Tiamat's Wrath

by James S. A. Corey

  She turned the last corner before her courtyard, and there, out in the gardens, Fayez sat. One leg ended in a bright blue pod the size of a boot where his missing foot was already starting to grow back. The other was stretched out on a bench. And leaning against the back of the bench, James Holden.

  As if he had felt the pressure of her gaze, Holden looked up and waved. He seemed both older and as though he hadn’t changed at all. She started toward the bench, leaning more on her cane than she’d had to before. The gel in her leg felt like it was burning. Hours more standing and walking through Cortázar’s labs sounded awful.

  As she approached, Holden and Fayez exchanged a few words, and Holden walked off briskly. By the time she got to her husband’s side, Holden had disappeared behind a hedge.

  Fayez moved his good leg and gave her room to sit. There were dark pouches under his eyes, but his smile was as amused and sardonic as the day she’d met him. Or the day she’d married him. Or that one time when they’d almost died because a terrorist had booby-trapped a landing pad.

  “I think I must have lived my life wrong somehow,” she said.

  “I know the feeling,” he said. “But then I see you, and I think something must have gone right. Even if everything else treats me like my previous incarnation killed a priest.”

  She took his hand, wove her fingers with his. The future looked a little less bleak.

  “I just had the most interesting conversation,” Fayez said.

  “I could say the same,” she said. “But mine’s classified, so why don’t you go first.”

  “Well, he was being awfully cagey. But I think our old friend Holden just told me Cortázar’s plotting murder.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Teresa

  Nothing was the same anymore. She tried to pretend that it was. That her father was only sick, the way normal fathers were sometimes. She woke up in the morning, and Muskrat was there. She walked through the gardens and the State Building the way she always had. Everyone she saw treated her just the same, except Ilich, who knew the truth.

  She assumed that everyone thought her father was in deep consultations with the best minds of the empire because of what happened to the Typhoon. They had faith in him. He was Laconia. She thought the guards stood a little taller when she walked by. That the cooks at the commissary saved the best dishes for her. It wasn’t because she deserved them. It was because she was the closest thing they could get to him, and they wanted to make their offerings. They were scared by what they’d seen. She was too. But they had a story where everything would be all right, and she didn’t.

  The closest thing she had was Ilich, and he was gone now more than he was with her. When he did see her, the only lessons they did were the new rules. Don’t tell anyone about the high consul. Don’t act frightened. Don’t leave the grounds of the State Building.

  She tried watching her favorite films and newsfeeds, but they didn’t hold her attention. She tried reading her favorite books, but the words all slid off her mind. She tried running the length of the security wall as fast as she could for as long as she could until the pain and exhaustion made it impossible to think or feel anything. It was as close as she came to peace.

  And in the afternoons and early evenings, she went and sat with her father. He suffered Kelly to bathe and dress him, so whenever she came he looked trim and neat. She sat beside him at his desk and used his displays to go over simple mathematical proofs or the diagrams of ancient battles. Sometimes he would nod at the images, as if deep in thought. Sometimes he would pat at the air around her head like he saw something there.

  She found herself really looking at him. Staring. His cheeks were rough from old acne scars. His hair was a little thin at the temples. The skin at his jaw was soft with age. And there were other things. The opalescence that sometimes made his skin shine like mother-of-pearl and other times nearly vanished. The darkness in his eyes, like storm clouds.

  The more she looked, the less he seemed like her father—the great man who strode the universe and her personal life with the confidence of a god—and the more he seemed like… just someone. The worst times were when he looked sad. Or frightened. He didn’t particularly notice when she cried.

  Ilich did what he could.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t been as available since… Well. Since.”

  They were sitting at the fountain where he’d taught her about displacement. How to make something heavier than water float by making it hollow. She looked at the rippling surface of the water and wondered whether she’d float now too.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I understand.”

  His skin looked ashy. His eyes were watery with exhaustion and stress. His smile was the same as it had ever been. She’d thought before it was because he wasn’t afraid of her. Now it just seemed well practiced.

