Down Among the Dead

by K. B. Wagers

  “Less than three standard days with those two and you’re talking in riddles,” I replied.

  Mia’s grin flashed like an orbital bombardment. “If I am committed to this fight, there are concessions to be made. This is one of them.” She trailed her fingers along my cheek, just brushing my lips as she dropped her hand.

  “I really hope that’s not another one,” I murmured, unable to stop myself.

  “It’s not, but I think later is probably better.” She stepped away. “I’m testing your BodyGuards’ patience as it is and things are still unbalanced.”

  “Mia, I’m still set on finding a way to end this without bloodshed.”

  “You are welcome to, Hail. That is the part that is uncertain.”

  I glanced past her, and the seer from the Council of Eyes lifted her hands from her lap. “She is right, Majesty. Mia is the only one who has seen a fight. The rest of us have seen nothing but blackness.”

  “Hai Ram.” I rubbed a hand over my face. “Well, fine. It’s still plan B, though, since there are no major objections about it.”

  “What’s plan A, Hail?” Hao asked.

  “It’s not done yet. I do have the start of one, though.”

  “That makes me nervous,” Hao replied, pointing a finger at me. “The Hail I know plans everything out. My job got far easier once I brought you on board because you were always four steps ahead of me in the strategy department.”

  “I thought you said I made your life harder?”

  Hao snickered. “You did that, too. But my point is, this isn’t like storming a station. Though I’ll grant you Canafey was a bold move. If you get Aiz on your side—”

  “When.”

  “When you get Aiz on your side.” Hao gave me a look as he continued. “You know damn well you’re not going to be sneaking onto Faria with him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because both of you operate better by kicking doors open and strolling in like you own the place.”

  Dailun’s laugh spilled out into the open air and I couldn’t stop myself from joining him. “You’re not wrong,” I managed, still laughing.

  “You can’t do it,” Hao said, abruptly serious.

  “I’m the Empress of Indrana,” I countered, spreading my hands wide and bowing to him. “And a state visit to Faria is hardly kicking in a door, but it is loads better than trying to sneak in the back.”

  28

  The meeting broke up and I stayed by the door as everyone filed out.

  “We’ll see you later.” Dailun gave me a quick hug and stepped into the corridor.

  “I would recommend, ma’am, coming at Aiz like a gunrunner rather than an empress,” Alba said with a smile. She squeezed my upper arm and followed Dailun from the room.

  I watched her go, her words tangling with Emmory’s earlier offer, and snorted with laughter.

  “You okay?”

  I looked around; everyone else had left except for Hao, who’d gotten to his feet and joined me at the door. “I just figured something out about Aiz.” I shook my head. “No, don’t ask me, I’d rather hold on to it for the moment.”

  “Okay.” He dragged the word out. “Can I ask you something else?”

  “Sure.”

  “You want to tell me why you keep cutting on yourself and not healing it?”

  The question was unexpected, throwing me off my easy stride across the room. “What?”

  Hao smiled at my side, but his golden eyes were filled with sorrow. “You think I don’t notice, Hail? The others might not. I can guarantee Emmory has no matter what masking program you’ve tagged onto your smati to try to hide the bios.” He caught me by the arm again before I could dance away. “Don’t you think about it,” he said, holding up his other hand. “You hit me, and we rumble here. We’re not supposed to fight you, but I’ll do it. Emmory will probably shock my ass, too, and I’m not in the mood.”

  It was tempting to take a swing anyway, but I forced myself to drop my arm and unclench my fist. Hao tugged my sleeve up, revealing the narrow lines of cuts running up my forearm.

  “Little sister,” he murmured. “Why?”

  “You all died.”

  Hao closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them again. They were filled with tears so that the gold shimmered like the sunrise over the waters of Balhim Bay. “No, we didn’t.”

  “Part of me still swears you did. That none of this is real. I’m trying, I really am, but this—” I pulled my arm out of his grip and waved it in his face. “This keeps me here, where all of you are alive. There’s so much I have to do. Everyone is depending on me to hold it together. It’s a small price to pay, and less than I deserve.”

