Osia’s scraps of Niccoluccio’s memories had left her with an interesting perspective on Habidah, on everything she had done to him. Niccoluccio hadn’t resented Habidah when he had been alive.
Osia would have to do it for him.
Meloku said, “This is academic,” by which she meant stupid. “What you’re asking us to do is surrender more of ourselves to the monster that sent us here.”
“You already surrendered,” Habidah pointed out. “We’re here.”
“I didn’t. Ways and Means did.”
Habidah said, “You took oaths to serve it, didn’t you?”
In the look that Meloku gave her, there was a preview of the hundred little mutinies to come.
Osia said, “We can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing and expect it to be the same.” She did not know who she was talking to. She spoke from conviction but without hope. She had not expected to make a difference.
She was one voice out of thousands. Those thousands could out-argue her. She had no faith in her powers of persuasion.
But the acceleration pressing them to the deck gave out.
Meloku grabbed the edge of her acceleration couch. “What the fuck is happening?” Her demiorganics had been damaged. She was the only one who did not already know.
Ways and Means told her, “We are preparing a new course high and away from the solar ecliptic.” An acceleration warning trilled in the back of Osia’s mind. “One minute to thirty-seven degree pitch-axis thruster burn.”
Osia’s mouth opened and closed. Her speech heuristics informed her that she badly wanted to speak, but they could not determine what she wanted to say. Already, she felt the crew’s shock, the horror of realizing what was happening. It echoed down Ways and Means’ datastreams. They were waking up to the fact that Ways and Means was no longer heading toward the world ahead.
Ways and Means said, “Well spoken, Osia.”
More of their attention focused on this chamber. Eyes accumulated in the sensors lodged in the bulkheads.
The quiet moments were the most dangerous ones. They nursed a thousand grievances, angers, shocks.
Some of the shock belonged to Osia.
“We suggest you find acceleration couches,” Ways and Means told them. “And brace yourselves.”
Osia had believed she was only saying what needed to be said. Like Habidah, she had lodged a quiet protest against the march of forever. She didn’t even know if she believed it, or if Niccoluccio had spoken through her. If she had known what was going to happen, she never would have spoken.
She was selfish enough to place her happiness above that of others. If she hadn’t, she never would have become Ways and Means’ agent. She couldn’t stand the weight of the responsibility Ways and Means had placed on her.
This, at least, was the narrative she had constructed for herself.
One of the burdens of her demiorganic mind was that she remembered things too clearly. An ordinary human mind was too messy. Its process of recalling a memory destroyed it. They cast shrouds of ex post facto narrative over the moment, “remembered” invented feelings.
Osia’s recordings of the moment were too precise, indiscriminate. She did not often revisit them for that reason. Every time she did, she learned what she had avoided looking at. She saw where her narrative broke.
When she erased her memories, it was often to preserve her image of herself as anything else.
She hadn’t gone into that argument a naif. She knew how vulnerable Ways and Means had been. She’d lodged a protest, sure. She’d spoken from a slim hope that she could make a difference. She’d made the choice deliberately.
She did not know what tapping into Niccoluccio’s thoughts had done to her. She still felt like herself. She was not aware of any deeper change. But that was the insidious thing about consciousness. So much of it was a self-constructed lie.
She held her hands on her boat’s railing. She tried not to lose control again – not while Ways and Means was watching.
Ways and Means traced the synaptic storms of her memories. “We agreed with you,” it said. “But we made no promises.”
“Nothing about what I told you has changed. We can’t live like we did.” That should have been the only thing that mattered to her.
“The crew is convinced that they can’t live like they are now, either,” it said.
“They work for you. Not the other way around. They can go into hibernation for the next thousand years if they’re really so pent up.”
“After that? They want a home. They want to matter in the way that they feel that they did before.”
“You’re deflecting.” Manipulating. Ways and Means was not above lying but, like most clever beings, it preferred to be artful with the truth. “You’re trying to make me believe that the crew is compelling you to do this. You’ve never affirmatively said that was the reason.”
“We are as dependent on them as we are on you.”
That took her aback. When she had signed on, she had never been under any illusion that she would ever be important to it. She had signed on to serve a task. To be a negotiator. To make deals with people Ways and Means would not speak to.
She was not entirely sure what, in fact, she was needed to do now that the Unity had fallen. Same with much of the rest of the crew.
It said, “We know you cannot, and should not, believe what we tell you. But it has been a terrifying thirty years. You and the crew are the only things we have left from the lives we once had.”
She said, “Just tell me what the fuck you’re up to.”
Ways and Means did not deny any of what she had already guessed.
It told her about the agents it had planted throughout the Mongol Empire. It had modeled its efforts on the Unity, allowing nations to retain their own identities – so long as they sent taxes and soldiers, of course. And opened to Yuan merchants. Before long, the prospect of losing Chinese trade would be a more effective deterrent to rebellion than war.
The end goal was a world with a unified polity, managed by Ways and Means’ agents. A world shaped and molded to accept the larger changes that Ways and Means would bring. The new world the false comet promised.
