The Surgeon’s clinic never closed. She did not recognize the male serving as Triage, but he would be another of those Outside, and one never knew how many of those there were: it made her wonder suddenly if the world Outside was striated with fault-lines of ancient and provincial attitudes, and if that was part of why they were not permitted Inside. The Queen peered at Triage, wondering if she could find such evidence in his eyes... but she saw nothing there save the impassivity of his masklike face. If he found her presence untoward there was no sign of it.
“The Surgeon does not treat females.”
“I am not ill,” she said. “I wish only to ask him a question.”
The male twitched his hand in a shrug. “Down the hall, in his office.”
“Await me here,” she said to her guards, and left them behind.
The Surgeon was indeed in his office. She stepped inside and waited to see if he would acknowledge her. She knew him well, better than she’d ever anticipated: had served as his assistant when the Ambassador had first suffered his honor wounds, had spoken to him when he’d saved the Mother’s life at the Ambassador’s behest, had even sheltered in his clinic when the Emperor returned to the Field to defend his position by killing Second. Standing before him in his study, she understood what she hadn’t before. She felt safe with him.
“This is unexpected,” the Surgeon said, eyeing her. “You are not injured, I assume.”
“No.” She looked toward the closed door, then back at him. “This place is secure?”
“My clinic is Outside.”
“And you are Outside,” she said. “Because to be Inside would be periculous for one in your profession.”
How different it was to see the mind working behind a male’s eyes. Males did not fear to reveal their intelligence. The Surgeon’s was acute; she liked the way he studied her, as if she were capable of having complex thoughts of her own. He hadn’t begun their acquaintance looking at her thus. “What is it you plan, Queen Ransomed, to ask such a question?”
“What is it you know, Surgeon, to call me by that title?” she asked.
The Surgeon folded his hands, long talons arched over their backs. “Males say a great deal to the person stitching their honor wounds.”
“My Emperor doesn’t speak much,” the Queen said. “And when he does, it is only because he trusts those who hear him.”
“Emperors command many they distrust.”
“Yes, but they command. They do not confide.”
His eyes narrowed. “What is it you want?”
What did she want? What else? “Your help.”
“My help.”
She inclined her head as the Ambassador had done. “When the Emperor returns. If things are not as they seem. I want you to shelter him.”
The Surgeon eased back from the desk. “I am Outside. You know what that means.”
“You don’t take sides, I know.”
“To do so would place me Inside,” the Surgeon said. “I can’t execute my function if I’m Inside, subject to the whims and vengeances of those I treat.”
“You once told me that this Emperor was less difficult than the others,” the Slave Queen said. “That he left less damage in his wake.”
His wariness shone in his eyes, and he said nothing.
“Is that not what you’re here to prevent? Waste? Damage? I would think that supporting the Emperor would be another form of surgery: one that prevents sickness. You support the male who creates less work for you.”
He was staring at her, jaw tight. “I would say that honor wounds are necessary for our system to function. But you would have a ready reply to that, wouldn’t you.”
“That it would be better for us all if we lived in a world where that wasn’t true?” she said. “A world where males do not torment one another to prove their right to rule? Any animal becomes vicious when goaded. How many generations of Chatcaava have goaded one another now, to create this permanent state of aggression?”
“What you suggest is impossible.”
She studied his face. His inscrutability had become almost impenetrable, which made her think… “You do not believe that.”
“An astonishing conclusion to have been derived from nothing, Queen Ransomed.”
“But true nonetheless,” she said, sure of it now. “You long for things to be different.”
“I long,” he said, voice clipped with sudden anger, “for there to be less waste. But life ends in death, Queen Ransomed. Nothing changes this.”
“But the time between life and its end… that matters, doesn’t it?” She paused, because he was seething now, looking away from her with lips peeled back just enough to show teeth. “If it didn’t matter, why treat anyone at all? Let them die of their wounds and reach their natural end. What use Surgeons, if the quality of the life while it exists doesn’t matter?”
“This, then, is what the Ambassador did to you,” the Surgeon said. “He put these thoughts in you.”
“No,” the Slave Queen said, surprised to find it was true. “No, these thoughts were always in me. The Ambassador only made it safe to speak them. Just as you are now, Surgeon, by not giving me to the court to be punished.”
“That would avail me nothing. You belong to the Emperor, and the Emperor indulges you. If he likes his females male in their thinking, that is his business.”
“And you like this Emperor, or you would work against him.”
“I am Outside—”
“You would work against him,” the Slave Queen said, considering him with interest. “By not doing your best work.”
The Surgeon bristled. “You suggest that I would withhold my ability, when withholding it would make me unworthy of my status Outside?”
“I suggest that no one works well for a master they despise,” the Slave Queen said. “I had not realized it. But even among us, there is such a thing as loyalty, and leadership.”
The Surgeon was studying her now the way he would have an interesting disease. “You suggest incredible things.”
“The Empire will change,” the Slave Queen said. “You have been good to the Emperor. I would not have you on the wrong side of that change.”
“Enough!” He luffed his wings, astonished. “You dare come here and warn me? As if you had concern over my fate!”
