by Rayann Marse
Ignu's smile grew wider. "They are nice trophies to look at."
"Oh, I see," said Stella, unable to keep the smirk off her face. "Aurora's put you on a healthy new diet of monogamy, has she?"
Ignu said nothing to this. He just stared patiently, waiting for Stella to get back to the point.
She turned, looking into the destroyed room. "This business with windows and whatnot... what do you make of it?"
"I have known Ognin for all of my life," said Ignu. "He doesn't lie or hallucinate. If he says he saw something, then he did. I doubt whether his mind interpreted the sight correctly, but there is no doubt that something unusual has happened.
"But that's not all. You humans love to make trouble it seems... Sybil, the translator, has gotten herself into a great deal of it."
"How so?" asked Stella.
Ignu told her. The stabbing, the break-out, Sybil on the ship with a ‘radicalized’ group of Menin females. By the end of his little story, Stella felt as conflicted as she'd ever been.
Who to go for now? Who needed her help more? Sybil, who had directly broken Menin law, or Kozue, who was in the care of someone who had?
The logical answer was Sybil. The translator was reachable. Kozue, on the other hand, could be anywhere. If Stella's hypothesis was correct.
"I have to get to the ship, then," she said to Ignu after a few moments of thought.
She turned to leave. Ignu caught her arm, gently but firmly. He didn't pull her back, but he didn't have to; she simply couldn't move.
"I don't recommend that," he told her. "The Mindseat is not happy with you humans right now. You should distance yourself from Sybil. I am already doing what I can to calm the situation down. There is nothing you can do to help. You would only put yourself in danger."
She was about to argue, to give Ignu a piece of her mind, but a sound of conversation down the hall distracted her.
She looked and saw that Gyrch was coming toward her, leading another male. It was Slych, all six feet and nine inches of him, battle-scarred and flushed with cultivated rage. He strode forward, pushing Gyrch aside and stepping so close to Ignu that their toes nearly touched.
"You," said Slych. "This has gone on long enough. I will not wait around for you to choose me as your next target."
Ignu quickly spoke, as though to prevent Slych from uttering the word ‘challenge’ and possibly seal their fates.
"Have no fear, Slych," Ignu said. "I would not challenge you."
"No, you would not. Because I will not give you the chance to."
An expression of sorrow and disappointment came to Ignu. He seemed to lose his strength, leaning against the wall.
"Before you make a mistake," he said, "ponder my challenge record. I have not been defeated, obviously. I have fought males stronger and more formidable than you, Slych, and won. You do not stand a chance against me. Leave now, with my sincere promise that I will not challenge you."
He stepped forward suddenly, stretching to his full height, all throbbing veins and huge, rippling muscles. He towered over Slych, who made quite an imposing figure, himself.
"As much as I would like to," Ignu added.
"And why won't you?" Slych. "You fear me, do you?"
"No. I simply have a plan of my own. And it does not involve fighting you. Now return to your concubines and enjoy the spoils of your latest victory."
But Slych did not go.
The two males stood there, noses almost brushing together, staring intently at one another. A feeling of awkwardness and tension grew and was soon so strong that Stella had to turn away and pretend to look at something else.
"I came here to challenge you," said Slych. "You understand that I cannot leave without doing so."
Ignu sighed. It was a shockingly human sound, with layers of pure exhaustion.
"Do what you must," he said.
"Then I challenge you, Ignu. Do you accept?"
"I incur the grace period. Allow me time to make my response. Now leave before I lose my temper."
Slych stayed a moment longer, just to prove he wasn't afraid or worried, even though he almost certainly was, and turned to go. He passed by Gyrch, who had flattened himself against the wall.
"Fool," Ignu muttered. "I gave him a pass, the easiest escape one could ask for, and he didn't take it."
"You males," said Stella, "with your damn pride and honor."
Ignu didn't seem to hear her. "Aurora will be displeased. But I will be able to keep the other female safe, at least."
"And untouched," said Stella.
He looked at her. "Yes. Untouched. But we also must find the other one. Kozue."
"So," said Stella, "you're going to help?"
"Yes. But only for Aurora. She wishes to try and finish the job she is getting paid to do." He smiled, looking at something far away. "Though I'm not sure she will wish to go home once it's finished."
Stella almost puked. She banished all thoughts of Aurora from her mind and went to check if the floor in Amnay's room was still hot enough to melt shoes.
Ignu came with her, watching as she explored the wall where the male called Ognin had seen a window. She grew frustrated when she realized, as she knew she would, that it was just a wall. There was nothing here to suggest any hidden features.
As she worked, she couldn't help but notice Ignu's growing impatience. After a few minutes, he seemed ready to explode. Abruptly, he turned and left the room in a rush, punching the wall and roaring in anger.
His sudden departure startled Stella out of her concentration. She retreated into the corner. The primal part of her brain, conditioned by Agron's aggression, had learned to fear the bellowing voice of a Menin male.
Gyrch came to the door a moment later, looking down the hall at the retreating shape of Ignu.
"He is angry," the servant said quietly, striding in. His robes whispered, the perfect counterpoint to his soft voice.
