A Treason of Truths

by Ada Harper

  Lyre dug her fingernails into the moss that gave off a blue glow—blue, not green. The green stuff would leave a violent rash that itched for a week. She ripped a piece of gauze from the lining of her jacket and deposited it inside. A few strategic pokes allowed enough light to dribble out to see the sewer in front of them.

  Sabine flinched at the light. Her condition was markedly improved the deeper they went, so Sylvere’s ability to fuck with them via the nano agent must be fading. Hopefully also his ability to track them. That didn’t explain the solemn quiet with which Sabine watched her work. Sabine’s normal response to emergency was to take control of the situation, or at least pretend to have control. A Sabine following Lyre, quiet and contemplative as the concrete walls around them, was dangerous.

  Lyre wanted to address it but that, too, was dangerous.

  Instead she focused on steering her makeshift lamp around the rubble, checking dark corners before helping Sabine in her wake. The creeper vine was still present, but only as tiny feeler tendrils along cracks in the wall. Tiny branches, barely thicker than a bit of string, posed no threat for the moment.

  They’d seen little else moving in the underworks. Good fortune that Lyre knew couldn’t last, so she dropped into a guard when a soft sound came from the shadows ahead. A half-bit whine bounced off flat permacrete walls, making the location difficult to place.

  Which made it all the more disconcerting when Sabine rushed past her with a quiet exclamation.

  “Sabine—” But the dratted woman ducked her head into a crevice and disappeared from the light. Of course Lyre was familiar with the place but Sabine had an advantage of not relying on the light. Lyre cursed as she vaulted over a rusting rebar to keep up.

  The sight that greeted her would have almost been cute, if it hadn’t made Lyre’s blood run cold. Sabine crouched in front of a heap of brambles, peering delightedly into the shadows. “Hello again.”

  Lyre’s lamplight reflected off coal-black eyes that were nearly buried under a thicket of vines that twisted, fur and thorn alike, into a waterfall between two alert leaf-thin ears. A beast, half buried under vine and bramble.

  No, not buried. Breathing. Another underworks monster.

  “Back, now.” Lyre hoped her voice sounded more cool than strangled. Her fingers flexed until she found a stab of tangled metal, a shard of permasteel already flaked off the walls. Lyre had wielded worse.

  Sabine’s fingers reached out, oblivious to thorns as long as her palm. She made to free the creature from the bramble, but when she tugged on a vine, it let out a sharp, injured yip.

  “Light.”

  She was too close. All it would take was one snap and her hand would be mangled. Even Lyre couldn’t close the distance with the weaponized equivalent of a rusty butter knife. “Sabine—”

  “Hold the light up. I can’t see a thing.”

  Lyre’s arm betrayed her and obeyed.

  Sabine picked thoughtfully at the tangled creature. In a blink, deft hands were lifting through the leaves. It was a familiar movement; Lyre had spent lazy afternoons watching Sabine tend to her fragile potted plants. The woman could strike down a kingdom with a word but also weed a crystal lily without bruising a petal. She took the same care now. Lyre couldn’t help but tense every time the creature twitched, but eventually its ears wilted to an obvious stance of ease.

  “There, look at you,” Sabine cooed. The creeper that had left ugly gashes on the creature’s flank had withered, and the purple-tinted leaves in its fur began to tendril and curl over the wound, knitting it together before Lyre’s eyes.

  “What clever fur you have.” Sabine sat back on her haunches as the beast dropped its bony jaw in her lap. “A potted pet. On the run from the Vault too, are we?”

  “A weed beast,” Lyre muttered. A symbiosis of flora and fauna, beast and plant in one. It occurred to Lyre that the deeper they descended into the underworks, the greater her knowledge gap grew. She’d spent her childhood here. Been trained here. Yet it was still full of secrets. What kind of spy was she?

  “A wolf,” Sabine corrected, still scritching her fingers carefully into the deep fur and twitching vines of the beast’s head. It closed its eyes appreciatively, and loops of foliage retracted to sprout tiny violet blooms. Sabine just cooed. “What a clever lady.”

  “Anything created by the Vault is dangerous,” Lyre said. “We should leave it.”

  “There you are,” Sabine said and Lyre knew nothing she said was going to change her mind on this. She brushed the last withered creeper from the beast’s shoulder and stood. “Let’s go.”