“I do,” she said. “And also my Emperor’s. He will need you.” She smiled suddenly, feeling mischievous. “He will create that world of less waste that you desire so ardently, if you help him.”
“Your insolence is beyond belief—”
“Is it?” She canted her head, somber again. “I, too, am Outside, in a way. Females cannot partake in the world of power and agency of males, Surgeon. Some would say the Chatcaava have been lessened by that division. You, the other males who are Outside… how much more could you do if you did not have to live outside the world of males on the Inside? What could you accomplish freed from the necessity to maintain your neutrality?” She leaned toward him. “If you could choose sides, Surgeon… what an ally you would be! What amazing things you might do for the world you would choose to bring forth!”
He stared at her, wings sagging.
“Yes?” she asked.
His head twitched to one side, as if from a slap. Slowly he folded his wings, tucking them neatly against his back. “You speak unspeakable things. But you are correct. They are ideas I have entertained on my own. Now and then.”
“Then I will leave you to their contemplation,” the Slave Queen said. “And with the promise that this Emperor would listen to your ideas, if you advanced them to him. If you stepped Inside, you would be welcome at his side.”
“And if he fell?”
“How could he, with the help of you and others like you?”
The Surgeon snorted. “You speak with the tongue of freaks, female.”
Something in his tone—she’d amused him. “But?”
“No ‘but’. You are perfectly suited to be mate to the creature you call Emperor
. He thinks with the thoughts of freaks and makes them Chatcaavan. There is a vigor to hybrid creatures that cannot be duplicated with purebreds, and he is busy cross-breeding everything he sees with everything he already knows. It has been… an interesting assignment, seeing to him.”
The Slave Queen drew herself up. “He is Greatness.”
The male cocked his head, eyes resting on hers. He said, after a moment, “Maybe.”
“Surgeon,” she said. “Good day.”
“Queen Ransomed,” he replied, paused. “Come again.”
She hid her smile of triumph and stepped out again.
The guards escorted her back to the tower, and she ascended the stairs past the jeweled mosaics and the males standing duty outside the menders, the nursery, the gift harem, the imperial harem. The Surgeon would be a powerful ally, not only because of his abilities, but because no one would expect a male Outside to harbor a male Inside. What the Surgeon hadn’t realized was that he’d already revealed his allegiances. Nothing had required him to offer the Emperor a safe harbor for the Slave Queen in the event of a serious challenge, and yet he had acquiesced to that arrangement long before the Ambassador’s arrival. Whether that revealed the Surgeon as someone who favored the Emperor or as someone who hated unnecessary death hardly mattered. He had a moral center, one the Slave Queen could predict. If—when—she and the others fled, her Emperor would have an ally. That was enough.
When she arrived at her tower, the Knife had gone but the Mother remained, perched on the lip of one of the nests depressed into the floor. All four hands were folded in her lap, and she was looking out the window at the ruddy streaks in the sky, the gradient of deepening purple as the sun set. Surprised, the Slave Queen halted.
“Long ago, it seems,” the Mother said, “you gave me the jewels. Do you remember?”
“You were named Emerald then,” the Slave Queen said, approaching her. “After your eyes.”
The Mother looked up at her with that bright green gaze. “I said then that you could be crueler than you were.”
“I do not love cruelty.” The Slave Queen sat across from her.
The Mother dipped her head in agreement. And added, “I like the Knife.”
She considered her reply. “He, too, does not love cruelty.”
That seemed enough for them both. “What will you do now?”
“Speak to the slaves in the nursery.”
“The slaves!” The Mother glanced at her. “They cannot speak, or read, or write. How do you mean to do it?”
The Slave Queen looked out the window. The stars were gleaming now on the dark wake of the sunset, bright pinpricks against the purple. “Meet me there tomorrow afternoon, and you will see.”
“I admit, this isn’t where I expected to find an Eldritch,” Laniis said, stepping closer to Meryl. She glanced at the whorl of bodies entering and exiting the main Pad station off the Starbase Ana port, glad that she had only two people to keep track of in the crowd and that both of them were taller than her—and almost everyone else.
“A starbase?” Meryl asked. “Or a farm?”
“Either?” Laniis said. “I’d never seen an Eldritch before I ended up in the Empire. All their press says they don’t leave their world.”
“They don’t, unless they’re kidnapped. Usually.” Meryl guided them around the edges of the throng toward the priority Pads. “But there are a handful of them known offworld. Amber’s one of them.”
“If ‘hidden on a backworld on the fringes of the Alliance’ counts as ‘known’,” Na’er said cheerfully.
Meryl snorted and squeezed them into the quick-moving line. “It counts, believe me.” She added, “Three for transit to the agriculture dome. Two Fleet Intelligence, one Fleet Regular.”
The Pads chimed. Meryl walked over one, and Laniis followed. They exited out of the noise and bustle into a nearly empty room with a floor and ceiling of warm wood and brass-colored metal. The walls were all flexglass French doors, flung open and overlooking rows and rows of crops beneath a sky as flawless a blue as Laniis could remember seeing. The temperature was perfect, warm with a sultry breeze that smelled of sap and growing things. They were in some kind of observation tower; she had the pleasant sensation of being perched over an idyllic world, undisturbed by sapient habitation. While Meryl went to talk to the Asanii felid behind a nearby counter, she drifted to the nearest door and rested her fingers on the frame.