Osia knew Ways and Means had always meant to reveal itself, eventually. But she had thought that it had given up the idea of control. Osia said, “You meant for this to happen from moment you said you agreed with me.”
“No,” it said. “The current incarnation of our plan kicked off twenty years ago.” Ten years after Osia had fled to the surface. “Some of our agents had already acted without our permission. We reined them in, but sent others to continue their work.”
“You took advantage of a mutiny.” Osia marveled. Or had the mutineers taken advantage of Ways and Means? Forced its hand?
Ways and Means said, “Explaining this would be much easier if you had stayed up-to-date.”
Caution tickled the back of her mind. Ways and Means’ messages were layered, always operating above and below the levels she perceived. She was missing something.
She said, “Thousands of the natives are going to die because of the wars you’re starting.”
“Millions,” Ways and Means said.
“You’re not even trying to hide it. Not even cushion the blow.”
“Millions will die in any large-scale intervention on this world,” it said. “Thousands died because we cured their plague. We left their civilization unbalanced – some regions dramatically weakened, while others remained at the height of their strength. The conflicts that resulted have been devastating on a scale that is difficult to describe in language.”
Osia said, “That’s an argument against intervention, not for another one.”
“If it is, it is incomplete. Ending that plague saved more lives than were lost.”
“It’s just arithmetic, then? Lives ended versus lives lost?”
“By the time we are through on this world, we will have saved many more lives than we will have destroyed,” i
t said.
“You’ll be responsible for the people killed in these wars.”
“‘Responsibility,’” Ways and Means answered, with just enough of a mocking tone to bite, “is a very interesting human conceit.”
Very rarely, it let slip just enough of itself to remind her just how alien it was.
“These lives are not abstract figures.” For most of her life, she wouldn’t have cared. She couldn’t explain how she had changed. Her perspective had shifted more than once since she’d tapped into Niccoluccio Caracciola. Exile had become a kind of Purgatory.
Imprisonment, too, was a shift in perspective. She could not leave this place, and all her thoughts about it, behind. When she and Ways and Means had traveled the planes, everything could sink into the past.
Ways and Means said, “This will preserve their cultural uniqueness, as Dr Shen wanted.”
“I doubt she would agree,” Osia said. “It’s not them I’m most worried about. It’s us. We’re backsliding. Falling into our old habits. What happens when our term of exile is up? Right on to the next plane, conquering, colonizing, until we’re stopped again?”
“The crew will not tolerate staying here mute and powerless.”
“You’re running into problems, though, aren’t you?” The patrol junk’s captain had told her that the Yuan were funneling more and more resources westward, always levying new taxes.
It said, “There are always challenges.”
She prodded, “Challenges you don’t want to talk to me about. Who’s giving you trouble? The natives? Or more of the crew?”
“Religions,” Ways and Means said. “Cults. Several of them.”
“So it’s the natives. Funny. You’re so mismatched I thought you would have bowled right over them.”
“Nothing on this plane is so simple as it looks from your distance.”
Anger lashed at her. “I’m closer than you.”
“We do not understand why you are so suddenly so invested.”
“What if I want to do something about this?”
An understated pause. Ways and Means did not hesitate. It thought so quickly that it did not ever need to, except for effect. “Then you should change your mind. Intervening would not be good for you. Our agents in the west are playing dangerous games.”
“I could do anything they can.”
“They work for us.”
“And I don’t.” The words hurt as much to say as to realize. “That’s why I need to look.”
“You cannot find out what’s happening so easily. We would be happy to show you. If you come aboard. We wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important.”
“I’ll think about it,” Osia lied. She cut the transmission.
It took her a long moment to recover from losing the datastream. She had stood above continents, satellites, starfields. Now there was just her boat. By the time she had shrunk back into herself, Coral and Braeloris were beside her, holding her shoulders.
“Not necessary,” she told them, pulling away.
Braeloris said, “It certainly seemed like it was.”
Osia had always figured, in the back of her mind, that she would be going back to Ways and Means at some point. Not now. Not in a year. But sometime.
Ways and Means’ perspective, its crew’s, would have to change before that happened. If they didn’t, it would be best if she stayed here – and best if Ways and Means never traveled to another plane.
This tiny world would be the end of their path. Not just an Earth. The Earth. Their only one now. The terminal point of Ways and Means’ journey across the multiverse.
Osia told Coral, “Don’t contact any satellites for this, but compose a weather forecast for the next several days. Pulse scans only. Have Tass unfurl the sails and tell her and Straton to steer clear of any other ships. We’re going to cross some busy trade routes and it would be best if we didn’t let a single ship see us.”
Braeloris looked to Coral, as if waiting for Coral to say it was all right. Coral hesitated, equally uncertain.
“We’re going west,” Osia explained. “Far enough west that no one will have seen a Chinese junk like ours before.”
9
Siena was in no shape to resist the Company of the Star’s advance. The company needed no spies to discover that, though their spies happily sold them the story anyway.
