by K. Eason
The tenju had eyebrows. They shot up. “Where are we?”
“This is Samtalet. Edge of the Verge.”
“The Verge, I recognize.” The tenju’s mouth contracted into a grimace. “Never heard of Samtalet, though.”
“That’s fine,” said Jaed. “Don’t think it’s heard of you, either. Are those your friends attacking the ship?”
The tenju’s features flattened, hardened, chilled. “Not mine.” His tone indicated a certain finality, and a certainty, and a sort of bleak fury. “Veeks got my ship.”
“Sorry to hear that. Will you please move aside?”
“Why? You got somewhere to go?”
“Not your business.”
“Veek ship under attack,” said the tenju, “means we wait, and hope whoever’s killing them wins. That door’ll hold.”
“Unless whoever’s attacking is worse.”
The tenju gave Jaed a strange look. “No such thing as worse than the veeks.”
Thorsdottir cleared her throat. “Listen.”
Jaed ignored her, as did the tenju, occupied as they were with staring at each other, measuring, assessing relative strength.
“Move,” said Jaed.
“No,” said the tenju.
Oh, honestly. “Listen! We have a ship. Help us get there, we’ll give you a ride.” Now she had everyone’s attention. “I’m Thorsdottir. This is Jaed. You are?”
The tenju regarded them through narrowed eyes. “Call me Crow,” he said, after a moment. “Where’s this ship of yours?”
“Docked to this one. Help us get back to it, we’ll take you with us.”
“Can’t be a big ship, then.”
“Bigger than yours.”
“Ha. You’re not wrong.” Crow side-eyed Jaed, then thrust the vakari weapon at him. “Take this, in case we run into anyone in the corridors. What? You don’t know how to use one?”
Jaed was so startled that he let the implied insult to his competence pass right by. “You’re just giving me a weapon?”
“Why? You going to hit me with it?”
“I—No.”
“Good. Listen, since you’re Confederation and you don’t know better: your people and mine don’t fight. We trade. So let me trade you this whitefire wand for that damaged person.” Crow jabbed his chin at Thorsdottir. “She needs help.”
“She can hear you,” said Thorsdottir. “She’s fine. Jaed, you need to get Rory.”
“Rory?” Crow snatched the wand back. “What’s Rory?”
Jaed shot Thorsdottir a grim, guilty glance. “Who, not what. Our friend. The vakari took her.”
Crow grunted. “Then she’s dead. Or she’ll be somewhere we can’t get to. I’ll help you get to your ship, but I’m not running around looking for a dead person.”
“Our ship won’t leave without Rory,” said Thorsdottir. “You two find her. Just get me into the corridor, and I’ll make it back to Vagabond on my own.”
If she had a nice bulkhead to lean against, the journey would not be too difficult, or at least, not impossible. The medical facilities on Vagabond were rudimentary, no med-mecha, but Zhang would be able to patch her up. Somehow. With something. Medicine, like arithmancy, tended toward the magical in Thorsdottir’s mind.
“No, you won’t. Crow, all right, let’s trade.” Jaed took the weapon as if it might whip round to bite him. “I really don’t have any idea how to use this.”
“Triggered by impact. Jab someone, it’ll fire.” Crow shoved a brusque, ungentle, practical shoulder into Thorsdottir’s ribs with a force she felt through the hardsuit. Then he heaved, and shifted her weight mostly off her own feet, and onto himself.
“I got you. You won’t fall,” he said, with what she supposed was an attempt at reassurance. It sounded more like a dare.
Jaed, meanwhile, tested the weapon by smacking it against the central console. A whitish-blue ball of current formed on the end, sending out curious fingers that licked over the console. Thorsdottir smelled burning polysteel.
Jaed stared with something like awe at the wand. “That’s not electricity.”
“No, it’s whitefire. Already said that.” Crow began hauling Thorsdottir toward the door. “Burns just about anything.”
“You’re still alive. Tenju immune to it?”