  “Sabine,” Lyre warned, but the cursed woman wasn’t listening. The wolf—and, damned if that wasn’t what it looked like, now that Sabine had said it—hopped to its feet as Sabine rose. It gave Lyre a cursory glance, calm and wary, before returning its intent gaze to Sabine and following at her heel. Hell.

  “Sabine. Your Grace,” Lyre tried through clenched teeth. She picked up her pace to keep up with Sabine’s long legs. As if the woman had any idea where they were going. “You can’t keep that thing.”

  “It’s not a thing, it’s a wolf. And I’m in need of one, after all.” Sabine didn’t slow, but a smile twitched at her lips. “As everyone keeps reminding me, a Quillian noble is judged by her companion.”

  “It’s a monster. The Vault made it, and the Vault doesn’t make anything good.” It was practice that kept the bitterness from Lyre’s voice. Practice didn’t help the acid flux of self-loathing beginning to pickle her stomach. “You can’t keep that thing.”

  “Can’t. You keep using that word. Perhaps you’ve forgotten.” Sabine stopped then, turning on Lyre fast enough to make her tense up. Impulse made Lyre take a step back, but Sabine’s hand came up, stilling Lyre’s retreat with a single finger to her arm. “I am the Empress of the Quillian Empire. I decide who and what to keep at my side, and I will not be denied. I decide what’s worthy, no one else. It would serve you well to remember that.”

  The way Sabine looked at her when she said that brought heat to Lyre’s face. They were talking about the wolf. They were talking about the wolf. They were not talking about Lyre’s origins. Sabine didn’t know, and if she did—no, they were talking about the wolf.

  Except you were never simply talking about one thing when you spoke with Sabine. She needed to dissuade her from this argument now. Lyre lowered her voice. “This is no way to make a point.”

  “No.” Sabine hummed as the shaggy plant beast knocked its giant head into her hip. She dropped the arm that was caging Lyre in and dug her fingers behind its leafy ears in a way that made the viney wolf sigh and made Lyre a little jealous. “But it’s an excellent way to gain an ally.”

  “It’s not a useful ally when we have to gods-damned rescue it.”

  “It rescued me first. I seem to collect people that way.” The slant of Sabine’s gaze pinched Lyre, prodding.

  “That’s not the way I remember it,” Lyre muttered.

  * * *

  They hadn’t been drunk—Sabine was too nervous about embarrassing herself and Lyre was too well trained for that. The Vault had nanobots swimming in every agent’s system to scrub any toxins of that nature before Lyre could even feel so much as pleasantly buzzed. But they were riding a high of a different sort. The weeks of stressful preparations and whirlwind exhaustion that came from having one’s life completely overwritten with a single obituary notice; the travel, the resettlement at Court, the etiquette drilling, the endless, endless meetings with disapproving senators. All of it crested with the coronation and left them awash in relief.

  Lyre knew now that the biggest challenges were yet to come—getting the pretty crown on your head was the easy part—but back then, gods, it had felt like they’d passed some torturous test they’d never have to face again. Sabine dragged Lyre by the hand, escaping the coronation festivities as soon as it was
feasible and leaving Galen at the mercies of a dozen altusii generals who were attempting to drink him under the table—good luck there. Sabine was half giddy with relief by the time they tripped into the Imperial quarters.

  “Swanky digs,” Lyre said, with all the audacity of a girl still young enough to think she could be both a spy and half in love.

  “It’s a start.” Sabine sounded pleased as she contemplated the apartment. The staff had whisked away all the boxes, but it still had an uninhabited feeling. It didn’t feel like Sabine, yet. The couch was suspiciously free of wrinkles, potted plants still neatly arranged on shelves devoid of water rings.

  But it must have suited her, the way Sabine smiled. She’d pulled the crown off so they could slip through the halls easier—her reign was so brand spanking new half the gathered nobles didn’t even recognize their empress without the crown yet. Sabine turned on her heel so she was facing Lyre when she plunked the circlet of terror-white gold on her head. “Fit for an empress.”

