by K. Eason
But because she was Rory Thorne, and disinclined by combination of nature and fairy gifts to surrender in silence, she asked, as calmly as possible, “Why shoot me now?”
“There are protocols to be observed. Rules about aliens being in this place. Your presence is a desecration. The Writ is unambiguous on that.”
The Writ. That must refer to the script on the artifacts hanging over each coffin. Religious texts. Rory was wise enough to know that one did not offer an outsider’s judgment on the validity of such a text’s contents to an adherent of that faith.
Rory gestured carefully, a small motion of fingers and wrist, at the door, which remained ajar on an empty corridor. “I can leave.”
“It is not—” Koto-rek exhaled like a plasma core venting steam. “You are already here. It is too late. It is a matter of contamination. Of, of orthodoxy.”
Contamination was a word Rory associated with alchemical accidents and leaking sewage, not the behavior of people. She noted too that Koto-rek had said alien, rather than xeno, which would be considered rude among the persons of Rory’s acquaintance. An alien was an outsider. A xeno was merely someone of alternative biology. It might be a matter of translation, and Rory would have dismissed it as such, but coupled with contamination and the ominous orthodoxy, Rory suspected she was up against something she couldn’t reason with.
Still, Koto-rek had not shot her yet, which suggested she could be reasoned with.
Rory turned slowly, carefully. Koto-rek’s visor was still raised, her face still bare. Her chromatophores had sunk back to a sullen, charcoal neutrality. Her weapon was once again pointing at Rory’s chest.
Rory summoned up sufficient saliva to swallow. Her voice must be clear. It must be steady. A princess—and for the moment she quite forgot she’d renounced that role—did not squeak.
“Then why haven’t you shot me yet?”
The vakar’s weapon did not waver. Her gaze, however, did, dropping and skating off to one side, to linger on a coffin as if the answer to Rory’s question were etched in that brushed metal surface.
“It doesn’t seem fair. You don’t know the rules, and even if you did, you clearly didn’t come here on purpose.” She jerked her head at the displaced shaft-cover in the bulkhead. “You came through there, probably from the corridor where your ship was, which is what I’m guessing was your initial destination. And I see no evidence that you’ve defiled anyone.” Koto-rek’s chromatophores rippled as if something large and toothy swam just under the surface.
Rory remained quiet and unmoving. In the distance—and it was impossible to guess specifics, in the acoustics of ship architecture—Protectorate and Tadeshi troops engaged in a noisy firefight. They might be coming this way. If they arrived while she and Koto-rek were engaged in Koto-rek’s crisis of conscience, well—
Dead is dead, Rory told herself, and relied on her patience. It had carried her through Vernor Moss’s imprisonment, which had lasted much longer, though with decidedly fewer ’slinger bolts. The dread of that ordeal had been worse, on balance. If Koto-rek decided to kill her, it would go quickly.
For the second time in a handful of minutes, Koto-rek lowered her rifle. “I was never especially devout.”
It sounded like an apology, though to whom, Rory could not guess. “Thank you.”
At that moment, an especially loud spate of ’slinger-fire rattled through the corridors.
“Sss.” Koto-rek’s pigmentation rippled orange, then umber. “Come on, Rory Thorne. The setatir Tadeshi put a missile through Sissten’s bridge. Our captain is dead, with most of the command staff. I am on my way to the auxiliary bridge to rendezvous with the surviving command. You will come with me.”
It seemed wise to cooperate. The firefight seemed to be drawing closer. Nearer Rory’s feet than she liked, the dead Tadeshi’s helmet crackled with comm-signal. Rory did not look at the hole in his visor, through which the sound (and bits of the soldier’s cranium) leaked. A call-sign, followed by a personal name, followed by a demand for a response, a sit-rep, and back-up.
The helmet’s interior, slimily visible, blinked and flashed with a half-dozen teslas. One of those, Rory knew, belonged to a transmitter. Military hardsuits were networked together to facilitate rescue and retrieval. Assuming the other Tadeshi survived the fight, they would come here, looking for their personnel.
