It was why it had made her so angry.
“Soon,” Satya whispered. Nkiruka nodded.
“Are you afraid?”
Nkiruka hesitated—then nodded again. “I don’t know what happens after this.”
“Shouldn’t you be able to see that?” A flash of bitterness, like the lash of a tiny whip. Nkiruka closed her eyes and took it. There would be more pain later, greater pain: the pain she would have to bear for all her people. Each agony now was somehow precious.
“Maybe I’ll be able to, when this is done.”
Glowbugs were dancing in the branches. Not everyone was there, but a few were beginning to emerge from the shadows into the clearing. There was a fire scar in its center, a place of Naming in happier times. A powerful place. Another kind of center. On the black mound, a new fire was leaping and dancing, and as two young women tended it and coaxed it into a blaze, Adisa stood by, quietly.
In his hand he held a long, thin iron rod. Most of it was ornate, twists and spirals and leaves winding up its length. But the tip was simple, unadorned. In his other hand he held a syringe.
One would take her sight. The other would give new sight to her.
“You’ve barely been prepared.” Now Satya sounded almost mournful. Because she is already mourning me, Nkiruka thought. Every moment is a farewell. “Usually there’s more time.”
“There is no time.” Nkiruka turned to her, pulling her close. Satya stiffened but allowed it, and after a moment her body went loose, her head against Nkiruka’s shoulder. Over her, Nkiruka saw Kae and Leila approaching through the trees, both of them dressed in white.
White, also a funereal color. It wasn’t only for her. She knew that.
It was for everything that was still to come.
“I wish you had chosen me,” Satya whispered. “I’m sorry, Nkiru, I’m … No. No, I’m not sorry. I wish so much that you had chosen me.”
“I did.” Nkiruka breathed the words into Satya’s hair. She smelled of sandalwood and cinnamon. Nkiruka would still be able to smell that after this was over, and she breathed it in as if she could keep it in a corner of her lungs like a treasure. “I chose you. Just not in the way either of us wanted.”
“I don’t think I can do this.”
“You can.” Nkiruka pulled Satya’s face gently away from herself, gazed down into her eyes, her thumbs tracing over Satya’s cheeks. “We have to be strong now. It will hurt. But we have to be.”
All the strength of all the Aalim in this place danced around her like the glowbugs. She was embraced and held by that strength, that power. The lights pressed into her skin. She tipped her head back and stared up at the stars, the other, older lights to which she would be eternally bound. A kind of marriage, one with all the secrets and the loves, the betrayals and the acrimony, the hidden violence and the sweetness that everyone could see, like any marriage. Long and painful and over too soon.
Love is so horrible, she thought, and she felt the stars agree.
At the time of her Naming, she had been gently forced to her knees. That did not happen now. Now she went alone, unaccompanied, splendid in her black robes gilded with silver stars—the night that went on forever wrapped around her. She could feel her people at her back, but all she could see was the fire and Adisa’s face.
Somewhere, faintly, Satya was weeping.
This is death and this is birth, daughter. Ixchel in the fire, staring back at her with a shifting, beautiful face, young and old and back to young again. Ixchel the Aalim, Ixchel the death-dancer, Ixchel the Old Mother and the speaker for the stars. Ixchel the reader of the paths ahead and the weaver of orbits, Ixchel the spinner of stories, Ixchel the leader and Ixchel the lover and Ixchel the maiden and mother and crone, Ixchel the tired old woman, Ixchel going into the fire and the night and the light that burned the core from your bones.
All these things you must be.
No one spoke. No one ever spoke. Adisa stepped forward and plunged the iron into the flames. It began to glow, redder and redder, like a young star in the depths of a nebula. Then it was withdrawn and Adisa came to her and slipped the needle into her arm, flooding her with the nanobots that would remake her from the inside out. It didn’t hurt. She looked up at him and his old eyes were shining and wet.
“Thank you,” he whispered, and then the iron touched her and took her sight from her.