"Isn't he always?" Stella asked. She composed herself, taking a deep breath, and began touching and exploring the wall again.
"No. He may always seem angry. But when he actually is, you'll know it. Did Slych challenge him?"
Stella nodded.
"Then I fear for the other males of the fighting class. The next twenty-four hours will be a hellish period. Once again, I'm glad for the choices I've made in life."
He stepped up behind Stella, reaching around her to push on a section of the wall. For a moment, Stella thought that maybe he had spotted something. Then she realized he was just trying to feel useful. That was, after all, his chosen station in life.
"I doubt there is anything abnormal about this wall," he said. "Your answer probably lies elsewhere."
"Yup." Stella sighed, backing away to view the wall as a whole but finding nothing new. "I bet you're right. What can I do?"
She squatted down to check her shoes, but once she was there she found it impossible to get back up. All her strength was suddenly gone; her vision blurred with tears, and she started to sob and shake.
A large, strong hand came to rest between her shoulder blades. Gyrch rubbed her back, whispering soft and soothing words. He sang them, like a lullaby, and apparently the translator was not geared for music; it failed to detect any of what he said.
But that was fine. The sound of it was enough.
She reached up, resting her hand on Gyrch's.
Chapter Seven
Aurora had spent the past two hours bathing, brushing, scrubbing, and primping herself to utter perfection. She looked at her reflection in the mirror and had a hard time believing that the creature she saw was her. Or that it was even human. It must be an angel, she decided. A thing of divine beauty.
Ignu would love it. He had been working so hard to deliver her to her throne, to make her his queen, and he deserved something extra special. Tonight would be all about him. She'd even had some of his other concubines go to fetch the ingredients for a fancy dinner. It was laid out on a table behind her. She recognized none of t
he dishes, or the constituents thereof, but it all smelled wonderful.
She heard him coming finally, long after she thought he would be there, and could not suppress a giddy laugh. She ran to the bed, flung the covers aside, and hid herself under them. A gift for him to unwrap.
He stormed into the room. The smell of blood hung heavy. He was soaked with it; it dripped from his hair in clotted, jelly-like strings.
He met her eyes. Then he looked around the room. Seeing the food, he walked over and began to stuff his face.
"Ignu!" Aurora said, hopping out of bed.
He looked at her, and she saw a ravenous hunger that went beyond food. That made her feel a little better.
"We'll eat together," she said, pulling the hunk of meat away from his mouth. "We'll sit down and dine. But we have to clean you first."
Suddenly numb and unresponsive, he let her undress him. She called into the hallway, and soon a concubine brought a sponge and a huge bucket of steaming water. Aurora cleaned her king, sponging blood from the clefts between his muscles, cupping handfuls of water to his hair and pulling strings of gore away.
"My love," she said. "What's happened?"
"I've made a poor decision," he said. "It might ruin us."
He told the story of the past couple of hours, starting with the attempted assault on Amnay and the mysterious circumstances which sprang from it. And he told her about meeting Stella there. Nothing much to report there; from the sound of it, the little singer was the same as she always had been. An aggressive seeker of knowledge who simply could not rest until she knew everything there was know, or at least the answers to every question she deemed important.
"I wanted to stay and help," Ignu said. "For you, Aurora, I wanted to find Kozue and show you that she is safe. But I believe she is beyond my reach now. And I became frustrated..."
Aurora nodded. She knew how he got. It was bad enough when he couldn't find someone to challenge. But now, with Slych, with the conflict of interest between answering the challenge and appeasing his woman, Ignu must be going insane.
"I had to kill," he went on. "I left and went looking for someone to challenge. I searched and searched, relentlessly, but I could not find anyone. It was as though someone was going around the ship, warning everyone that I was coming. I have thought that for a while now. It angers me. And now I have found that my theory is correct.
"I caught up to a group of servants. They were going door to door, sticking their heads in. I watched and listened from around corners. Sure enough, they were informing other males in their private quarters that I was near, that they should not answer the door. I knocked at some of their rooms but received no answers. We are being sabotaged, my love. The cowards have found a way to thwart me."
"The servants?" Aurora asked, scraping a bit of dried blood from his ear.
"No. The servants do not act on their own whims and desires. They must have been commanded by someone, I knew that. So I approached them. I asked who has ordered them to do this..."
He hesitated, going tense.
"Did they tell you?" Aurora asked.
Ignu nodded, his neck stiff and his lips bloodless.
"Well then, who?" she asked.
"The Mindseat. I couldn't get many answers out of them, but it seems the Mindseat has decided to try and slow my progress down. They fear me. They worry that I might single-handedly dismantle Menin society. They feel I am unstoppable. If so many breeding females belong to me, and I don't even breed with them... They have decided that I am a problem that needs dealing with. So they have most of the servant class working in various capacities to slow me. To restore some form of balance. Cowards and weaklings, all of them. Every last spineless one. If I could kill every member of the Mindseat, I would."
But he couldn't. The Mindseat was untouchable. Its members were the most powerful warriors of their respective generations. They had lived long enough, had survived enough challenges, and won enough concubines, to have retired from that segment of society.
