by K. Eason
Jaed, she could not see, except in ghostly reflection in the screen. She watched the shell of his ear go the faintest bit red, but that was the extent of his physically perceptible reaction. He didn’t sigh, or groan, or even hold his breath. But she thought that, if a man could grow spikes and spines and hard edges, he had just done so.
“We will meet you when you arrive,” said Messer Rupert smoothly. “Grytt and I, at the aetherlock.”
“Acknowledged,” said Jaed, and cut the connection.
Here it comes, thought Thorsdottir.
Jaed turned so that she could see his profile. The red that dusted the tops of his ears had found his cheeks, as well. He looked feverish. Or murderous.
He licked his lip, once and twice, with the air of a man trying to choose his words wisely.
“You can’t,” he said finally. “Bargain, I mean. With Rose.”
On a different day, Thorsdottir might have greeted Jaed’s declaration with laughter, or at least a smile: she did not take orders from him, of all people. Or anyone, anymore. But today, right now, she was too busy holding herself upright on his shoulder and trying to decide if she’d need his help and goodwill to return to her seat in the rear cabin.
She would need his help. Almost certainly. Unless Zhang volunteered, and Zhang was very deliberately focused on piloting. His goodwill might depend on the answer she gave him, for which he was apparently still waiting.
Thorsdottir cast back to what he’d said. It didn’t need an answer, but fine. “Just did.” And because her (admittedly) terse response only made the red spots on his cheekbones get brighter, she added, with some impatience, “For Rory, Jaed.”
“Rory—” Jaed closed his eyes and visibly counted to five. Then ten.
And then Crow turned fully around, fast enough his hooks clicked and rattled across his armor. “You’re gambling. The Empire’s out for itself. You don’t trust the alwar. Not with something like this.”
Thorsdottir peered at him. She’d known what a tenju was only slightly longer than she’d known about alwar. “So we trust you instead? The—whatever your political organization is?”
“Tribal affiliation,” Crow said mildly. “The name of which doesn’t interest you, and yeah, you’d be better off, if what you want is not to use this weapon. We’re not much for alchemy and arithmancy. But they are. And you hand them your weapon, they’ll use it. Maybe not on you—probably not—but they will use it on someone, somewhere.”
Thorsdottir could not find a response to that. To demand how do you know seemed childish and also an invitation to a biased historical treatise on interspecies relations. It was clear the tenju bore no great love for the alwar, although there seemed to be some treaty between them. Crow’s account would be prejudiced, and anyway, it was clear he believed it.
She wasn’t sure she didn’t, but it didn’t matter. She—they, all of them—needed to get Rory back.
And she needed to sit down. Now. Or very, very soon.
Jaed must have sensed it. He bit his breath off and spat it out. “You need my help getting into the back?”
“I—yes. Please.”
Jaed’s arm around her was steady, neither gentle nor rough. No, it was polite. A, a duty. Thorsdottir examined the sudden spike in her chest that had nothing to do with whitefire batons and burns and a nanomecha invasion.
She should apologize, but she wasn’t sorry. She was just sorry he was so upset. And she was as sorry for herself to be on the wrong end of his regard as she was that she’d upset him. So she said nothing at all—that seemed simpler—and let him guide her back to her seat. She thought he would leave, but he stayed looming over her, his body across the open hatch. Then, with a sudden grimace, he whipped around and sealed the hatch behind him.
Thorsdottir felt oddly relieved. Better an angry Jaed coming at her than cold, distant, dutiful Jaed.
And yes, he was angry. “You can’t,” he said. “Listen. You cannot bargain with Rose. They are dangerous. They are a genocidal collection of arithmantic nanomecha. They are meant to kill planets, do you not get that?”
All right. Perhaps she preferred cold and dutiful after all. “I get that. I read the documents, same as you. But Rose doesn’t want to be a weapon. Why do you think Rose turned off all those cryotubes? So the vakari wouldn’t find them when they boarded again. They would’ve died if we hadn’t taken the clipping, and they knew that.”
Jaed stared at her. “How do you know that?”