Of course she screamed. Of course she fell and writhed in the dirt as the fire knitted itself into her marrow. Of course she screamed again as the night split open around her. She was rising out of the flames, a firebird, a star.
All the dark and all the dancing.
Time folded in on itself. In the center of it—the true center toward which she had to go—there was a tiny green world, a woman, and a man, and she knew them because she had always known them, because this was where she had been going from the moment of her birth.
They were reaching for her. They could almost touch her. Then they were gone again, and she was alone.
She lay at last in silence, her face damp with tears. She felt herself breathing, and she stared up at the bright stars. Brighter than they ever were before. Bright and reaching for her, taking her as one of their own.
“You must tell them,” she said as she began to push herself up on shaking hands, though her voice was strong as it had ever been. “You must tell them that we’re going. Jakana and Suzaku. They don’t have to come. They must choose.
“But you must tell them that Ashwina is going to Adam.”
The planet Peris was green and blue, and very small.
Lochlan had begun to learn, early in his life, to never discount what seemed ordinary or insignificant. Ixchel had beaten it into him—sometimes literally—and into everyone else who had been her student with him.
“You have to see, foolish boy. You think I can’t see? You’re not so foolish as that. Seeing isn’t always seeing. Or rather, seeing can’t be trusted. The universe is at least half what can’t be seen with your birth eyes. Assume nothing. Withhold judgment. Open yourself.”
He had tried, had made a genuine and honest effort. But it had always been something he struggled with. At first he had felt defensive about it, then resigned, then had worn his failure as a perverse badge of honor. It had been easier, especially young and angry, to judge at a glance. To be sure that he knew what he knew.
Then there had come Adam.
Still.
“Doesn’t look like much,” Aarons grunted.
Lochlan shot him an amused glance. “No, it really doesn’t.”
“That’s good,” Adam said. “If it doesn’t look like much to us, it’ll look like even less to them. I don’t know how long we’ll be able to stay here, but …”
“You’re sure they’ll take us in.” Rachel appeared skeptical, as she had since Adam had shown them on the chart where they had to go. She hadn’t said much, but Lochlan could practically see what she was thinking. It was ridiculous, it was stupid, there was no way Adam could know.
But Adam had healed her. Had showed her how to heal others. So perhaps she too had found it in herself to reserve judgment.
Besides, there was something about the place. Something somehow familiar. Lochlan turned his attention back to the planet, which rotated slowly beneath them as they orbited, its two green continents run through by low mountains, its single wide ocean. Peris, largely ignored by the Protectorate, was not exactly on the edge of their space but for the most part—given its sparse population and lack of any valuable natural resources—beneath their notice.
“Not they,” Adam said quietly. “Her.”
“A single woman.” Rachel let out a laugh and shook her head. “This is insane.”
Adam smiled at her. “She isn’t only a woman. You’ll see.”
“Then what is she?”
“She used to be Bideshi.” Adam nodded at Lochlan. “Powerful. Wise. She still is those things. An Aalim.”
It came to Lochlan all at once, his recol
lection. It was old, from before his entire world had been torn apart at Caldor, when he and Kae had been children together, running and playing and getting into trouble …
Like stealing a Protectorate shuttle that a child, who would later go on to be one of the most gifted pilots of his generation and to lead an entire wing of escort fighters, had no business flying.
The memory lingered, not least because it was arguably his fault, no matter how intently he had denied it. He could see Kae now, back on Ashwina after two days of terror on the part of his parents, and—secretly—Lochlan himself. Kae being lectured by Adisa, his brow furrowed. Something had happened to him and he’d never told Lochlan everything, though he had talked about the woman, the house, the ship. Something had touched him. Changed him. It had been why he had been able to return safe, but that hadn’t been that the only thing it had done.
All she had done.
He knew of only one banished Aalim who had made her home on a planet such as this one, whose line and orbit had touched theirs before.
“Chere,” Lochlan murmured. Adam and Rachel turned to him, and he smiled. “Lakshmi. It’s her, isn’t it? That’s who we’re here to see.”