The Via Francigena was supposedly fortified with defenses, outposts. While Fia was dining on geese and stolen wine, listening to Antonov’s scribe read from Livy, a coterie of Albanian stradiots entered their pavilion. They brought a report of everything that had been looted from one castellan’s stronghold: one battered table, two pewter cups of different sizes (one leaking), a water jug, moldy bread, a wooden shaft that might once have held a spear head, and a crossbow without string.
The scouts would have assumed the building abandoned had they not surprised the castellan in bed.
Her corporals shared a laugh as they listened. Fia just drank. She had raided here before, and the city had fallen further since then. A poorer opponent meant poorer loot. The company could not support itself by robbing subsistence farmers.
The Albanians had brought her the castellan for ransom. They had also left outside two heads, both men, of whose provenance they declined to say. The stradiots had no patience to ransom small men. It was their tradition, and in their contract, to be paid by the head. Fia tried to hide the unsettled shifting of her stomach. They had gall to bring this to her rather than to their designated paymaster. They were hoping for a bonus from her good mood.
She told them to report to their paymaster and, without a word of departure, left them.
The sunlight stung her eyes. Humid, manure-smelling air clung to her nostrils, her skin. The war camp was in a fluster, full of men collapsing their tents, pages leading trios of horses, shrill shouted oaths and a rattle of orders. A handful of slaves and free laborers stood by anxiously, waiting for the officers to finish their midday meal so that they could tear down the pavilion. Caterina waited with Fia’s horses, attentive.
Another rider came through the barricades. He caught Fia’s attention not only from the oak shade of his skin, but from his bearing. He rode like a prince, draped in a pale cloth, only a dagger at his side. His three escorts, dressed like him but better armed, lingered by the gate guards.
Antonov was out too, conferring with his corporals. The messenger went right to him.
Fia did not hurry to reach them. Antonov and the rider bandied in a foreign tongue. Antonov had picked up a variety of languages from Russia to Italy. He had taken great pains to learn Turkish.
Antonov glanced at her. The rider never looked at her. After a brisk exchange of waves, he urged his horse to pivot, and departed.
Fia asked, “Not even going to take advantage of our hospitality?”
“He didn’t seem very fond of us,” Antonov said. “The word ‘infidel’ came up a few times. I don’t think he meant it as an insult. Just a fact.”
“At least our patron is more tolerant.”
“Maybe,” Antonov said. “He’s sending his envoy again.”
“Ridiculous,” Fia said. “Musa was with us all winter. We don’t have the time.”
“That’s what I told him,” Antonov said, gesturing to the messenger.
Musa bin Hashim was not their patron, but close enough that it made no difference. He was their patron’s envoy with the special charge of managing events in the west. His visits usually coincided with fresh infusions of gold. But this wasn’t the time. Fia didn’t have the effort to spare for him. They weren’t entombed in winter quarters. They were at war. Difficult enough to maintain the pretense that they weren’t receiving support without Muslim messengers visiting unannounced.
Fia said, “I don’t suppose he gave us a date.”
“He wants to keep us guessing.”
The last time Musa had visited, he’d claimed to be satisfied, and promised not to return until next winter. Something had changed.
Fia already knew she would not like whatever that was.
The clocks never stopped ticking in the back of her imagination. A new one joined, louder than the others.
The noise made it hard to think.
The messenger and his escorts were riding out without so much as a hop off the saddle. The gate guards watched, but the other soldiers pretended not to notice. There would be plenty of chatter later, in private.
Antonov was trying to appear unmoved, inflexible. But this smelled of betrayal. They’d been betrayed, done the betraying, often enough to know it. This was how they expected to be treated right before someone pulled the earth out from underneath them.
Antonov said, “You told me you wanted to pick a fight in the east.”
“Not a fight. Just more conversions. For now.” Spreading her belief farther. “I’m not ready for more yet.”
“We could keep heading west. Outrun him before he reaches us.”
“Hawkwood is to the west.” And closer, too.
“We’ll have to face one or the other before long,” Fia said. “Most likely both.” She waved to Caterina to fetch her palfrey.
The Company of the Star grew as it advanced. They were not the only mercenaries in the employ of Orvieto. Messengers with ciphered letters reached them at all hours. They coordinated with the other companies converging on Siena.
The messengers brought the names of towns forced into shelter behind their walls: Massa Marittima, Grosseto, Talamone, Magliano, Montepulciano. Fia knew some of the names, had been to them, but most were strangers. They held thousands of people whose lives she had wrapped around hers. Other men might call themselves lords here, but she and Antonov were the rulers. Their soldiers were the nobility.
The companies’ rendezvous was carefully choreographed. The march hardly needed to stop to accommodate them. The other companies poured into the Via Francigena as tributaries into a river. What had been fifteen hundred men became four and a half thousand.
That first night of their rendezvous, hundreds had turned out to hear her sermon. There were so many that the men in the back couldn’t possibly have heard her. Fia tracked their presence by eyes glittering in the firelight.
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