“A hunch. My gut. They were so scared of the vakari, Jaed, you don’t even know. Besides. This is Rory we’re talking about. There’s no price—”
“Oh stop. Rose also attempted to kill Rory. You weren’t there. I was.”
“If Rose’d meant to kill her—”
“What, then we wouldn’t be having this argument? Rory’d already be dead? Do you not see how that logic doesn’t work?”
“I’m saying, it should count that Rose didn’t kill her.” Thorsdottir shook her head a little too sharply for current physical conditions. “We can trust them.”
“We can—” Jaed looked up, as if seeking wisdom from the cabin overhead, and tossed his hands in the air. The drama of the gesture was rather lost in the small area, where he had to mind the swing of his forearm so he did not hit Thorsdottir. “Rose is nanomecha. Operative word: mecha. Whether or not they’ve got true sentience, they’re still programmed. Rose has command codes that trigger their programming remotely, and which for all we know the Tadeshi already have, or will be getting in a more successful delivery.”
“Or we’ll intercept them.”
“That doesn’t matter! Command codes. Mecha do what their program directs. Rose may not want to, but what I’m saying is, Rose won’t have a choice.”
“Then maybe Messer Rupert can hack them, or that adept, or someone like her.”
“Sure. Then someone else gets control of the arithmantic bioweapon. Great plan.”
“Well, what else was I supposed to do? Just leave Rory behind?”
“How about, wait until we’d gotten on board so we could talk to Messer Rupert? How about, wait until we had more of an idea what we’re stepping in, here?”
“That doesn’t matter. Rory—”
“Rory wouldn’t want this!” Jaed’s face was fully red now.
“How do you know that? I’ve known her—”
“No, you’ve been in her service. That’s not knowing her. That’s doing what you’re told.”
Thorsdottir recoiled. “And you know her better? She holds us all at a distance. You follow her around, same as we do.” (Zhang, who could hear through the hatch every word, muttered “Leave me out of this,” to which Crow offered a sympathetic noise.) Thorsdottir’s own face was red now, her skin too tight and hot. Then she weighted her words with razors and flung them into his face. “No, take that back: not the same. We’ve got a reason to be here. You’re here because you’ve got nowhere else.”
Jaed’s mouth tied itself in a bitter knot, but he neither broke eyelock nor retreated. A part of Thorsdottir was proud of him for that. “No. I’m here because I’m scared of sheep. And politics. And being responsible for anyone else. That’s what you do: you and Zhang, you’re all about taking care of Rory. For you, there’s nothing bigger that protecting her. For Rory—there is. She doesn’t think about people, she thinks about ideas. She’s Messer Rupert’s that way. You’re Grytt’s.”
“And you’re whose, Vernor Moss’s?” It was petty, small, and Thorsdottir regretted it the moment the words left her mouth.
Jaed pressed his lips into a white, furious line. “Rose is a weapon,” he said, in the tones of a teacher faced with extreme recalcitrance. “With command codes. And now Rose is part of you. So what do you think happens when someone activates those codes, with those nanomecha inside you?”
She had not thought about it. She
was not going to start thinking about it right then. “I’m hardly going to turn into a weapon.”
“No,” Jaed said, light and breathless and as furious as Thorsdottir had ever seen him. “You will die. And I do not want that to happen.”
The moment of revelation has been described by writers as a flash, a bolt, a violent, shocking discharge of electromagnetic energy. To Thorsdottir, it felt more like a kick to the gut. Jaed was not concerned about some larger implication of Rose’s deployment, not worried about hypothetical biospheres and hypothetical people. He was worried about her. Not Rory. Not—all right, be fair, probably also the genocidal capabilities of sentient arithmancer-nanomecha, because Jaed also thought more widely than his immediate acquaintances and situation, and also Rory, but mostly about her, Thorsdottir.
She retained sufficient wit to keep that realization to herself. She wasn’t sure if Jaed was even fully aware of it. She hoped—she did not know what to hope. That he was aware? That he wasn’t? And if he was right about Rose’s—not contamination, not infiltration—permeation, maybe? Decide what to call it later—if Jaed was right, then she had become as much of a threat as Rose to, well, everyone. Anyone. Until Rose was activated, Thorsdottir was the same thing as a bank of cryounits.