“I’ve got a battle-rig with good hexes. It’ll turn a couple hits.”
Battle-rig was a good name. Better than armor. And appropriate. Thorsdottir had a good vantage to examine the smears of soot and scorch marks, hanging as she was off Crow’s shoulder. The tenju had definitely seen some battle, and more than what had happened here.
“It’s like plasma, but not,” Jaed was saying, with that distracted fascination he and Rory could get sometimes, when they encountered something new. It was an endearing, maddening trait, fine for meeting a new species of butterfly on a walk through the fields; it was less appropriate when escaping a hostile ship under attack from unknown persons.
But then Jaed said, “How’s whitefire react with phlogiston?” and Thorsdottir forgave him.
“Explosive, if there’s enough of it,” said Crow. “Why? You an alchemist?”
Jaed hesitated half a beat. “Arithmancer.”
Messer Rupert had said many times in Thorsdottir’s hearing that mathematics underlay all the scientific arts, including alchemy. The difference between this material and that was a chemical formula, which could be rendered into an equation. In theory, therefore, an arithmancer could practice transmutation, if they had the correct equations and a sufficient grasp of the underlying chemistry. There would be no phlogiston particles in a ship’s aether if the scrubber-hexes were working to transmute the flammable phlogiston to unburning, breathable air. Thorsdottir knew from experience what an arithmancer could do against a fixed hex, given sufficient time and skill. If Jaed tried transmuting on the fly, air to phlogiston—breaking a hex and performing alchemy—he probably wouldn’t succeed. Math that complex did not happen in moments, particularly with the sorts of distractions that tended to come with battles. Or rather—math did not happen that fast without errors, which could be fatal if there was phlogiston involved.
Thorsdottir could not see Crow’s face from this vantage. His voice, however, came out taut, gathered, coiled. “All right, arithmancer. You take point.”
Jaed set himself in front of the door. He dropped the wand down, so that it hung beside his thigh. “Ready. On three. Two.”
They opened the door.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Humanity had, in the years before first contact, spent a great deal of time imagining what other life forms might exist in the multiverse, and whether or not they would be friendly. Much fiction and art and scholarship had been devoted to speculation. As is often the case, anticipation is more dramatic than reality. Despite its apparent size and fecundity, there appeared to be a lack of sentient species in the multiverse. Prior to these accounts, humanity knew of only three: itself, the mirri, and the k’bal, and for most people (of all species), that knowledge was confined to the most cursory facts about the others. Everyone knew what their fellow xenos looked like (more or less, since no one had actually seen a mirri unsuited), and more importantly, that they posed no threat.
Rory’s personal contact with xenos had been limited to her Naming Day, to which k’bal and mirri ambassadors had been invited, and her father’s state funeral. In neither case had she personally interacted with them. Messer Rupert had, being the Vizier, as had her mother, but their interactions had been limited to pleasantries mediated by a translation hex. Rory knew that the Merchants League had both a more frequent and more knowledgeable contact than the Consortium, conducting commerce with the k’bal and mirri. The mirri maintained a single political entity to which all mirri belonged. The k’bal maintained several factions, loosely associated and occasionally in conflict, but
the k’bal were also pacifists, and so their settling of conflicts involved the relative volume of cranial venting and elaborate dance competitions to which non-k’bal were rarely invited. No one shot at anyone.
Which is to say: the humanity Rory knew did not have much experience with violence other than their own, which had, until this point in their history, been more than sufficient. To discover a xeno species that was at least as violent, and more efficient and effective, was unsettling.
As Rory Thorne followed Sub-Commander Koto-rek ia’vakat’ia Tarsik, conscious that each step increased her separation and isolation in a strange vessel, among a strange people who showed great skill with violence and arithmancy, she was, indeed, unsettled. But she was also exhilarated, and because of that, unable to keep from staring around like a small child.