“Bit too cultivated for me,” Na’er said from behind her. “But it’s got a kind of divine arrogance to it, doesn’t it? To just go into space like this, make an artificial moon-sized shell, and then fill it with tiny worlds designed to suit us.”
“Is it arrogance, or a form of worship?” Laniis asked. “We mimic our creators.”
Na’er snorted. “Humanity’s barely crawled back out of their solar system.”
“I meant our real creators,” Laniis said. “The Speaker-Singer. Your gods.”
“My gods were a fiction created by over-zealous Pelted eager to forget that we were ever made by fallible, mortal people.” Na’er shook his head and said in the cadence of a broadcast evangelist famous for her fiery condemnations of humanity, “’They would call us their children. But children cover ugly truths with pretty lies! When we refuse those lies, we refuse their claim to us!’”
Laniis flicked an ear back, looking over her shoulder at him.
Na’er shrugged. “I’m sorry, arii.”
“Don’t be.” Laniis resumed looking out the window. “I don’t blame you for not believing in a divine creator. And the Aera never seemed to have very nice ones anyway.”
“I like the concept of the sacred wind that changes,” Na’er said. “As a philosophy, it suits me. The rest of it…” He shrugged. And added, “I don’t know how you can still believe after what you’ve been through.”
Thinking of the unlikeliness of her rescue, Laniis said, “How could I not?”
Meryl called from behind them. “Ariisen? I’ve got our coordinates.”
“Time to go meet another Eldritch,” Na’er said. “Ever think you’d see three?”
“I never even thought I’d see one!”
“This one should be good,” Na’er said. “A first for me.”
“Now, children,” Meryl said wryly.
“’Into the breach!’” Na’er said, thrusting a fist up heroically.
The Pad deposited them outside a snug little house in the middle of the grain section of the dome. It had a small observational tower tucked at its corner, like the minaret of a glass and metal castle, but it sported an otherwise rustic aesthetic, from the low roof to the rocking chair on the wooden porch. Laniis half-expected some sort of Terran dog to lope out of the yard to announce them and was disappointed when one didn’t appear at their approach.
The wooden steps creaked as Meryl strode up them and rung the literal bell hung outside the door. A moment later, they all heard exuberant barking, and the door opened for a dart of fur and color and light. Delighted, Laniis said, “I knew there would be a pet!”
From the porch, a woman said, amused, “Of sorts, anyway. He’s a solidigraph, but Hyera insisted I needed company. Bells! Bells, sit!”
The dog—it was a dog—sat and regarded them with interest. There was no doubt of its solidigraphic origins, since its fur was a kaleidoscope of riotous colors that shed glitter when it moved. It was also accompanied by what appeared to be a school of tiny orange and white fish, which drifted around it like a piscine halo.
“Blow me away,” Na’er said, stunned. “What on the worlds is that?”
“That is a designer edition digital pet,” the woman said. “Their name is Bells and Whistles. Bells is the dog. The whistles are the fish. Listen to them long enough, you’ll hear it.”
Laniis twitched her ears toward the grouping, and after a moment discerned the faint sound when the fish shifted position… a breathy whistle, distant and sweet.
“God Almighty,” Meryl said, staring at i
t. “That can’t have been cheap.”
Their hostess laughed. “So, what brings Fleet to my door?”
Laniis looked at her now: this female Eldritch Amber had said might help them. She hadn’t seen a female Eldritch since the princess, and she sensed she would never see one quite like this again… because this woman—Sediryl Nuera Galare from the name elegantly penned on Amber’s envelope—was nothing like that woman, or either of the men she’d met. She was dressed in unabashedly modern clothes, brown pants tucked into boots sensible for tromping around fields, with a sky-blue long-sleeved shirt buttoned down over an ivory undershirt. There were no jewels threaded into the crown braid on her head. There were no jewels on her at all, only the hint of a necklace tucked under her collar. She didn’t need them to proclaim her authority, wealth, or confidence. She had her hands in her pockets, an insouciant smile, and she was beautiful like something vital and quick and present.
“Your cousin Amber sent us to you with a message,” Meryl said. She pulled the letter from the inside of her jacket. “He said you might be able to help us with something.”
“Amber sent you to me?” Sediryl’s brows lifted. “This should be good. What is it exactly that he thinks I can help you with?”
Laniis said, “He said you might be able to get Chatcaavan refugees out of the Empire.”
Silence then, filled only by the occasional rustle of the grain in the wind. The world, this arrogant world, this piece of prayer, filled with sunlight and the toasted grain scent of ripening wheat, filled that silence with meaning.
Sediryl stepped back and gestured to the door. “Let’s talk.”
CHAPTER 10
After asking to be taken to bed, Jahir was expecting to be asked—to be made—to do something new, something difficult, something excruciating.
He’d been right.
“No, cousin.” Lisinthir pressed his palm flat on Jahir’s chest, near the shoulder. “No turning over this time. I require you on your back, where I can see your face.”
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