And if Jaed was right, Rory wouldn’t want Rose in the wrong hands. But she’d already promised. So what to do about it now?
(In the cockpit, in the sudden absences of raised voices, Zhang and Crow exchanged glances. “They’ve killed each other,” Crow said. “No,” said Zhang, who was not unobservant, even if the subjects of her observations might be. But she would not hazard any further guess at the silence.)
Jaed and Thorsdottir were in fact staring at each other, as the red receded in both their faces, along with the anger, leaving a wrung-out, faintly nauseous (and in Thorsdottir’s case, more than faint) ache behind.
Thorsdottir dropped her gaze first. And so she was not watching when Jaed sealed his visor. She heard the click and looked up at once, but by then he had turned away, so that she could see the precipice of his cheekbone and the curve of his lips as they moved. His gaze drilled into the HUD, and Thorsdottir could see the reflection of text across his pupils and the icy-pale blue of his eyes.
* * *
—
“What?” said Jaed, for although Thorsdottir believed it was his impulse that had led to the sealing of the visor, it was in fact Rose’s prompting, in the form of red flashing teslas on the rim of his helmet, that had arrested his attention.
And, let us be truthful: Jaed was relieved for an excuse to temporarily suspend his conversation with Thorsdottir. On a planet, or a station, or even a bigger ship, he would have walked away, seeking physical distance and, with that, emotional perspective. But instead, he withdrew into the sealed environment of his suit, made sure of deactivated ex-comms (one only makes that particular mistake once), and snapped, at a volume too great for such an enclosed space, “What, Rose?”
need flesh
Jaed was no more comforted by the sentiment than Thorsdottir had been. He was more familiar with Rose’s technical specifications, and so made a leap of intuition where the nanomecha’s vocabulary failed. “You need flesh to exist. And by flesh, you mean organic matter. We kinda figured that out.”
no. need flesh to . . . Rose trailed off. Jaed waited. . . . bloom.
That was no more comforting. Jaed supposed—correctly—that Rose meant they needed bodies as fuel to execute their unpleasant primary objective. Rosebushes were all very well and good, but nanomecha needed energy, and organic bodies were basically alchemical batteries. Flesh (ugh) made a good fuel. Break it down, remake it, and stop thinking about the details right now.
Jaed knew Thorsdottir was watching him. He knew she would demand a reason and recounting of this conversation, including, perhaps, some reason for its timing.
I’d like to know that, too, thought Jaed, and so he asked. “Why tell me this now?”
have flesh now
“You mean Thorsdottir.”
yes
“You could’ve had Thorsdottir on G. Stein. You had her hardsuit.”
no
He recalled Thorsdottir’s defense of Rose. “Because you did not want to hurt anyone. But you did want to hurt me and Rory, and you did actual damage, so why not, um, invade us, or whatever?”
Rose hesitated. Letters flickered, half-realized, as if the nanomecha were scrolling through the alphabet, trying to find the correct symbols.
code, Rose said finally. hex.
Right. He and Rory were arithmancers. Not very good arithmancers, maybe not much of a threat to a vakar or an adept or whatever sort of people had created Rose, but Rose wasn’t much of an arithmancer, either.
fix Rose
It took Jaed a moment to process, both because he was thinking, and thus distracted, and because when he did read the words, he did not immediately understand. Fix meant repair, except Rose had used repair already to refer to healing Thorsdottir’s wounds. Fix must mean something else. You fixed what was broken—oh.
Jaed found his mouth suddenly dry. “Fix you. How would I do that?”
code
fix code
fix
Jaed closed his eyes. Rose’s request followed him, hanging on the back of his eyelids.
“Fix you so that you won’t . . . be able to bloom?” Maybe it would be that simple. “I’m not a very good arithmancer. You want Rory. Maybe Messer Rupert.”