"What will you do?" she asked, not feeling particularly concerned. This was Ignu, after all. He couldn't fail, and he always knew the answers.
"I don't know," he said.
She stopped wiping him.
"Too much is happening. I am not sure what the best course of action is. Too many problems have presented themselves, all at the same time."
"That's life," said Aurora. "That's how it always goes."
"Not here. Life is simple. Over millennia, we have perfected and honed it. It has been distilled down to a simple and elegant system that does not allow deviation or mistake. But it seems like the arrival of you and the other humans has spoiled something. Your presence has infected us in some way. I don't understand it. And I believe the blame lies with us, not with you. We asked for you to come here, but evidently we were not prepared for the effect you would have on us."
"Ignu," she said. "It's alright, I promise. Things will work themselves out. I don't want to see Menin society ruined any more than you do. We're tying to push it to the extreme, but only with to goal to guarantee ourselves a position of power."
"What we are trying to do is unprecedented in scope, but not in overall purpose," Ignu said, nodding. "But still, the Mindseat interfering with private matters is unheard of. They respond to direct appeals and make large decisions about the course of the entire population. They don't meddle with individual affairs. Something is very wrong here. And it probably has something to do with your translator. She has the Mindseat in a state of some anxiety. They are over-reaching themselves, doing things they wouldn't ordinarily do, trying to get ahead of the curve and set things right."
He looked at her now, with violent anger in his eyes.
"They think you are the driving force behind my recent challenges. They think you are the reason I am doing these things. When the reality is that you were merely the final motivation that I needed. It would have happened eventually, no matter what. I might have tried to make them understand this, but... I may have ruined my chance of doing that."
"Does this have something to do with the blood that's all over you?"
He didn't answer right away. Walking over to the mirror, he deemed himself clean and began drying off. They sat and ate then, not speaking for a long while. Finally, Ignu smiled at her. Most of his anger had gone. Perhaps he just needed food.
"You look beautiful," he said. "Even more so than usual."
"Well, that was the idea. Are you gonna tell me what the story is with the blood, or what?"
He nodded, setting his fork down. "The servants... I was very angry. They told me what I've already told you. But they refused to say more than that. I only got so much out of them, I think, because they were terrified of me. My fury grew once I realized they would say no more. They withheld information, refusing direct orders from me. A servant is never meant to do that; they are meant to be impartial. They belong to everyone; they are not allowed to follow just a single master. So, judging them in violation of law, I sentenced them to immediate death... Four servants, cut down in the hall. Their screams echoed far, but no one came out to see what was happening or to help them. The cowards all stayed in their holes. Afraid of me."
He turned his head to the side and spat on the floor.
"I would kill them all," he said. "What I did was right. I feel good about it. But the Mindseat won't. They will not be glad to hear that I have not only caught on to their scheme, but also executed some of their pawns. They will have some words for me, I assume. In fact, I am certain they are talking the matter over right now. They will be here to drag me into a tribunal by the end of our dinner."
"What will they do?" asked Aurora. "What can they do?"
"They can do whatever they like, as long as a majority of them agree to it. They can kill me, castrate me, demote me to servant status. But I think, most likely, they will exile me. I will be sent to some colony. They will say there is honor in this, that I will be serving the greater good. It is also possib
le that they will do nothing... They may just set some restriction on my ability to challenge."
"All of that is wrong. Being superior is not a crime."
"In the eyes of the inferior, it is."
Chapter Eight
"I hope we don't meet anyone else along the way," Gyrch said.
Stella looked over her shoulder at him. She was walking along at a good clip, hurrying down the hall at about four miles an hour. In order to stay with her, Gyrch had to put in a concerted effort to slow himself down. He took baby steps, painstaking, agonizing, like a sloth crawling across a busy road while traffic backs up to either side of him. But he did not complain.
"Why do you say that?" Stella asked.
"Because they may require my services for something. I would much rather stay with you. And not only because I enjoy your company. You need the help. A servant is an impartial party, and sometimes a mediator in discussions."
"I think you should be on the Mindseat. I feel like Menin society could use a good mix. It doesn't seem like a good idea to give one segment of a population all the power."
Gyrch looked around now, making sure he would not be overheard. "They are meant to be infinitely wise, able to look at problems not as the bloodthirsty warriors they once were but simply as Menin. But that is only in theory. In practice, they behave and decide much as you might fear they would. I wouldn't want to be on the Mindseat with them, because it would just be a waste of effort. They would never agree with me on anything, and none of my ideas would ever be put into effect."
"What sort of ideas are you talking about?" she asked.
But Gyrch didn't answer. After a moment, he looked around again and said, "It is quieter than usual. I have seen no one in the halls. Have you?"
Stella shook her head. She had spent many hours wandering this ship in her days of being here, and it certainly wasn't unusual to go fifteen or twenty minutes without spotting another soul. But she would often hear sounds in the distance, doors opening or shutting, Menin shouting or barking orders. Or she would catch a glimpse of someone rounding a corner up ahead of her, or disappearing into a room.