And he’d been right.
Jahir bent over the body. The tremor began at the base of his spine and traveled outward, and for a long time he knew nothing but a bodily tension that built until he thought he would pass out.
But he didn’t. And the tension crested like a wave, flooding him with a resolve that dismissed his exhaustion, his weakness, the possibility that he might kill himself with further exertion. Eyes closed, Jahir reached outward. Downward. Throughout the tower. Slid into its bones, seeped into its air, seeded the dreams of hundreds of Chatcaava with fear and nightmare.
The mind he wanted was awake.
/Surgeon./
A clatter. He saw through the alien’s eyes: a tablet. A dropped stylus. Talons scrabbling for the edge of a desk, as if to ensure the world had not tilted.
/Speak, Surgeon, in your mind. I hear you./
/What… what are you doing! You… you can reach me without touching me??/
/I am capable of a great deal./ He listened to the roquelaure’s furious warnings impassively. /Though not for long. I take this risk to tell you that you are in danger. The Usurper does not recognize the validity of Outside as a protective status./
/What?/ the Surgeon hissed, shock framing the word with ice.
/He has told me today, after killing Oviin to silence me, that he would kill you next to keep me controlled. Because he perceived I cared about your fate./
That pause felt electric. Then, low, /You have not been silenced./
/Even my silences are dangerous./ No answer, but he did not need one. /Take steps to protect yourself and your family, Surgeon. And tell others. All the others. Nothing is sacred to this false Emperor. He is not Fitting./
Anger, rising like a smoldering sun. Matching resolve. A terrifying competence, hidden so long beneath a gruff exterior and the necessity of holding apart from a society too dangerous to engage. But it had become more dangerous to cling to neutrality, and they both knew it. /I hear you./
Jahir let the contact fade. His numb fingers moved slowly over Oviin’s stained and moon-silvered mane.
“It was you,” he whispered into that small ear. “You made it possible.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
By all rights, neglect and age should have rendered the Chatcaava’s first space station unusable. At very least, it should have seemed ramshackle. But the Emperor’s initial impression of it was not of antiquation, but of an antique. Observing the patina of its halls and the meticulously polished grid flooring, he couldn’t help imagining a team of curators dedicated to the preservation of the station as it had been when first the Chatcaava built it. There was love here, and pride, and it surprised him, even as he knew it shouldn’t have.
In a conference room that had once been palatial in a culture new to starfaring, with a hemispherical bubble facing the planet, he was met by the Worldlord’s son and several other Chatcaava of his newest fleet. The Emperor had brought with him the Pelted captain, the Admiral-Offense, and the Ambassador. It was a small meeting, to portend so much, but the room did not permit more and that also seemed meet: that like his Empire, he was stripping his military needs to their barest essentials. To their roots. He glanced at the curling white and gray clouds on the ancient homeworld as they were served a hot tisane—by Chatcaava, he noted, not slaves—and then turned his attention to the Worldlord’s son’s presentation. If the room was too old to interface with modern technology, tablets could more than adequately project the displays that showed the scope of the war they faced, and to list the organization tables of the fleet in-system.
“…there are new people coming every day, and it became necessary to do something with them, so I have taken the liberty of making those assignments,” the Worldlord’s son finished, “Because I was elected to oversee the task force until your arrival, Exalted. If I am not acceptable, however, I will step aside for whomever you appoint.”
“Your performance is sufficient proof of your competence,” the Emperor said, studying the list of ships in his navy. His navy, because now he could face the fact that he was no longer the Emperor of a united Chatcaavan Empire, but the leader of a new nation in rebellion against its parent. Truly, he had returned to Kauvauc, who had been the fierce and solitary predator, setting his sights on a monumental goal.
The pause following his statement was delicate, but long enough that the Emperor looked up from the diagram to meet the gaze of his newest subordinate. The Worldlord’s son had orange eyes, reminding him powerfully of the Queen’s. He wondered what mate the Worldlord had gotten this son on, to give him such eyes. “Yes?”
“You will not require me to prove it by fighting a challenger?” the Worldlord’s son asked, carefully.
“You will have enemies enough to test yourself against without being forced to fight your allies,” the Emperor said. “I will not waste our time or strength on unnecessary dominance contests. We have too much to do.” He lifted his brows. “This is the new empire I will build. Does it trouble you?”
“I… no. I don’t know.” The male’s eyes had widened, but he showed no other signs of his fluster. “I have been increasingly concerned, Exalted… what Logistics-East has done, and Command-East… it isn’t right. To turn on a huntbrother this way and savage his flank. The navy has always had its ritualized contests because it is what we are. But this was no contest. No fair test. It was…” He frowned. “It was treachery. When my sire contacted me, I was already hoping for a solution to this problem. He said we should back you because you would create a more sane empire.”
That characterization was somehow amusing. “Did he now.”
“But he didn’t explain his definition of sanity,” the Worldlord’s son finished. “And my sire is… eccentric. We trust him, but do not always understand him.”
“My sane empire has aliens for allies—true allies, not pacified neighbors we raid for slaves—embraces the Change, and…” He trailed off, remembering the Knife’s first interview, and smiled a little. “Loves its dams as well as its sires.” He canted his head. “Is that alarming enough?”