  “It’s not.” Hao sighed, looking up at the ceiling. “Not on either count. You’re breaking my heart, little sister. If anyone in this universe has earned a lifetime respite from pain, it’s you.”

  I leaned in, pressing my forehead to his. “I love you, gege. I don’t believe the universe gives a shit about me, but I am grateful you still do.”

  “Until the heat death of the universe, Hail.” Hao smiled. Then he smacked me in the back of the head. “Stop hurting yourself, little sister. That’s an order.”

  “You’re not my captain anymore.” Even as I protested, I knew it didn’t matter. Hao was, and would always be, someone I could put my trust in and whose orders I would consider.

  He shrugged. “And you’re the Empress of Indrana. Some things change, some things don’t.”

  “I will try.” I had to force the words out, but once they were in the air part of the weight holding me down seemed to vanish, and Hao nodded once in approval before he turned and left me alone.

  I only hoped I could live up to his expectations.

  “Hail, you got a minute?” Johar had her hands in the pockets of her black pants as she sauntered down the corridor toward me with Gita at her side. Her black tank top made her tattoos stand out in even sharper relief against her pale skin.

  I paused in the corridor. It was late evening and Mia’s words had been rolling in my head all day. “Sure, I’m headed to the gym. Walk with me,” I said, and the pair fell into step easily.

  Johar was uncharacteristically quiet as we headed through the ship, but I didn’t push her. Jo didn’t like wasted words. Whatever she needed to say to me could wait until she had the words right. And Gita seemed content to walk along with us without saying anything.

  “It’s no secret we’re all a bit worried about you, yeah?”

  I chuckled and scratched at my cheek. “You two draw the short straw?” At her blank look, I continued. “Emmory said he was going to keep trying to talk me out of this right up to the end. I didn’t think he meant he’d get everyone else to do it, too.”

  “Oh. No, just me.” Jo shook her head. “I’m actually not here to talk you out of it.”

  “Me either,” Gita said.

  I stopped outside the gym and studied the pair. “I’d ask if you want to spar, but I don’t know how to dial it down—”

  Jo shook her head again with a laugh. “Naw, I’m good. I like my spine where it is.”

  “Did Emmory really tell everyone not to spar with me?”

  Johar shrugged. “Mia told him it would end badly. His concerns about her aside, he’s not an idiot. He saw the vids. Standing order is for us to say no to you. But I’ll run you through some paces if you want.”

  “Sure.” I hadn’t had a plan when I headed out of my room other than to work off some of this restlessness rolling around in my gut and to try to make some sense of the tangled path in front of me. I pressed a hand to the panel. “So you’re not trying to stop me from fighting gods?”

  “I would really prefer you didn’t, Majesty,” Gita said. “But we all know you’ll do what you want.”

  “Does it help that I would prefer not to? Prophecy or no, the idea of going up against something that is potentially so far above my level no matter what Aiz thinks we’re capable of is frankly a little te
rrifying.”

  “Eh, prophecies.” Jo pulled a hand free from her pocket and wiggled it. “I confess I’m not a hundred percent convinced that’s happening, but you are going to have to fight Aiz—and you’re going to have to beat him.”

  “Is that so?”

  “You know it is.” Jo tilted her head. “It’s the only thing the Shen respond to and him especially. You can’t talk your way in charge. You have to show them you’re worthy of leading. I want to help.”

  “I very much doubt he’ll let you fight with me.” My gut twisted a little at the thought of Jo trying to go up against Aiz—even though she probably had better odds than anyone else, he’d kill her in an instant.

  “Dear sweet crispy noodles, no.” Jo laughed. “I don’t want to fight him. Dying isn’t my idea of a good way to pass an afternoon, and even though we’re apparently at ‘bring people back from the dead like it’s a normal Tuesday’ level? I don’t know what that’ll do to my extra bits.” She made a sweeping gesture at herself. “And I like them, so no, for once no fighting for me. But I can help you see what you need to do to beat him, and potentially others if it comes to that.”