  This was the creature Lyre’s Barnacle Girl had become. Rising to the demands of a hungry Empire, becoming proud and noble and bold. For a moment, Lyre had a double vision, the quiet, doe-eyed girl of a few years ago, dress impeccable and fingers stained with paints, laid over the young ruler resplendent in gold in front of her. She wasn’t a barnacle friend anymore, and for a moment Lyre’s heart clenched in panic. Fear that when she stood on her own Lyre would lose her entirely.

  “Your Fancifulness,” Lyre said, and in a moment of impulse executed an overly dramatic drop to one knee. She dipped her head in a rather impressive imitation of chivalry. They told the same ancient fairy tales on the Vault that they did in the Empire. “I am your humble knight.”

  “Are you?” Sabine drifted nearer, and Lyre’s eyes were in line with the sway of her hips. Lyre looked up and her breath stumbled in her throat. The shadows of the room painted the swell of her breast, and above that, her eyes were wide and wet. Dark with desire, with doubt. Caught in a moment neither of them wanted to break. “Are you? Mine?”

  The truth was an ice wedge in Lyre’s throat. “Of course I am.”

  Sabine’s face softened. “You know, right? How I feel? How—”

  She could handle anything but that. She dug her fingers into her hips. “Shut up, Your Grace.”

  Sabine’s breath caught. “I don’t want to be Empress.”

  “You’re the empress. Whether you like it or not,” Lyre said. “But you’re also a barnacle. A shadow. A foolish noble girl with more prestige than brains. Wouldn’t last more than five minutes here if you didn’t have a common wench like me to serve you.”

  “I don’t need a servant.” Sabine’s voice was soft and failing.

  Lyre slid her fingertips over Sabine’s hip, tracing the fine line of pelvic bone there, to where it disappeared under soft, warm flesh. She was close enough to feel the heat through the fine silk. Close enough to feel Sabine’s shudder as Lyre took a slow, soft breath.

  “Oh? What if I want to serve?” Lyre asked. Her movements stilled and she looked up, taking in the wide gold eyes. The brow already crinkling with the weight of the new crown pressing alien weight against her skin. Sabine looked so serious. So afraid. Lost on her pedestal. There were a lot of couldn’ts. Impossible things that Lyre could not give her, no matter how much she wanted. But this, this one thing maybe she could do.

  “You don’t need a servant,” Lyre repeated. Her fingertips found the break in cloth, stealing up the slip of Sabine’s gown like the thief she was. Her skin was smoother than the silk. Sabine’s breath stuttered and gods, Lady, Sweet Lady and all her consorts, Lyre wanted to steal heaven itself. “Maybe you need a liar, though.”

  “Lyre...” And sweet damnation, why did her name sound so pristine on Sabine’s lips. It wasn’t fair.

  Lyre’s heart clenched. “What do you need, My Grace?”

  “Lyre...” And this time Sabine sounded close to begging. No. That wouldn’t do, not for an empress. Lyre had to make Sabine an empress, or she’d be lost entirely. Tempted to keep her for herself.

  “What do you want?” Lyre leaned forward, whispering the question into Sabine’s hip and when she drew her fingertips just so, Sabine’s breath came out in a broken tumble. When her hand landed on Lyre’s hair, delicate long fingers winding their way through her curls with surprising gentleness, Lyre knew she’d won. Their roles were set. Empress and supplicant. It wasn’t equal, but it was what Lyre could allow herself to want. A safe kind of worship, where her chosen deity wouldn’t realize she already held her heart on the altar. Sabine’s fingers tightened and a pleased little sound escaped Lyre’s lips.

  “Don’t stop,” Sabine said. Her voice was changed, from before. The loss, the failing, the pleading was gone, upended under a groundswell of need and new, tender budding command. It was an order, and Lyre’s pulse thrilled with it, even as her heart ached for the soft things, the chance for soft things, that she’d just lost.

  Sabine licked her lips and this time her eyelids were heavy as she looked down at Lyre, a distant queen. Her eyes searched Lyre’s face, and waited until Lyre gave a tiny, encouraging nod before she said it again. Low, like dark chocolate and promise. “Don’t stop.”

  And Lyre didn’t. “As you say, Your Grace.”