The Worldlord’s son had been mouthing the words ‘loves its dams’ to himself when the question hit. He looked up, and there at last was the startlement he’d been doing so well at hiding. It made him look his age, and he was not so old. But then, neither had the Emperor been when he’d decided he wanted a throne. “I... Exalted…”
“Just say ‘yes’,” the Admiral-Offense said, tired. “He wants you to admit that it scares you. He has a strange sense of humor.”
The Worldlord’s son looked from the older male to the Emperor and mantled his wings, uncertain how to react to the seeming insolence. “Exalted, what I do know is that our nation is deteriorating. Something must be done. Even if he hadn’t become unacceptable to the navy for cheating, the current Emperor is accelerating our demise, so obviously we require a different approach.”
The Admiral-Offense was right. The Emperor was amused. “And mine is sufficiently different.”
“Yours is…” The Worldlord’s son blinked several times, then said, “Yours is revolutionary. And I trust my sire.” He paused, and offered, uncertain, “And I know my dam? She may not remember me, though. She does not always remember things from day to day.”
“Don’t worry,” the Emperor said. “I am not testing you. And as I said, there is work to be done. As soon as we can, we will be deploying to attack Apex-East.”
“Apex-East!”
The Emperor watched him, waiting.
“I have not been in that system lately,” the Worldlord’s son said slowly. “When I was ordered to activate the reserve, I left Apex-East to make the circuit of our reserve bases. That was how I was able to keep back the ships I have brought you, Exalted. But by all reports, Apex-East is crowded with our enemies.”
“Yes,” the Emperor agreed. “But if all goes as it should, it will shortly be deprived of enough of them for us to have a chance. And for that…”
“We need to draw
up plans,” the Worldlord’s son said, relieved. “Yes, Exalted.”
“You have told us what we have,” the Emperor said as the Pelted captain called up the new maps. “Now you will hear what we are bringing to the task. Let us see how many ways we might use our strength to achieve our aims.”
Servants brought a meal several hours later while the work continued. They called in two other Chatcaava who led sizable portions of the new fleet and patched in Uuvek to summarize his intelligence reports. The Pelted captain was the strongest critic of every operational plan they brainstormed, to the point that they looked in her direction whenever they suggested anything. After advancing one particularly questionable scenario, the Admiral-Offense said, “Fleet Captain, we await your ferocious claws,” to which she burst out laughing.
“So I can poke new holes in your ideas?”
“The weak must be torn down so the strong can survive,” the Admiral-Offense said.
“Ordinarily I’d find that statement objectionable, but in this case… so what do you do if you can’t find these remote sensor platforms?”
On it went. They had too little data to privilege any single operation plan over the others, but having them gave the fleet something to begin training to. By the end of the day, the Emperor felt that he had a chance of succeeding, no matter how modest that chance.
“With your permission, Exalted,” the Admiral-Offense said, “I shall return to the flagship with the Worldlord’s son to oversee the implementation of the training schedule. We have little time and a great deal to do.”
“I would appreciate the help,” the Worldlord’s son said. “I know how to command a reserve force, but I lack the Admiral-Offense’s long experience leading an active fleet.”
“Then go, both of you,” the Emperor said. “We will speak again soon.”
The Worldlord’s son bowed, wings half-spread. “Exalted. My final task was to convey to you an invitation to the Temple.”
The Emperor raised his head.
“From the Male-in-Waiting, the highest authority there. He would like to see you.”
“Thank you,” the Emperor said after a hesitation. The Admiral-Offense had paused at the door, but the Emperor made a small negating gesture in response to the tacit offer. “Go with the Admiral-Offense now.”
“Yes, Exalted.”
After their departure, the Ambassador said, low, “You will go, of course.”
“Yes,” the Emperor said.
He asked Andrea, who agreed immediately. The Ambassador was a given. The Knife he thought appropriate, because of the devout streak he’d revealed in those studies of scripture, and in his zeal for the Change. But he also asked Lieutenant Baker, and did not know if she would agree.
“Me?” she said, ears sagging. “You want me to come with you to a Chatcaavan temple?”
“I would be grateful if you accompanied me,” the Emperor replied, standing at the hatch. He had worn his true shape to make this request because doing otherwise would have been a form of emotional manipulation, and they would both have known it.
“But why?”
“Because,” he said, and stopped. He had no ready reply. Being asked forced him to examine all his tangled thoughts. “Because you wish to be part of the rebirth of this part of space, and it will have to begin here. And also… because you knew me as I was before, and I cannot afford to go into the temple of the Living Air pretending that I have always been what I am now.”
She had flinched. “You want me to be your reminder of evil?”
“Of my past,” the Emperor had said. “And yes. Of the existence of evil. Of what we were, too often. Of what I was the ultimate symbol of.”
She had looked away, the muscles in her jaw so taut they pressed against the flesh of her cheeks. But after a long moment, she said reluctantly, “A Chatcaavan temple.”
“The seat of our most important ancient religion,” the Emperor replied. “On our abandoned homeworld.”
