by K. B. Wagers
“Hey, she’s awake,” Johar said, her stride not slowing. “Fair warning, Hail, I will dump you right on that thick skull of yours if you try to hit me.”
“Why are you carrying me? Why are my arms tied? And why does my mouth taste like I licked a morgue floor?”
“I don’t even want to know how you can use that as a basis for comparison, Your Majesty,” Gita said, her voice floating from somewhere ahead of us.
“It’s a long story.” I turned my head to the side, squinting in the dim light. We were out in the jungle and I guessed it was just before sundown.
“I’m carrying you because it works better than dragging,” Johar said. “You know damn well why your arms are tied, and I found a plant out here in the jungle that is a reasonable approximation of sapne powder, which Gita said would not cause you any complications. So you’re welcome for that.”
“Explains why my head hurts,” I muttered. The memory of Johar and the others returning after my shower and someone passing me a cup of tea as if nothing were wrong floated back into my aching brain.
“There were alternatives to knocking you out; however, this seemed safer,” Johar replied cheerfully. “If I put you down, are you going to run from us, or are you going to listen to reason and help us get the fuck off this planet?”
“I don’t know.”
Johar sighed. “At least she’s honest about it. Your ass is heavy, Hail, and I’ve carried you for two kilometers now. I’m putting you down. We stole a couple of guns from a patrol as we escaped, and I swear I will kneecap you with one if you take off. I’m good enough at this weird healing shit of the Shen’s to stop the bleeding, and Fasé can fix your ass once we hook up again.”
“That’s fair.” I bent my knees to absorb the impact when Johar dropped me on my feet and held my arms out.
She shook her head. “I feel like I’m less likely to have to shoot you if I leave those on. You’ll manage.” She took the Koros 201 from Alba and gestured. “Follow Gita, Hail. I’d like to get off this fucking planet and back to civilization. I miss room service.”
I turned around to face the woman I hoped, but couldn’t trust, was my Ekam despite Aiz’s assurances to the contrary. She was also armed and watching me with a distressing mixture of concern and wariness. Gita looked past me, shared some unspoken thing with Johar, and then turned and slipped into the jungle.
I could have run. I could have fought. But both scenarios held unreasonable odds of success, so instead I followed her into the growing dark.
The jungle closed up around us, a suffocating mass of damp leaves and swinging vines. Every step kicked up the smell of earth thick with decay until it filled my head with memories of being trapped in tunnels.
“Careful, Majesty.” Alba caught me just above the elbow when I stumbled. Her smile held more worry than the others’, possibly because Johar was behind us and we all knew she really would shoot me if I tried anything.
I didn’t want to hurt them anyway. Either they were my people, or they were Shen, and I had to admit that I wasn’t the best judge of what was real and what wasn’t at the moment.
“Hail, are you okay?”
I kept the curse in my head; Johar must have seen me tense. “Specifically right now? I’m fine,” I lied.
We continued through the jungle, the women helping me over massive tree trunks and slow running streams. Johar and Gita were ever cautious about keeping the weapons out of my reach. Even though I was bound, I was still a threat.
“It’s a good sign things are quiet,” Johar said to Gita in a low voice when we stopped for a rest. Slivers of moonlight filtered in through the trees, giving us just enough light to see by.
“No one saw us leave,” she replied. “But they’re going to come looking as soon as they realize we’re gone or they find that patrol.”
“Let them come,” Johar said from ahead of us. “I once spent a month in the Dego jungles avoiding some hijackers who tried to take my ship.” She snorted. “They were idiots. If they’d just taken my ship and run with it, it would have taken me a while to find them. Instead they chased me into the jungle when they realized there was a bounty on my head.” She paused to pull back a curtain of vines heavy with purple luminescent blossoms and waved Alba through. “I picked them off one at a time while I circled back around to my ship.”
Gita’s laugh was soft. “I’m glad you’re here, then.”