She swallowed, held her breath, and, with a glance of please do not shoot me at Koto-rek, went to the dead man’s side. She crouched down, eyes averted (it helped that she could put most of her attention into the aether), and, with few moments of trial and error and hexing, disabled what remained of the suit’s on-board systems. The teslas went grey.
From this familiar vantage, she could see the other dead soldier, the one Koto-rek had shot through the torso. She could hear no comm-leak, which made a queasy sort of sense, given the perforation was not in his helmet; an aetheric check showed the suit was transmitting nothing. As dead as its contents, Rory thought. Bile burned the back of her throat.
She told Koto-rek what she’d done, and why.
The vakar regarded Rory through narrow, thoughtful eyes. “Can you do that again?”
“Hex? Yes. But not offensively, if that’s what you mean.”
“Sss. That is what I mean, yes.” Koto-rek stabbed her rifle at the ’slinger Rory had dropped. “Then can you use one of those?”
“I—yes.”
“I won’t ask if you’re any good. That doesn’t matter. Just pick it up, and point it at any setatir Tadeshi you see, and squeeze the trigger.”
Rory pressed her lips together and retrieved the ’slinger. She managed to prime the weapon without looking at her hands. Fortunate, that a hardsuit negated any penalties to dexterity from sweaty palms and trembling fingers. She hoped she did not look as awkward as she felt, and suspected from the long look Koto-rek leveled at her that she did.
Heat crawled up her cheeks. One did not arm oneself unless one was willing to fire the weapon: Rory had heard that from Grytt, from Thorsdottir, from Zhang, more times than she cared to recall. But she had not appreciated what that meant, exactly, until she stood among the effects of that policy, two human dead and a dozen vakari.
Koto-rek regarded her without pity. Her visor slid down, sealing her flattened jaw-plates and narrow eyes behind oilslick opacity. Her voice came from the sides of the helmet, compressed and crackling.
“Can you hear me, Rory Thorne?”
“Yes.” Rory sealed her own visor and, with a nudge of her chin, activated the ex-comms.
“You will walk beside me, on my left and a step behind. If we encounter Protectorate troops, you will let me speak. And if we encounter Tadeshi, be sure of your aim.”
Koto-rek poked her head into the corridor. Then she flowed around the corner like oil and not like something composed of sharp angles and talons and extra joints.
Just pretend you are following Thorsdottir, thought Rory, and went after her.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
It took a very long time for Vagabond to reach Favored Daughter. Jaed, therefore, had a great deal of time to report to Messer Rupert all that had transpired. The part about Rory—how they had been separated, where the vakari had taken her—Jaed had to recount several times: first to Messer Rupert, then to Messer Rupert and Grytt (at which point he discovered how to broadcast their replies to a speaker on the console, instead of only to his earpiece), and then when Vagabond had drawn close enough to Favored Daughter to manage visual communications, to Messer Rupert, Grytt, another tenju named Hworgesh, and a small collection of alwar (Captain Kahess, Adept Uo-Zanys Kesk, the communications technician known only as lieutenant, and a pair of security personnel, anonymous in their uniforms and matched scowls). Jaed thought all collections of alwar must be small, if this was a representative sample of the people. It was a joke he thought best to keep to himself, in the circumsta
nces, though he thought Crow might appreciate it; the tenju had maintained a steady, subvocal stream of disapproval until he spotted Hworgesh, at which point Jaed and Rupert had been forced to table their conversation temporarily while Crow and Hworgesh shouted at each other in a language that sounded like a severe bronchial infection carried in a bucket of rocks.
That raucous interlude provided Jaed a moment to collect himself and to arrange to the story in his head. He wouldn’t reveal Rose, not to anyone except Rupert and Grytt. The part of the story from Thorsdottir’s perspective he could leave legitimately skeletal. But then the tenju finished their burst of conversation, and Messer Rupert was saying in his quiet voice, “Jaed, if you’d please.”