She had not been sure what to expect from the Sissten’s architecture. Mirri and k’bal were not bipeds, so, predictably, their ships were not designed for two arms, two legs, and a relatively vertical posture. Vakari physiology, at least on the surface, seemed human enough, and the ship’s interior dimensions did not seen unusual.
Some of the other features, however, did. The deckplates were rougher than human decks, either ship or station, and did not seem to be entirely metal. There were irregular ridges that reminded Rory of the texturing on the palace steps of Thorne, meant to prevent slipping in rain or icy conditions. Deckplate that rough must be difficult to keep clean. And what about the bacteria that might be living here, on a xeno ship. Or the bacteria she was bringing to them. There could be appalling cross-contamination.
The floor’s grooves were not of sufficient depth to impede or hinder her own thick-soled steps. The sub-commander’s boots looked much like Rory’s own, if a bit longer in the heel, all contours of the foot smoothed out, bulked up, and concealed. The actual vakari foot, though, must look like the hand, assuming symmetry. That would mean total toes numbering four, with the extra joint, and perhaps with talons, which the fingers seemed to have since the gloves came to a curving point. A hardsuit acting as battle-armor would need to cover all the delicate bits that might be broken off in a fight. Toes qualified. Perhaps that was why the boots on Koto-rek’s feet now seemed as ill-suited as Rory’s to this roughed-up deckplate. Perhaps crewpersons not wearing hardsuits wore different footwear, as they did on human ships; Rory had a pair of slippers on Vagabond, and Jaed had those ridiculous socks with the individual toes, of which Thorsdottir made constant mockery.
Rory’s chest hurt suddenly, as if someone had punched out all her breath. Thorsdottir and Jaed were behind her now, around a bend in the corridor (the angle of which was not human standard, and so felt abrupt, like a sharp corner). The pleasant distraction of observing vakari ship design faded.
Koto-rek ia’vakat’ia Tarsik’s head turned sharply, as if Rory had made some sound aloud. The vakar’s chromatophores flared briefly orange, then settled into a throbbing, dim violet.
“There is no need to worry. You will not be harmed.”
It was as if the sub-commander had sensed Rory’s distress. Rory supposed her aura was all manner of red and orange, but Koto-rek should not have known that. Perhaps vakari did not have to be looking at someone to read their aura. Maybe they could . . . hear it. Feel it. Sense it without looking. Smell, perhaps, or some sort of sonar that dipped into the frequencies of aether attuned to auras, like Kreshti ferns.
Rory considered about the evidence of vakari arithmancy she’d already seen, and its level of advancement, and that the sub-commander did not carry a weapon, and decided to assume that Koto-rek ia’vakat’ia Tarsik had sensed her aura in an arithmantic manner. She wanted to ask about it, if it was a vakari ability, or one specific to vakari arithmancers, and then remembered her resolution to be a mantis-lion, and said instead, “You speak our language well.”
The sub-commander made a clicking sound in the back of their throat, somewhere behind the jaw-plates and the vibrant, etched teeth. “You speak like an ambassador, not a salvager, and certainly not a soldier, which the other two are.”
“Not soldiers,” Rory said instantly and fiercely. “Neither of them are soldiers.”
The vakar’s cheeks took on a cobaltish sheen. “They met us armed. You did not.”
“You’re not armed, either.” Rory felt stupid, remarking on the obvious, when she wanted to simply ask how long it had been, how much contact, between this Protectorate and humanity. And which humanity, because that would make a difference, too, though what sort of difference, she was not certain.
“I am not,” the sub-commander agreed. “But I am not without my weapons. Nor, I think, are you.”
Leaf. Leaf. Rory breathed and imagined cerulean serenity spreading through her aura. Nothing to see here, move along, this is not the confession for which you are looking, Sub-Commander.
“What weapons do you believe I have?”
Koto-rek ia’vakat’ia Tarsik clamped long nostrils together so that exasperation, or amusement, hissed through the gap. The vakar said a word in their own language and speared a sly look at Rory.
