.