  I didn’t tell them that I had a plan for beating Aiz; I’d discussed it with Emmory and he agreed that the fewer people who knew about it the better.

  However, Jo had forgotten more about fighting than most people I knew, so it was worth it to listen and take whatever advice she was willing to give.

  “So, this prophecy thing,” Johar said carefully as I pulled off my jacket and tossed it to the side. “Do you actually believe it, or are you just going along with it because you don’t see any way out?”

  I stutter-stepped on my way to the corner and didn’t answer her until after I’d finished stretching and cued up the heavy bag. I normally hated these illusions, but the one benefit they had was I could destroy them repeatedly and a new one would always take its place.

  I threw a few punches at the bag, feeling the impact rock up my arms, before I answered Johar. “I don’t know. I hate that I keep saying that and I hate that it’s the truth. My life used to be simpler, Jo, and some days I really miss it.”

  “Tell me about it.” She laughed and even though it wasn’t necessary moved around to brace the hologram of the punching bag so she could look at me.

  I ran through a routine pulled off my smati, no thoughts, just throwing punches as the instructions came up. Jo stayed silent until I paused to drag in a breath, taking the water Gita handed me with a nod of gratitude.

  “Tell me something, if I came to you before all this and said I had a job for us. If I gave you the details as I believed them, but warned you there was going to be a certain margin for error—would you take the job?”

  “You know I would,” I replied without hesitation.

  “Why?”

  “Because I know you. I trust you.”

  “Why?” Johar spread her hands with a grin. “I’m a scoundrel. We all know it.”

  “Because I know you,” I replied, more than a little confused by where this was going. “We’ve worked jobs together, we’ve—”

  “You trusted me the moment you met me.” Johar cut me off and shook her head. “Sized me up in an instant. I saw the wheels in her head turning,” she said to Gita, who was watching the conversation with her head tilted curiously to the side. “And just like that, this green-haired titan decided the suspicious-looking man across from her was worth trusting. No questions asked.”

  I blinked at her, my brain crawling back through memories to find the truth of what she said. “Jo, what’s your point?”

  “You read people, Hail,” she replied. “It’s what you do and you’re damn good at it. I’m not saying you’re infallible, because no one is, but you’ve been right more than you’ve been wrong about who you can trust.”

  “Okay.”

  “Why do you trust Mia?”

  I froze. Fires of Naraka, that was a question. I flicked my eyes to Gita, but her face remained expressionless. Whatever her feelings on the matter, my Dve wasn’t about to let me see them.

  “Give me a minute,” I said, and turned back to the bag.

  I laid into the bag as I untangled my feelings. Despite Hao’s commentary earlier about being obsessed with Mia, I knew that wasn’t the case. I was attracted to her, but that wasn’t why I trusted her.

  Was it truly that simple? That I trusted her because I knew in my gut I could? That I could recognize the echoes of myself there—her dedication to her people, her loyalty, even ironically her honesty?

  I thought of Fasé, who I’d trusted the same way when I’d agreed to let her touch me that very first meeting. It had been different, a shift from mistrust to trust borne of the circumstances we’d been in, but in many ways it was the same as with any of the people around me.

  I trusted them initially because my gut had told me I could.

  I leaned my forehead on the bag, the energy of the hologram pulsing against my skin before I pushed away and wiped the sweat from my eyes with my forearm. “My gut, Jo.”

  She smiled, not the least bit surprised by my answer.

  “Did you have some input on this?” I asked Gita.

  Gita looked at Johar. “I think she actually brought me with her to teach me a lesson.”

  “Hey, your job is to keep her safe and you’re damn good at it. Don’t argue with me.” Johar held up a finger and Gita closed her mouth on whatever protest had been forming. “You’re supposed to be suspicious of people like Mia and Aiz. Especially when they’ve proven to you they’re willing to hurt her to get what they want.”