  “This may not help,” he said, “but part of what you’re feeling right now is normal. There’s a moment that everyone eventually experiences when they see that their parents are just people. That these mythic figures in their lives are also struggling and guessing. Doing their best without knowing for certain what their best is.”

  The anger in Teresa’s chest was the first warm thing she’d felt in days.

  “My father is the ruler of the human race,” she said.

  Ilich chuckled. Had he always chuckled exactly that same way, and she was only noticing it now? “That does change some aspects of it, yes. But I don’t want you to feel alone.”

  Have you considered not making me alone? she didn’t say. Or is it just the feeling that matters?

  “I know it’s hard, having this secret,” he said. “The only reason we’re doing this is that your father and you are so important.”

  “I understand,” she said, and pictured what he would look like if she drowned him in the fountain. “I’ll be okay.”

  She didn’t sleep that night. The anger that had surprised her so much in Elsa Singh had infected her. As soon as she put her head on her pillow and closed her eyes, she was in a shouting match with Ilich. Or with Cortázar. Or with James Holden. Or with her father. Or Connor. Or Muriel. Or God. Even when she drifted just a little bit away from herself, she woke up minutes later with her back teeth aching from being clenched together. Seriously? You’re one of the angriest people I know, Tiny, Timothy said in her memory. Now it felt true.

  After midnight, she gave up. Muskrat thumped her tail against the floor twice.

  “What are you so fucking happy about?” Teresa snapped.

  Muskrat stopped wagging, and her gray canine eyebrows rose in an expression of concern. Teresa turned on the state newsfeed and watched one of the professional voices of Laconia make reassuring mouth noises. The repair of the gate repeaters is already underway, and the communications network should be restored in a matter of weeks. Normal trade between worlds will resume very soon after that. Until then, the high consul is determining which supply ships are critical to the empire and approving transits on a case-by-case basis. The tragedy in the ring space which claimed the lives of so many loyal to the Laconian dream has shown no signs of recurring, according to the Science Directorate. Lies, half-truths, fictions, and bullshit.

  Rage and grief fought in her heart, and behind them, looming larger than the sky, a sense of overwhelming betrayal that she couldn’t put a name to.

  Muskrat chuffed once in concern. Teresa bared her teeth in a grin. “I’m not allowed to tell the truth. I’m not allowed to feel anything. I’m not allowed to leave the compound,” she said. “I can’t do anything. You know why? Because I’m so important.”

  Teresa got up, stalked to her window, and opened it. Muskrat looked away nervously.

  “Well?” Teresa said. “Are you coming or not?”

  She had never been to the field outside the compound at night. In the darkness, it seemed larger. Swarms of tiny insectile animals crawling along the ground glowed in patterns of moving stripes as she walked past, like her footsteps were making dry rippl
es on the ground. A cold breeze hissed through the bare trees. In the distance, something called out, its voice like a flute. Two others answered, farther away. A smell like pepper and vanilla hung in the breeze. Ilich had told her once that the chemistry of Laconia was so different from the one humans had evolved with that people struggled to make sense of it, inventing smells that weren’t really there out of confusion. She had grown up here, though, and it seemed perfectly normal to her.

  Muskrat trotted along at her side, glancing up every few steps as if to ask, Are you sure about this? Teresa knew the way to the mountain like it was the back of her hand. She didn’t worry at all about straying from the trail.

  In her imagination, Ilich sputtered and scolded. He told her that the rules existed for good reasons. For her safety. That she couldn’t just go and do whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted. He’d know she was gone. That she’d ignored his rules. That was part of what made it worth doing. What could he do? Lock her in her room? When her father came back to himself, Ilich would have to answer for everything he’d done in the meantime. Her father had known she went off the compound. If he hadn’t stopped her, Ilich wouldn’t dare. He’d only make rules he couldn’t enforce. A law without consequences wasn’t a law. It wasn’t anything.