“I’d rather be back in the hotel with room service and running water.” Johar snorted, shooting me a glance. “And with everyone in command of their faculties.”
“Emmory and the others will be here shortly.”
“If Alba’s message got through, sure. If not, we’re shuttling out into the black with only a hope and a prayer.”
Gita’s reply was too low for me to make out, and Alba shifted on the log across from me, the noise drowning out any chance I had of overhearing her words.
“Majesty?” Alba’s soft call further distracted me, and I looked up from my hands.
I wanted to believe it was her. She looked like my chamberlain, moved like her, spoke like her. But there was no way of knowing for sure. Aiz could have improved his imitations, had his people study mine for all the months we were here before replacing them.
Or worse, they’d replaced them from the beginning and I just couldn’t tell the difference any longer.
You knew it was Johar when you fought her, Hao whispered in my ear.
“… I wish I knew how we could help you.”
I blinked at Alba, realizing she’d been talking to me. “I’m fine, Alba.”
“You’re not, ma’am. We all know it. You know it.” Alba shook her head. “I know it’s hard to believe, but it was right there. Everyone’s alive. You should be happy about it. It breaks my heart to see how you can’t trust in anything, even your own eyes.” A tear slid down her cheek and she impatiently wiped it away. “That’s only going to make it worse. It’s not going to fix what’s broken.”
“There’s no fixing what’s broken,” I replied, looking down at my hands again. “All you can do is throw it away and start over. I wish you’d all left me when I told you to. This would have been easier.” With a sigh, I dug my feet into the ground and stood. Gita and Johar’s conversation stopped as they both reached for their guns. “I know you think what you’ve seen is real, but it’s not. It’s just one more trick. No one is coming, but if you all want to try to escape we should get moving.”
We trekked through the night and well past sunrise, Gita and Johar stopping to rest every hour for a few minutes before pushing us onward.
I followed them, biding my time as my cooperation lulled them into enough complacency to allow for a chance to escape. One of two things was true—either these were Shen pretending to be my people, or they were my people. Both instances called for the same reaction from me: to escape and return to the compound, where I needed to be.
I hoped that if Gita and the others were real they would continue with their escape and leave me to my duty, but I knew the chances of that were as unlikely as Emmory and everyone else returning from the dead.
“This is awkward,” I said to Jo as she tugged my pants back up after a bathroom break.
“Could be worse,” she replied.
“Oh, really?”
“Your legs could be tied, too.”
I laughed, hoping it didn’t sound as forced as it felt, because it was necessary to convey the playfulness of my shoulder bumping into hers. I deliberately overbalanced, sending us both to the ground. “Shit, sorry.”
Johar laughed as she untangled herself from me and hauled me upright. “Clumsy ass.” She grabbed me by the back of the neck and pressed her forehead to mine. “It’s good to see you more yourself, though. We’ll get through this, Hail. Everything’s going to be okay.”
“Of course,” I lied, hiding the knife I’d stolen off her in the palms of my hands. How Johar had gotten her weapons back I didn’t know, but I wasn’t going to ques
tion it.
I was just going to hope she didn’t notice before I could get free.
We continued on through the jungle, stopping again several hours later for a meal. I’d managed to slip the knife into my pocket and was nibbling on a gray tuber that tasted fairly horrible even though Johar assured me it was safe to eat.
The real Johar’s enhancements made her the perfect candidate to try out the local flora—we still hadn’t seen any fauna besides a few birds flying overhead—without risking serious illness or death. But a Shen duplicate could easily pick out things to eat on the planet that would be safe for both of us.
Gita took a bite, gagged, and glared at Johar.
She grinned. “This one’s not bad. It’s got a decent mix of nutrients.”
“I question your definition of ‘not bad.’”
I couldn’t stop my own chuckle, and the woman who was possibly not my Ekam transferred her glare my direction.
“Let me know if you’re still laughing after you taste that,” she said, but her mouth was curved in a grin.