Of course Rory knew the same translation hexes as Rupert, entirely because he had taught them to her, probably imagining situations in which Rory might need to scramble her own speech for concealment or privacy, or when she might need to overhear something said in an unfamiliar dialect, and not that she would require those hexes to communicate with a vakar.
Or rather, to respond to what was clearly a vakar’s challenge. A dare. Reveal herself as an arithmancer.
Rory tilted her head and pasted a vacant smile across her lips. “I’m sorry. I didn’t quite understand what you said.”
Koto-rek ia’vakat’ia Tarsik’s jaw-plates flared. Their facial pigments intensified into vivid violets, tinged with red. But the vakar did not press further, or say anything else in any language, and Rory was free to resume gazing at the bulkheads as she passed through the corridor on what a part of her wanted to consider an enemy ship, though so far, the sub-commander had not acted enemy-like. They had been courteous, had not pointed any weapons at Rory, but had merely walked a half step ahead, expecting to be followed. That was a habit of command, an assumption of authority. Rory wondered how many layers there were between sub-commander and actual commander, and suspected not very many.
The bulkheads, like the decking, were textured, but unlike the decking, there were discernible patterns: long, intricate branching structures rising up from the lower third of the bulkhead, becoming most complex in the middle third, and dispersing in the top third. Colors moved through them, subtle and faint and dependent on perspective, like watching the colors change on an oil slick. Decoration, perhaps, or an organizational signal, the pattern of which Rory could not discern.
The sub-commander held up a restraining arm and stopped in front of a doorway. There was a small plaque on the bulkhead, beside a keypad, white with black strokes. Very much like a sign, and entirely unreadable. Rory stared hard at the symbols, trying to commit them to memory, as the door opened.
The room was narrow, dark, consisting mostly of a porthole looking into a second, interior room. It was from that room that all illumination came, dim and faintly blueish in cast, from teslas embedded in the overhead’s shallow arch in that other room, which was rounder, undecorated, possessed of a single door on one side, with no panel or controls of any kind.
But that second room was not empty. A man squatted against one side, arms dangling over his knees. His head hung between his shoulders, obscuring most of his face. He had medium brown hair, cut very short, and medium brown skin with some darker, bruised mottling. He wore a close-fitting skinsuit, standard wear under hardsuits; his had a Tadeshi flag on the shoulder and long rents in the sleeves. Rory could not see if there was damage to the skin underneath, or blood on the fabric’s lips, but she thought there might be.
Rory crossed the room and put her hands on the porthole.
It did not feel like glass, exactly, to her gloved hands. It seemed heavier. More dense. Some kind of transparent polysteel, maybe.
“Who is he?”
“He
Sergeant Vladimir Nash serial number 314PI1592
refuses to tell us.”
Rory managed to keep the surprise off her face; Messer Rupert had drilled that habit into her, and it had proved useful with nannies and cooks and malevolent Regents. She held her breath and decided to risk deploying the tiniest, most innocuous of hexes, to distort her aura, which would have otherwise turned from a vivid, furious crimson into a terrified yellow. She watched the sub-commander as she did so, looking for a reaction. The vakar’s chromatophores remained neutral, all apparent attention focused on Sergeant Nash.
Rory was not reassured.
“Why am I here, Sub-Commander?”
The vakar reached for a panel beside the porthole and pressed a sequence into the keypad with the tips of their talons. Rory made note: vakari keypads would defy all but the smallest of fingertips, and would probably need a stylus. If she should ever find herself trying to access one.
Sound leaked into the dark observation room: a man’s harsh breathing, half sobs, as if he had been running.
“Speak to him,” said Koto-rek ia’vakat’ia Tarsik.
The man’s head came up at the sound of the vakar’s voice. There were bruises on his face, and one eye was swollen and crusted with blood. He pushed himself to standing against the bulkhead at his back and, still pressed against it, thrust his face toward the porthole. He could not see through it, though obviously he knew they were there.
Rory stared at the man’s damaged features. “Did you do that to him?”