  The first sign she was close was a shifting in the hedges and the bulbous false eyes of the repair drones peering apologetically out at her. They made their series of three falling clicks, an obvious query for which she didn’t have time or an answer. Muskrat usually barked and tried to play with the drones, but tonight, she only paid attention to Teresa.

  The drones followed them to the canyon. In the deeper darkness, it was hard to make out the path, but she moved forward all the same. Now that she’d come this far, second thoughts started to haunt her. What if she picked the wrong cave and startled some local animal in its sleep? What if Timothy wasn’t there? High above, the orbital construction platforms rippled and glowed. If she looked out of the corner of her eye, she could even make out the Whirlwind, the third Magnetar-class ship. Only no. It was the second now. The flute-thing called out again, closer this time. She wished she’d brought a light with her. She hadn’t thought starlight would be so dark.

  She found a deeper shadow that she thought was the sandstone shelf. She ducked under, her hand stretched in front of her. It only took a few steps more before she saw the cavern’s lights. The cavern was brighter than the night, and warmer too. The repair drones that walked with her had followed her in, or other ones had been there to begin with. She couldn’t tell them apart.

  Her heart was beating faster. She was sure that she’d turn the last corner and find Timothy gone, his camp vanished.

  “Timothy?” she called, her voice trembling. “Are you here?”

  A slick metallic sound came from her right, and Timothy stepped out of the shadows, a gun in his hand. He shook his head. “You got to be more careful, Tiny,” he said. “My eyes ain’t what they used to be.”

  Timothy’s expression and the casual way he held the gun were so comic, Teresa had to laugh. Once she started, it was hard to stop. The laughter seemed to have a life of its own, hilarity bursting out of her in a riot unstoppable and violent. Timothy’s confused expression only made it funnier. She howled, she buckled over, holding her sides, and at some point she noticed that it wasn’t laughter anymore. That she was crying.

  Timothy watched her like she was giving birth and he wasn’t a doctor. The visible understanding that there was probably something he should be doing to help, but he didn’t know what it was. In the end it was Muskrat who came and put her thick, heavy, fur-covered head against Teresa. The violence of her emotions left her spent, and she rubbed the dog’s ears while the drones set up a little chorus of queries, aware that something was broken but not how it could be fixed.

  “Yeah, okay,” Timothy said after a while. “Rough night. I get that. Come on back. You can… I don’t know what you can do, but I want to sit down, so let’s go back here.”

  Her limbs felt heavier as she walked, but her heart felt lighter. As if she’d come all this way for someone to watch her break down, and even though nothing had changed, something was better.

  The big man sat on his cot and rubbed his eyes with the knuckle of his first finger and his thumb. She sat across from him on a metal box, her hands in her lap.

  “So,” he said. “I don’t really know how to do this part. But I think the way it goes is you tell me what’s bothering you?”

  “So much has happened.”

  “Yeah?”

  And she told him. All of it. From her father’s tit-for-tat plan with the things hidden at the gates to the death of the Typhoon to the conspiracy to hide her father’s illness and the bemused absence that he’d become. The more she talked, the easier it got. Timothy barely spoke, only asking a few questions here and there along the way. He just gave her his attention and asked for nothing in return.

  Eventually she ran out of words. The sorrow in her chest was still there, still as painful and heavy and hard, but bearable somehow in a way it hadn’t been before. Timothy ran his palm over his scalp. It was a dry sound, like dust hissing against a window. Back toward the mouth of the cave, Muskrat barked happily.

  “Yeah, that all sucks,” he said. “It’s like that sometimes.”

  “It gets better, though. Right?”

  “Sometimes. Sometimes it’s just one shit sandwich after another.” He shrugged. “What are you gonna do? It’s the only game in town.”

  “I just want—”

  Timothy held up his hand, gesturing her to silence. Muskrat barked again, the bark she used when she saw a friend. And there were voices behind it. Timothy scooped up his gun, his eyes fixed on the entrance.