Adam arched a brow. “Is that her name? She never told me.” He didn’t know, Lochlan realized. He knew a little, but only as much as he needed to in order to get them this far. “She’s an Aalim, isn’t she? But I don’t understand why she’s here and not on a homeship. I mean, I assumed she would tell us once we—”
“She’s in exile,” Lochlan said quietly. “She was an Aalim on a ship in another convoy. Very powerful. I never met her, but everyone knows what had happened.”
“This is one of your … witches?” Rachel tripped over the word, as if she grasped more of its distasteful provenance—when it came from the Protectorate—than she had before. Lochlan shot her a look, but it wasn’t as sharp as it would once have been. Maybe he was getting tolerant in his old age. Adam’s bad influence.
“Our Aalim, yes. The mothers and fathers of our people. They guide us through the dark. They help us find the paths that we should walk. When we speak of them we do so with respect.” Says the man who routinely referred to Ixchel as “that mad old bat.” He caught Adam’s eye and didn’t quite smile.
“So what happened?” Adam frowned slightly, gaze intent, confusion mingling with curiosity. Lochlan briefly considered telling him in private—but what did it matter if these raya were privy to the more personal details of the Bideshi’s lives? What could it hurt?
Hadn’t they earned a small step through the door?
“No Aalim is allowed to favor any of their children, to hold them dearer than the others in their heart. Lakshmi did.” He had always hated this rule. It had always seemed so unfair, so wrong. But it had also always been so, something so deeply rooted that it couldn’t be argued with. No matter who it hurt.
Maybe we aren’t so different from them, after all.
“You mean she took a lover,” Aarons said. It wasn’t a question.
“She had a lover before she took her place as Aalim for her people. But, well … their fare-thee-well wasn’t as final as it was supposed to be. And they were discovered.”
“And cast out,” Adam said softly. “Her lover too?”
“No. She remained on board her homeship.” Lochlan saw Rachel, Tamara, and Kara’s eyes widen and felt a tickle of pleasure. She. “But she was never the same afterward. Losing someone like that …” His gaze shifted back to Adam. “You never completely get over it.”
“She didn’t follow Lakshmi?” Kara actually sounded upset, and Lochlan looked at her, surprised. She wasn’t disgusted, not bewildered, but sad. “They didn’t leave together? Why not?”
“They weren’t allowed.” Lochlan shrugged. This part … This was difficult to explain, not least because he wasn’t sure that it would bear explaining. Not even to people who should understand it better than anyone. The power of what was. The difficulty in throwing it off. “They had … transgressed, I think the word was.” His upper lip curled. “The shame for them was already great enough. If they could’ve fought back against the ship’s council’s decision, Lakshmi wouldn’t have let it go down that way. From what I was told, she wanted to just … leave quietly. Live out her life somewhere well clear of everything that had happened.” He nodded down at the little green sphere. “Guess this is where she ended up.”
“All right,” Rachel said after a moment or two of meditative silence. “Whatever else is going on here, we’ll figure it out once we’re on the ground. Tamara, you’ve got the coordinates for the landing site from Adam? Good. Execute the appropriate burn whenever you’re ready and get us down there as soon as possible.”
In the corridor, halfway to the mess hall, Adam caught Lochlan’s arm and tugged him aside. Lochlan halted willingly enough—he was hungry, but not that hungry, especially when the only thing available were protein bars that tasted like salted sawdust.
“What’s up?”
“How did you know?” Adam leaned forward. “How did you know it was her? How did you recognize the planet? You did, didn’t you?” His eyes narrowed. “Have you been here before?”
Lochlan huffed a laugh. If this was all it was … Of course he wanted to know. “No, I haven’t. But Kae has. Relax, I’m not keeping some deep, dark secret hidden away from you. It just didn’t seem like something that bore going into in … mixed company.”
Adam blinked. “Kae?”
“Yeah. He wasn’t Kae, then. I mean, he was, but it was before—”
“Oh.”