“I already did.” I bit into the tuber again and stepped hard on my gag reflex as I chewed and swallowed. The taste was somewhere between spinach that was about twenty minutes from going off and a rotten potato. “It’s fine,” I managed.
“Liar.”
Gita’s tease was an echo that slammed into my chest and lodged there, burning with all the strength of white phosphorous.
“Majesty?”
I shook my head, wordlessly dropping my food off and hauling myself to my feet with the aid of the branch above me. Grief was a fresh pain, meticulously cutting my heart into pieces and sewing it back together in a chaotic jumble. The tears flowed down my cheeks and I didn’t try to stop them or hide them from my Ekam, who made a pained noise of protest at the sight.
If this wasn’t Gita, she was doing a good job of pretending.
“Hail.” Gita wrapped an arm around my shoulders and it took all my control not to stiffen at the contact.
“Did I ever tell you about the first time I met Emmory and Zin? Emmory called me a liar,” I said instead. Real Gita or not, I needed to tell someone the story.
“To your face?”
“Twice.” My words choked with tears. “I deserved it; I was lying to him, and his brother was dead in the hold of my ship.”
“Majesty, why can’t you believe they might still be alive?”
“Do you want the bullshit answer?”
“No.”
“They’re dead. Maybe not all of them; but Emmory and Zin. Hao—” My voice broke. “I saw that rubble. There was no sign of them on my smati. No sound on the coms. And this is my life, Gita. Everyone I love dies on me while I stand untouched among the flames.”
She rested her head against mine. “I need you to have some hope, ma’am. I know it’s hard. They’re out there. I promise you. We’re here and we’ll get off this planet and back home. Whatever else happens. I promise you that much.”
“I wish I could believe you.” I forced myself to lean into her, to play the part until I could cut through my bonds and make my escape.
“Come on.” Gita pulled on me gently, and I let her lead me back to the others. “We may as well get some rest.”
“Aiz won’t,” Johar replied.
“I know, but he knows this jungle. Or at least we’re better off assuming he does. We don’t.” Gita sighed and helped me to the ground next to Alba. “There’s a very good chance he’ll just circle around to the shuttle depot and wait for us there. I don’t want to walk into a firefight unrested.” She looked around. “We’ll rest here for a few hours and then cover the last bit of ground. If we get there at dusk, we’ll have a better advantage.”
“The afternoon rains are going to be here in probably forty-five minutes, tops. But they shouldn’t last too long and we’ve got several hours until nightfall.” Alba looked up, squinting at the sky past the canopy. “This planet has a forty-standard-hour day, and I think is tilted in a similar fashion to Earth. We’re in the northern hemisphere and it’s summertime because we’ve had about twenty hours of daylight the last few days.”
Well, that sounds like your chamberlain. Hao laughed, and I bit my tongue to keep from telling him to shut up. Instead, I stretched my legs out and pillowed my face in my hands.
I dozed, listening to Gita’s and Johar’s quiet murmurs and Alba’s even breathing on my other side.
It was difficult to maneuver my arms into position to retrieve the knife from my pocket without moving to the point where I alerted the women on the other side of our little camp, but I managed, and stuck the base of the knife into the dirt. The sharp edge of Jo’s knife cut easily through the bonds and they slid to the ground.
I lay still. Jo and Gita—or their duplicates, my brain insisted—had fallen into silence and I didn’t dare move before checking to see where they were.
The jungle was quiet, only the wind and the rustling sounds of whatever wildlife inhabited it filling my ears. I eased my head up, spotting Johar with her eyes closed and her hands behind her head. Gita was gone.
Standing watch, most likely. The question was if she was watching me, or watching for Aiz.
It doesn’t really matter, does it? It was Cas, not Hao, who smiled down at me. Either way you need to go.
There was a gap in the canopy, sunlight streaming down and illuminating the jungle to my left, showing me a spot under a downed tree I could slip through. I grabbed Jo’s knife from the dirt and rolled under it, making my escape.