  “It’s okay,” Teresa said. “They’re probably just following me.”

  Timothy nodded, but he didn’t seem to hear her.

  “Following you?”

  “I have a tracker. They planted a tracker on me, can you believe that?”

  His eyes widened, just for a second. “Ah, Tiny. Didn’t see it coming down like this,” he said. She saw something in his face, and she couldn’t tell if it was sorrow or amusement or both. Resignation, maybe. “You should lie down on the floor there. Flat as you can. Put your hands over your ears, okay?”

  Who’s there? came from the entrance, sharp and hard.

  “No, it’s all right. They’re not going to be mad at you,” Teresa said, and Colonel Ilich stepped out of the gloom, a rifle in his hand. Three guards from the State Building were behind him.

  Everyone went quiet. Teresa felt a sudden dread bloom in her heart, the realization that she’d misunderstood something badly. That she’d made a mistake she couldn’t take back.

  “You!” Ilich snapped. “Put the gun down! Get away from the girl!”

  “Close your eyes, Tiny. You don’t want to watch this.”

  “Stop,” Teresa said. “He’s my friend.”

  The roar of Timothy’s gun was louder than anything she’d ever heard. It was like being punched from all directions at once. The sound alone was a kind of violence. She dropped to her knees, her palms pressed against her ears. Gunfire ripped through the cave. Ilich ran toward her, fear in his eyes, and pushed her down, shielding her with his body.

  Timothy was screaming like an animal—deep and full of rage. He pushed past her, past Ilich, barreling toward the guards like he could brush them aside. The charge seemed to make the nearest man forget he had a gun in his hand. He tried to grab Timothy, but Timothy took the man’s wrist like it was something that belonged to him, shifted it until it snapped. Ilich pushed her down again, and she had to fight to see. Another gun fired. Someone shouted, not Timothy. Teresa twisted under Ilich’s knee, trying to find Timothy in the gloom. She got her head up enough to see him just as a wound bloomed on his leg. Redness splattered the cave behind him as he fell. Timothy lay in a fast-spreading pool of his own blood, twitching. Trying to get up as if he didn’t know h
is leg had been turned to splinters. He bared his teeth in pain and anger, swinging his gun around toward Ilich. She screamed No! She felt it ripping at her throat, but couldn’t even hear it herself.

  Someone fired twice. The first round took the top of Timothy’s head off. The second blasted a wide hole in his chest. Timothy collapsed, motionless. The silence after rang like a bell.

  “What did you do?” Teresa said. She didn’t know who she was saying it to. Ilich pulled her up. He bunched her shirt in his fist at the back of her neck like it was a handle, pushing her past Timothy’s body.

  “Fall back,” Ilich said. “Fall back to the truck! We have the girl.”

  Teresa shifted, trying to turn back to the cave. Timothy was hurt. She needed to help him. Ilich yanked her along.

  “Stevens is hit pretty bad,” one of the guards said.

  “Carry him. We can’t wait here. We don’t know if the target was alone. We have to get the girl out.”

  “He’s my friend,” Teresa shouted, but Ilich didn’t hear her, or he didn’t care.

  The night air was cold now. She could see her breath in the glare of the guard transport headlights. Ilich shoved her into the backseat before pushing in beside her. They threw the wounded guard in the back. He groaned when the transport truck lurched backward. Ilich leaned against her, murmuring something fast and low. Her ears weren’t right, so it wasn’t until she could shift enough to see his lips that she understood it was fuck fuck fuck fuck… There was blood on his neck, dark and thick.

  “Sir!” the driver said. “Are you okay? You’ve been hit.”

  “What?” Ilich said, and then, “Teresa, are you okay? Tell me you’re okay!”

  The transport truck hit a bump in the road, shaking a little, and the shock of it all fell away. She understood clearly what had just happened. She balled her fists and she shrieked.