Of course Rose couldn’t answer, with his eyes closed. He opened them again.
fix flashed on his HUD. fix no more rose
Oh. Oh no. Jaed could feel Thorsdottir’s eyes on him. He considered opening the visor and telling her what Rose had said. She would object. She would tell him, don’t you dare, which would let him, well, not dare.
Someone would take the responsibility of the hard decision. He had just reproached Thorsdottir for offering Rose for Rory. Said that Rory herself wouldn’t make that deal. He believed that. Rory was . . . not cold, never cold, but she was a princess. She made decisions for other people, whether or not she wanted to. Decide not to marry Ivar, start a civil war. Decide to run to Samtalet, find an alchemical super-weapon.
Thorsdottir had accused him of being his father’s, but . . . that wasn’t true. His father wanted the same power Rory rejected. Jaed had never wanted that. Never wanted anything except to be left alone, out of everyone’s machinations. Free from expectation and manipulation and (painful truth) from responsibility.
Vernor Moss had made terrible decisions, but he’d made them. Rory Thorne had made some bad ones, too, but they were hers. Now Thorsdottir had thrown Rose out to these alwar Empire people as a bargaining chip, very bad decision, but her responsibility, and one that they’d all have to see through.
And now Rose was asking him to fix them, the effects of which might take Rose’s threat out of the equation, but also Rose themself. Rose was, in essence, asking him to kill them. So yes, he could open the visor, tell Thorsdottir, let her decide. Or he could make his own decision, the weight of which already ached. There was just one further thing he needed to know.
“Will fixing you hurt Thorsdottir?”
no
“All right,” he said, as if it were easy. As if this moment would not haunt him the rest of his life. “Then tell me what I need to do.”
Rose showed him a few lines of code, and a brace of variables. It was an appalling vulnerability—so very little defense. No wonder Rose hadn’t wanted to deal with him or with Rory or the vakari and their scary arithmancy. Rose was vulnerable unless Rose was completely concealed.
It was not difficult to rewrite that code—a dip into the appropriate layers of aether, that was all, a switch of variables—and it was the hardest thing Jaed had ever done.
* * *
—
Thorsdottir h
ad watched the expressions crawling over Jaed’s face, and come to a few conclusions about the nature of his conversation with Rose. That his face had settled onto queasy conviction did nothing to settle her own nerves.
Then his visor opened, and his eyes settled on hers, and held steady. “It’s fine. Rose is—Rose isn’t dangerous anymore.”
Thorsdottir ruminated on the nature of fine, and its various meanings, and decided that Jaed’s version meant totally beyond salvage. “What happened?”
“Like I said, Rose is no longer a danger. I mean—they’re still nanomecha, but they don’t, they can’t, weaponize.”
“The command codes won’t work anymore? That’s what Rose says?”
Jaed nodded: barely a movement of the head, accompanied by a jaw ratcheted so tight that Thorsdottir feared for his molars. “Jaed, what is the matter?”
“Rose has, ah. Deactivated the part of themself in my suit. Everything that’s left is now in you.”
“And that’s why the codes won’t work?”
“No. That’s because of arithmancy. I can explain what I did to Messer Rupert. It won’t make any sense to you.”
There was an untruth lurking in his words, but Thorsdottir was too tired, and too worried, to dig it out. She wanted peace restored with Jaed, and she wanted Rory back, and she was not totally sure of the order of those desires. “But it’s fixed? I can talk about Rose without giving this alwar empire a weapon?”
She didn’t know why Jaed flinched at the word fixed, or why his affirmation—“Yes, it’s fixed”—sounded so brittle. “But I still don’t want you volunteering yourself to any xeno labs, all right? Tell Messer Rupert everything. Let him do the negotiating.”
It was, if not exactly a reversal, at least a significant redirection of his position. Thorsdottir considered asking again what had transpired in Jaed’s conversation, and once again, declined to do so. He was unhappy, that was obvious, and she guessed (correctly, though not in the way that she thought) it was because the parts of Rose in his hardsuit had decommissioned themself. Why that bothered him, she did not understand; there was more Rose, and besides, Rose had already decommed the vast majority of themself on G. Stein and survived.