  A liar, Lyre thought, distant and idle between the delights of learning Sabine’s body, learning the way she rose and fell under her lips. A liar was a bladed kind of lifestyle. No one understood that being a good liar required a ruthless kind of honesty. A brutal, merciless willingness to bludgeon yourself with the truth, least you get lost in your own lies. It was cruel, painful in ways Lyre had never comprehended until now.

  Because, Lyre thought, a tear slipping from her eyes later, much later, after she was certain Sabine had fallen asleep, this would be a dream, a wonder, bliss and completion. If only. If only Lyre could let herself believe in the most dangerous lie of all: that it was all she wanted. That did she didn’t want more, so much more.

  Lyre didn’t learn Sabine’s scent that night. But she learned the taste of her. It was a loss from that moment. Lyre stared into the half dark of the apartment, Sabine a rumpled pile of silky hair and discarded jewels on her chest. She watched the play of fireflies on the ceiling, moonlight reflected from her gown twitching and twirling with each gentle rise of Sabine’s breath. She felt the first tug of a bond sink deep in her chest. She was lost, heart and soul. Lost for good.

  She smashed her Vault transmitter the next morning.

  Both Lyre and Sabine were genta women, infertile like most of the population and not finely tuned to bond physiology as altusii and caricae citizens. Lyre always felt smug about this. Put a deeply compatible altus and caricae in a confined space together and they would snap together like magnets, whether they admitted it or not. Instead of magnets, gentas were like puzzle pieces. Gentas still bonded, but it was a choice, a rare, decisive thing. Lyre had always taken comfort in that. Her fate was her own.

  Somewhere along the way, she’d stopped wanting any fate but Sabine’s happiness. Lyre had made a choice, the same choice she’d make a thousand times, in every lifetime. Whether to royalty or ruin—and it was most definitely ruin—Lyre chose Sabine. Every time.

  So she’d quit reporting anything about Sabine to the Cloud Vault. Lyre had gone dark, and told herself she was satisfied with the shadow of the life she wanted.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Cian’s devices were clever if somewhat unreliable. Half the time, when Lyre checked in with Alais they only got static. The other half, swearing. Evidently, the route farther down the chute had not been as direct as Lyre had promised it would be. It was, Sabine supposed, to be expected. The underworks of the flotilla was a claustrophobic rasp of bramble and rust. Wind sighed through the gaps, somewhere in the distance, creating a constant, low wail.

  Sabine didn’t know how Lyre could look at a thicket of
schematics, lines so dense they had to be rendered in three dimensions, and keep any sense in her mind when dropped into a thicket like the underworks. She frankly didn’t understand why Lyre had even prepared for such an unlikely occurrence as their present progress trudging through the forgotten sewer works of the floating city, but Sabine had grown used to the mysteries of Lyre’s mind. It was like a mirrored surface, smudged just out of focus. She was entranced with trying to see something in it, even if it only most readily wanted to show herself.

  Still, Sabine had to grudgingly admit. Lyre had outdone herself this time.

  Lyre guided their way through a forest of the forgotten. Rusted viaducts and exhaust pipes, crisscrossed with a garden of foliage and clever creatures in rebellion. A garden that had revolted, killed the gardener, and taken the scorched earth for itself. Beetles that ate rust, and spiders that spun steel thread to repair the gaps left behind. Fruits that bled engine fuel. A microcosm that didn’t so much conquer the giant cog work of the floating city as support it. The flotilla was possible because of these forgotten things.

  At least, Sabine thought they were forgotten. She was learning you never could tell in the Vault.

  “Goji.” Sabine clicked her tongue, and the plant-wolf stopped inspecting a puddle of oil-sheened water and caught up.

  “And you’ve named it already,” Lyre muttered, though most of the animosity had been replaced by a kind of familiar exasperation. Soft-edged in the way Lyre was with her. Had been.

  Goji dogged close to her heels. It was a good name for the wolf, Sabine had decided. She wasn’t scientifically inclined, but she’d always gardened. She knew plants. Goji was a strain of nightshade that had a lot in common with the scraggly beast. Spindly but strong, growing often in wasted areas. Though it was part of the nightshade family, its berries were sweet and edible. A hardy staple in certain remote regions of the Empire, blooming and covering hills with tiny starlike purple flowers, much like the buds buried in Goji’s fur which turned constantly toward any light source they passed. A misunderstood dark plant, seeking the light.