Sprinting through the jungle isn’t the wisest course of action, but I heard shouting as I made my way down a hill and broke into a run.
The ground shifted under my feet and I narrowly saved myself from being impaled on a broken branch, though it raked a deep gash along my side as I threw myself to the right and landed heavily on my shoulder.
“Fuck.” I got to my feet, left hand pressed to the wound and Johar’s knife still in my right. There was no way to figure out where I was going without turning my smati back on, but that would reveal my location to my pursuers.
Get some ground between you, baby, and then take a look. Portis was leaning against a tree ahead of me, and he tipped his head to the side.
“I know,” I said, reaching out to pat his shoulder on the way by and feeling the rough bark of the tree instead. I looked up at the sky, spotting the sun briefly through the trees, and oriented myself in what I hoped was the right direction. Then I began picking my way across the jungle floor.
18
It was purely by accident I crashed into the patrol. My instincts were in better shape than my brain and I disarmed the startled woman I’d run into with ease, knocking her to the ground and powering up her weapon. Johar’s knife fell into the dirt by my boot.
“Your Majesty?”
I blinked stupidly at the blonde who looked like Kisah, reminded myself she was dead, and then stiffened at the echo of other Hessian 45s powering up. “Don’t move,” I snarled when she started to get up.
More Shen, Hail. Aiz set this whole thing up. It’s just another test after all. Don’t trust them. Don’t let your guard down. Hao’s ghost rested a comforting hand on my shoulder.
“Shiva, it is her. Everyone, guns down.”
“Majesty?”
I held the gun steady as I backed away. My brain screamed about the conflicting information that was colliding around me. “No. No no no.”
“Hail.” Not-Emmory had his hands up. “It’s us.”
“No. My Ekam is dead. I am not seeing this. I’m not falling for this again. Take one more step and I will shoot you.”
“Little sister—”
I shot not-Hao before he finished his first step. He stumbled back, a hand pressed to his shoulder, with curses that the real Hao would have been proud of flying from his mouth.
“Next step in my direction and I shoot you in the head,” I said. “Where’s Aiz?”
“Sha zhu, I am going to kick your ass.�
��
The pistol whined to life again in my hand. “You keep that name out of your fucking mouth. That is not your name to use.”
“What is wrong with you?”
We stared at each other, his gold eyes locked on mine. My heart slowed in my chest and my muscles tensed as I prepared for a fight. For a moment I thought not-Hao was going to come at me, gun or no gun, but then the Shen wearing my Ekam’s face took charge.
“Hao, enough.” Not-Emmory’s voice was sharp. “Zin, take Hao back to the ship.”
“Ah-ha.” I waved my gun. “Nobody’s going anywhere except for me.”
“Hail.” Not-Emmory blinked at me, his hands still up. “He’s going to need medical care.”
“You can move after I’m gone,” I said.
“Please?” he asked. “I’d like to talk.”
“Fine,” I said finally, and the pair disappeared into the jungle. “You have one minute.”
“Are you hurt?” Not-Emmory asked, his voice soft.
“I’ll be fine.” I smiled mirthlessly. “These are scratches compared to what I’ve been through the last few months.”
The violence that ripped through not-Emmory’s face startled me enough that I took several steps away from him. I clung to the words about not trusting my eyes, no matter how much my heart wanted this to be real.
Everyone was dead, lost to the flames, and I was the last woman standing.
“We could help you,” he said, unaware of my inner turmoil. “Where are the others?”
I laughed. The wound on my side was still hot with pain and my shoulder ached, but I could get them both to heal without hurting myself further. “I’m fine. Time’s up.”
“I know.” Now his smile was gentle.
I had a split second to regret letting not-Emmory have his victory, and then not-Zin crashed into me like a freight train. He hit me from the side, knocking us both over the downed tree, and I landed hard on my injured shoulder.