“Yes. He— Okay, look. What happened was that we were on Golen Station for supplies, and I dared him to nab a Protectorate shuttle, all right? And he did, and he got chased all the way to here.”
Adam laughed, sounding shocked. Though only half. Maybe not even that much. “You what? Were you insane? No, wait.” He held up a hand. “That’s a really stupid question.”
“Well, I didn’t think he’d actually do it. I guess I got under his skin; I don’t know. The guy seems so levelheaded, but he has some serious fuguri when he’s roused. Anyway, he ran across Lakshmi, and she … I’m honestly not sure. Kae was never very clear about it. But she did something that got him home safe and whole, and that’s all I cared about right then.” Lochlan’s mouth tightened with a ghost of old guilt. “Khara, I did feel bad about that. Could’ve gotten his damn fool self killed. Then again, he did it, not me.”
Adam was smiling. “Exactly how hard did Ixchel whip your ass for that?”
“She didn’t whip it,” Lochlan said, a bit stiffly. “She kicked it. All the way up to her chambers, gave me an armload of books to augment the whole thing. Then back down for more and up again. About ten times. Kae only got sent to bed without dinner and scrub duty in the main kitchens for a week. Bastard. She always did like him better.”
“I bet she did.” Adam leaned up and pressed a kiss to the corner of Lochlan’s mouth. “How could she not?”
“You’re a bastard too.” Lochlan hooked an arm around Adam’s waist and pulled him closer, and then it was good that there wasn’t anyone else in the corridor, and wouldn’t be for a while.
The ship set down in a wide sienna field that stretched out at the bottom of a low, rolling hill. At the top of that hill was a house surrounded by reddish trees whose trunks and limbs twisted in a way that was at once gnarled and graceful. As Adam stepped down from the ramp onto the grass, he raised a hand to shield his eyes, glanced up at the trees, and thought of Ixchel’s ancient hands.
The house itself was small, single-floored, and built of dull brown-red brick with a roof of wooden slats. Yet, there was something regal about it—and mysterious, though it was one of the most nondescript structures he had ever seen.
Lochlan drew up beside him. Some distance away, Rachel was talking to Aarons, their heads bent together, Rachel’s focus intent on Aarons’s face and her hand close to his. They had spent a lot of the last day in consultation, and Adam gath
ered that, while Rachel was content to be a kind of leader, she was also content to take advice from an older Protectorate citizen. Would that everyone in their band of refugees could be so flexible.
He glanced back at the house, a tickle of apprehension in his gut. He could see no one emerging to greet them. But he could feel someone there, all the same.
“Well, chusile?” Lochlan’s mouth quirked, signaling amusement, but beneath his expression Adam could sense the same tension. Lochlan might be going into this knowing a little more, but he still knew almost nothing. “Are we going to seek an audience with Her Grace, or not?”
“Yeah,” Adam murmured, and without waiting another second, he started up the hill.
There was a fresh breeze, and as they walked higher, it swept through his hair like cool fingers. Birds trilled somewhere, unseen. The sky overhead was mostly devoid of clouds, a blue so light it was nearly colorless, and if not for that lightness he would have been put in mind of the High Fields: their expansiveness and sense of an open world stretched out for the enjoying. But over those fields, there had always been the stars and the endless night they were set into.
Still, he could see why an exiled Aalim might make a home here.
But where were her Arched Halls?
Now he could see a garden set against the side of the house, a tree on one corner that bore small fruit in a variety of bluish hues, and a low line of purple flowers that ran along the house, their petals long and waving softly like delicate fingers. It was lovely in its way, and it didn’t feel as though it would be out of place on Ashwina.
But there was a sense of loss here. It was gentle, but it was there.
Together, they crested the hill. Now it seemed higher than it had from below, and he saw the ship and the people gathered all around it, some in groups, some alone, standing and seated and lying on their backs in the grass, simply enjoying being on a world that wasn’t inherently hostile. How long had it been since they’d walked in the grass? Enjoyed air that wasn’t rank with filth and death?
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