At some point during his description of climbing through G. Stein’s guts, a banging and scuffling commenced in the crew cabin, and the unmistakable sound of one woman swearing under her breath. Thorsdottir was coming forward. Jaed kept his attention resolutely focused on the adept. Her title sounded arcane and mysterious, and Jaed was painfully curious what it meant. The woman to whom that title was attached also looked arcane and mysterious, and also sufficiently formidable—despite her diminutive proportions—that Jaed did not dare take his eyes off her to glare at Thorsdottir. He saw, in his periphery, that Zhang was aware of Thorsdottir’s movement, and had in fact turned around in her seat—which seemed a little unwise, given that she was flying Vagabond manually—to shake her head and make exaggerated movements with her mouth that Jaed supposed were versions of what the hell are you doing and get back and sit down.
“We didn’t find anything of importance, and then the Protectorate ship showed up and we ran back to Vagabond and got off G. Stein,” Jaed said, in a rush, just as Thorsdottir hurled herself against the back of his chair, dragging it down and requiring him to shift forward to counterbalance. He tried to fill the lens-feed with his visage, and so prevent any stray sightings of the person whom he’d just testified three separate times was otherwise engaged and unable to come forward.
He failed, of course. Thorsdottir dropped her head down almost onto his shoulder to squint into the screen. Her fingers gripped the cushions beside his head, knuckles straining and white, as she struggled for balance.
The adept’s gaze flickered. The resolution of the image—which was only two-dimensional, not holographic—prevented Jaed from seeing the finer nuances of her expression, but his stomach clenched in precognitive dread.
“And who is this?” asked the adept, at the same moment Messer Rupert said, “Ah, Thorsdottir.”
“Rory,” said Thorsdottir, who was finding it harder to breathe than she had anticipated. “She’s alive. We left her on the Protectorate ship. We need to get her back.”
Messer Rupert exchanged a stricken look with Grytt. Jaed had spent enough of his life (reluctantly) around politicians to recognize the reason for their silence. They were passengers on a xeno vessel of unknown—at least to Jaed—political affiliation and interest in this endeavor. Rupert couldn’t promise military aid. Rupert probably couldn’t promise them tea if and when Vagabond docked with Favored Daughter. Jaed was more concerned with the adept, whose gaze on Thorsdottir reminded Jaed of his father’s stare when Vernor Moss had identified something he wanted and had worked out a way to acquire it. She said nothing, which Jaed also marked as ominous, and which convinced him that she must be an arithmancer or alchemist or perhaps something of both. Fortunately arithmancy did not work across comms (did it? Surely not). He was just being paranoid and protective. There was nothing to sense. Thorsdottir was—fine. Or not fine, but not arithmantically interesting, either.
Not that he’d looked since Rose’s repair efforts. Jaed let his eyes slide out of focus. The first layer of aether appeared, what Rory called the aura layer, which was mostly colors and soft edges and occasional obvious hexwork (like swarming hex-shards, if there were any present, which there were not). Thorsdottir’s aura seemed especially vivid, the lava and sunset swirled with a nacreous chartreuse. The entire effect seemed to sparkle a little, as if there were shards of glass in the aura.
Rose. That was Rose. He ducked his chin and flicked a look at Zhang to confirm. Her aura, much the same palette as Thorsdottir’s, was not sparkling. Neither was Crow’s, and Jaed was momentarily struck (and distracted) by the difference not just in color, but also in quality: the tenju’s aural discharge appeared more texturey than Zhang’s, as if Zhang’s were painted on a flexible, clear polysteel and Crow’s on a dense, woven fiber. Then he reminded himself that tenju auras were not the issue here. Thorsdottir’s was, and if he was seeing Zhang clearly, then he should also be seeing hers clearly, which meant that what he was seeing—those chips of glass, the shards, Rose—was accurate.
Now Jaed did let slip an exclamation, which earned him a sharp look from Grytt, behind Messer Rupert’s shoulder, and Messer Rupert’s raised eyebrow, and a startled side-eye from Thorsdottir. He offered no explanation. Instead, he pasted a sickly smile onto his lips that he hoped might pass for apologetic.
“While we are sympathetic to your concerns, Domina,” the adept said smoothly, with a chin tip to Thorsdottir, “I am hoping to hear more of what transpired on the G. Stein, and how those events might have precipitated a Tadeshi dreadnought and a Protectorate vessel in pitched battle. Perhaps if we understand what transpired, we can better determine how to proceed from here.”