“The homeworld of the Chatcaava,” she’d muttered, and he knew that she would come. That she couldn’t not come.
That was the party that stepped over the Silhouette’s Pads and onto the coordinates supplied by the Worldlord’s son. One moment, they were on the alien ship, with its cool and odorless air, its predictable lines and bounded rooms… and the next, into heat and light and a breeze that tasted more real than anything the Emperor had ever held in his mouth. He halted abruptly, aware that the Knife had too, and together they raised their heads toward a sun their bodies intimately recognized. Even the hushed noise of the surf at the base of their cliff seemed synchronized with the beat of his heart in his body: five beats, and then the surf. Five, and then again. The complexity of the scent in the air, salt and soil and sun-heated stone, the astringent green smell of kelp, made him hunger and filled a craving he’d never known he’d been harboring.
“What a beautiful place,” Andrea breathed.
And it was. They had come out on a cliff broken from gray mountains streaked in amber light. The sea at its feet was a steel gray flecked in champagne foam. And the sky, in defiance of the peaks around them, felt enormous, a great bowl, pale blue at its peak shading to eggshell white at its horizons. The sun was near one of them, enormous and orange.
Out in the middle of the water was a long finger of stone, its edge limned in amber light. The Emperor could just pick out the stairs hewn in a winding spiral around its girth.
“Is that…?” Lieutenant Baker whispered.
“That is the Temple,” said a voice behind them. A male had lit there, a lithe young male, sable brown with eyes as yellow as the sunlight. “And you are expected.” To the Emperor, “We understand your time is limited. As special dispensation, you will be allowed to fly rather than climb the stairs, as all pilgrims are required.”
“I will not go without my companions,” the Emperor said.
“They may also fly.”
“They are not Chatcaava wearing other shapes, but true aliens.”
The envoy’s neck pulled back as he straightened in surprise. “You bring true aliens to the Temple? At last?”
“At last?” Baker repeated, ears sagging.
“I will not go without them,” the Emperor said.
“Then they may come as well. But your party will have to walk.”
He glanced at the others. Andrea said, “How long? Can we bring equipment? In case we’re not acclimated to the environment, or can’t eat the food…”
The envoy replied, “It is three days up. And you may bring supplies. Pilgrims do.” He canted his head and let the breeze pull him off the cliff.
“Do we even have time to make a three-day climb?” Lieutenant Baker asked. “I thought we might be called back at any point.”
The Knife shook his head in a Pelted gesture. “We will not be gone from here in a week, huntsister. There are still ships promised to us who are on their way.”
Baker turned an ironic eye on the Emperor. “And you want to be away from your new navy that long.”
“They came because they were devout,” the Emperor said. “To fail to make the pilgrimage would dishonor the beliefs that brought them to me.”
“Well,” Baker said, watching the envoy’s dwindling silhouette. “I guess we should go pack.”
They regrouped at the cliff several hours later, where they followed the envoy down to a small boat. The Emperor sat near the prow, watching the sun sliding past the horizon, coloring the waters gold, then bronze, then a sulky reddish lavender. The Ambassador remained near, unspeaking but almost supernaturally present, as if the Emperor could sense him just by the shape of his silence. At the back of the boat, Andrea and Baker conversed quietly about the features of the world that they could observe, comparing it to other worlds they’ve seen. So cosmopolitan, these aliens… so easy to forget that they took that perspective for granted. That they might see other worlds, and that those worlds would be glad to host them. This world was nearly empty, and yet it had to be. It had
consumed Chatcaavan history and endured past its depredations, and how they needed it now: this reminder of their impermanence. A world become a forgotten temple, for a people who no longer held anything sacred.
It stole his breath, and made the pounding in his chest hurt.
The envoy deposited them at the small apron of stone that surrounded the Temple prominence. “There will be a place to sleep each night,” he’d said, and left them to their climb. And though it was already sunset, they’d decided to begin it. “We have lights,” Lieutenant Baker had said, face lifted toward the apex. “And safety equipment. And I don’t know about you all, but I’m curious.”
Since none of them could disagree, they’d taken the first step, and then the next. The staircase was wide enough for two people abreast, cut out of the wall of stone, and it had a thigh-height wall at its lip. The Emperor had wondered at that lip, for surely fliers need not fear falling. Had they expected females to make this long journey? Perhaps it had been the fabled bell-ringers who’d needed it, for children could not fly. He trailed his hand over it and continued up.
By unspoken agreement, they’d ordered themselves: Baker first, with the safety equipment, and her ‘huntbrother’ the Knife at her heels, then the Emperor, with Andrea behind him and the Ambassador at the rear. As they continued upward night swelled over the horizon. A single slivered moon shone pale against a rope of milky lapis and cream, the distant interstellar clouds dotted with silver, blue, and scarlet stars. He had thought they would climb in darkness and instead they ascended through glory, and he kept a hand on the wall to steady himself against the power of the sight.
The place to sleep the envoy had promised was a built plateau between flights of stairs. Baker and Andrea put up tents while the Emperor walked to the lip of the plateau and stared outward.
In Extremis Page 36