  “I’m not a hundred percent clear on what this has to do with the prophecy,” I admitted.

  “Right now your gut is saying what needs to happen is talking, not fighting. Even though that’s in some pretty direct opposition to the future everyone’s seen, right?”

  “They said the fight will happen regardless.”

  “You don’t believe that,” she replied with a grin, and reached out to poke me in the stomach. “Because your gut says otherwise. But if you need harder evidence than that, you know the real problem—the conflict between the Shen and the Farians—isn’t prophecy. It’s happening, right now, and we need to put a stop to it. As much as we’d all like to wade in there and knock heads together, we know that won’t fix anything. You’re focusing on the negotiations, just like you should be.”

  “So you’re telling me that the way to deal with this potentially galaxy-destroying problem is to just trust my gut?”

  Johar shrugged. “Little bit, yeah.”

  “Shiva help us,” Gita muttered, staring at the ceiling, and I laughed.

  Encubier was desolate, a barren swath of red-brown rock with a barely breathable atmosphere. The hangar for the underground base was hidden within an outcropping of boulders that sloped up into an impressive mountain range.

  I straightened my spine, ignoring the pressing feeling of the hangar and the rocks above my head as we came down the ramp of Fasé’s stolen ship.

  Aiz stood with a handful of his people behind him; all of them except for Aiz were armed. And tense, though I couldn’t blame them for that given the circumstances.

  “Mia, you are all right?” he asked in Shen as we approached.

  I rolled my eyes and gently nudged her with a shoulder in his direction. “You think so little of me?” I countered. “I wouldn’t have let any harm come to her.”

  “I trained you. I know you,” he replied, wrapping his arms around his sister and pressing a kiss to her forehead. He murmured something too low for me to catch, and she answered him with a reassurance that made the tension in his shoulders vanish. Then he looked at me and continued in Indranan. “But it was your people I was more worried about. How are you, Star of Indrana?”

  “Ready for a talk,” I said, stopping a meter away from him with Emmory next to me. Like Aiz’s people, he was armed, his Hessian 45 in a thigh holster instead of his usual shoulder one.

&nb
sp; “So talk.” He smiled.

  “You know we need to be on the same side, but that means my people need to be with us also.”

  “We do.” He nodded at me. “However, we’re going to need a consensus on who’s in charge.”

  “I would think you’d be used to the co-leadership thing.” I shoved my hands into my pockets and scuffed the toe of my boot in the red dirt that had blown in through the hangar door.

  This scene was so familiar from my gunrunning days: two groups with no reason to trust each other besides a common goal and the leaders of both trying to figure out how best to get the score and not die in the process. Only difference was I actually trusted Aiz a little more. I knew he wouldn’t shoot me full of holes like the Bolthouse gang had.

  “My sister is an exception and always will be. With you and me, we need a clear leader here.” Aiz studied me for a long moment and I remained motionless under the scrutiny. “Best two out of three, Hail?”

  I kept my smile easy, even though my heart was pounding in my chest. I had one shot at this and if I fucked it up we had to leave everything to chance. “We’re a bit pressed for time. How about just a single round, last one standing wins.”

  “Wins what?” A grin spread over Aiz’s face and I had to keep mine from widening to match. I had him, now I just had to finish it without raising suspicion.

  “The right to make the choice. Be the one in charge. If you win, I’ll join your crew, fight gods and monsters and whatever else you want. If I win?” I gave a lazy smile. “I admit I’ll probably still fight gods and monsters with you. But you go with me to talk to the Farians and I get to call the shots.”

  Aiz’s answering smile was slow. “Very well, with one adjustment.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Last one standing? No.” He shook his head. “First death is cleaner, and you did say we were on a schedule.” I watched as Aiz’s gaze flickered to Emmory and then back to me, felt Emmory tighten beside me like a panther about to spring. Aiz’s smile grew. “Yes, first death will be perfect.”

  Mia stepped away from him and the other Shen started moving at her signal. Emmory waved a hand and my people mimicked the motion until they’d formed a circle around us.