“She doesn’t want a fight,” Crow interjected. “That’s what she means. Not unless there’s something in it for her.”
The adept ignored Crow, but Jaed noted the flattening of her expression, and the half a dozen other signals that, at least on a human face, would mean Crow’d gotten it right.
“All right.” Thorsdottir’s left hand crept onto Jaed’s shoulder, as did a fair portion of her weight. The seat, relieved of its burden, sighed back to fully upright. Her right arm and hand, still swathed in bandages, remained at her side, out of the camera feed’s range. “Maybe I can offer you something of interest, then.”
Jaed controlled a tight, teeth-baring smile. “No,” he whispered, through clenched teeth and lips and with every fiber of his being.
“Trust me,” Thorsdottir said under her breath. It might have been a question, or a command. Her fingers tightened on Jaed’s shoulder until flesh creaked on the polysteel of his hardsuit. “Jaed couldn’t tell you this part. He wasn’t there. I didn’t tell him what I found in G. Stein’s hold.”
The adept hoisted an eyebrow. “And what did you find?”
“A weapon. Plans for a weapon. Alchemical. Meant to take out a whole biosphere. Poison a planet.”
Jaed fancied he could hear the hum of the alwar ship’s engines, so silent did everything become.
“You found this weapon on the Tadeshi corsair, you said?” asked the adept, in the tones of someone who wants to be very, very sure of what she’s heard. Behind the adept, the other tenju resumed their rumbling mutter. The captain looked like obsidian and adamant. She did not look surprised, though. Jaed squirmed inside the shell of his hardsuit.
“Yes,” said Thorsdottir, answering the adept’s question. “On the G. Stein. In the cargo hold. It was hidden among legitimate cargo. The Protectorate destroyed that ship, but they didn’t find it. We did. And we still have it. Does that sound interesting to you?”
The adept turned away from the screen and consulted with someone in rapid, xeno syllables. One of the alwar on Favored Daughter darted off-screen. Rupert looked as official as Jaed had ever seen him. Grytt looked like Grytt, with perhaps a bit more disapproval.
Thorsdottir, when Jaed looked at her, seemed grim-lipped and triumphant at the same time.
“You know,” he said, taking advantage of the momentary respite, “we have no idea what the politics are here.”
She glanced at him. Her eyes were clearer than they had been, the whites mostly void of red. “I know.”
“And you might’ve just steppe
d in the middle of something really complicated.”
“She has,” said Crow. He sounded pleased. “Right in the middle. Both feet.”
Thorsdottir ignored him. “We need to get Rory back, Jaed. I’ll do whatever’s necessary to make that happen.”
Jaed envisioned Favored Daughter turning its weapons on Vagabond. From the look on Zhang’s face, she was thinking the same thing. He and Zhang had that in common: caution. Zhang’s came from a dislike of surprises; Jaed knew his reticence came from a fear of making mistakes through bold action. He envied Thorsdottir. Admired her. And at the same time, he wanted to vomit.
The adept returned to the screen. Her hair and robes were still neat, flawless in their arrangement, and yet she gave the impression of great dishevelment.
“Yes,” she said. “We are very much interested in whatever information you might have.”
“Right,” said Thorsdottir. “Then here’s the deal. You help us get Rory back, and we’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
* * *
—
Thorsdottir knew, the moment the words slipped out of her mouth, that there would be repercussions. She read that truth in the way Messer Rupert’s face smoothed over into his Vizier mask, and the way the adept with the long name’s eyes (were they really a burgundy-red sort of color?) sort of . . . lit up. Not quite smiling—no teeth, anyway—but a tiny lift in the corner of her mouth that, if it meant the same thing for alwar, indicated satisfaction.
But more telling than the visual evidence was the audible: Zhang’s groan, which barely qualified as a sound at all, but which Thorsdottir heard as if Zhang were sitting beside her. An effect of Rose’s repairs, maybe. Or just that she knew Zhang that well.