Seeva throws her hands into the warm wet of its mouth, cuts loops with her scalpel, reaches under its bristly tongue, finds the rope buried into soft flesh, and transects the rope’s fibers.
Seeva withdraws the coils, hitting the canister as hard as she can as she jerks her hands out. The meal in a bottle sails away and clatters against a bar.
The cat’s hisses are more vicious now, the growls deeper.
Seeva begins untangling the cat’s limbs, slicing through knots, unraveling cords. The cat rips free of the last loops, twisting and rolling before leaping to its feet.
It lunges at her.
Seeva stands her ground, staring into its ellipse pupils.
Hot breath and strands of saliva wet Seeva’s face. The cat roars, and Seeva slowly steps back and slips out between the bars.
The cat licks its paws, eyeing her.
“That was something,” a voice says.
Seeva turns.
A reedy young man in a cap, who carries a stiff whip against his shoulder, watches her. “We usually have to dart them to get them out of that situation. I was waiting for assistance. Not uncommon, you know. Scorned gamblers who lost it all want revenge on the animal. Or someone didn’t want the cat to enter another games. Some know they like to play with rope. They coat the coils in meat sauce or blood and throw them in when no one’s around. We lose a few every year when the rope’s already been swallowed. Cutting filaments are buried in the fibers.”
“Why not just shoot or poison them if someone wants to kill them so badly?” Seeva walks away, not needing the answer.
“They want to make a scene, to cause suffering for the animal. Not a quick death.” He’s silent for a moment. “I’ve never even seen anyone attempt that before, much less accomplish it.”
Seeva hesitates.
He asks, “Would you like to be a groomer and caretaker of the chariot cats? To work for me?”
Another chance to help save the animals, my family.
***
A week later, Seeva tosses rounds of meat from an antigravity cart as she trundles between pavilion cages housing the chariot cats. Meat lands in soggy plops answered by throaty growls and snarls full of gleaming white edges, fanning whiskers backdropped by midnight blue fur.
Seeva never thought she’d miss the annoying drone of insects over stalls, buzzing at her hair and ears. On the Pearl there’s no such life, no flies of any type: dung hunters, pollinators, the hovering and metallic blue sheen of dragonflies, all eradicated or never introduced, just another sign of sterile perversion. Too much comfort for those who waste their lives here.
Seeva’s energy has returned, although she can’t find enough tasks to fill it. Waiting and plotting how to get to Drumeth does not take enough physical effort. She runs and trains in the mornings, the evenings, the dead of night.
“Seen any suspicious people about?” an adolescent voice asks, not the cat trainer who hired her.
The intangible feeling of threaded connections between her and the animals, tethered lines of thought and emotion, of silent communication are severed, the disrupting force a black hole sucking the morsels of calm and peace from this artificial world.
A figure in a black suit stands near the stable’s entrance, a silhouette against the light outside. “Any more attempts to kill the cats?”
The figure approaches: short hair, strong jaw, the hint of a breast. The woman officer from the games. Probably in her late twenties or early thirties, but her pitch is that of an adolescent boy.
“I’m Saysana. You’ve no need to be frightened of me. I’m on your side, the side of these precious animals. The Pearl guards its creatures, and I volunteered for an inspection.” Her eyes turn soft as she looks about the cages.
Seeva’s head cocks on its own. Don’t trust her. She’s one of them. “They’re beautiful.”
“Not just beautiful, they’re living souls. They deserve …” she falls silent, hiding her inner opinions.
Seeva’s limbs turn to butter. Could this woman really care for the animals more than for the Pearl’s people?
No, don’t get distracted. “I have to feed them and keep them strong. There’s a celebrity games coming up.”
Seeva’s stomach gurgles. Feeding them and keeping them strong, although satisfying in the moment, may not help these animals in the long run. That strength would be used for sport, for the entertainment of the Pearl.
“Yes, I’m aware,” Saysana says, “the standard annual celebration of the Pearl: the Pearl’s birthday, its date of inception, its new year, Revival Day. Always so many games with escalating violence and prizes to keep the people’s flagging interests at a maximum for another year.”
Seeva nods. “Two months away. I’ll keep an eye out for anyone in the area who doesn’t belong. And I have a helper.”
Seeva points to Ori who is perched on a cross rail, his pink and emerald eyes studying Saysana.
“Gorgeous,” Saysana whispers, looking from Ori to Seeva and back again. “If you see anything, please call my comm at any time.” She hands Seeva a contact point to scan with her v-rim. “There are so many types of people here at the Pearl. Ones who have fled their homes, planets tens of thousands of light years away, ones we pick up at each rendezvous point, gamblers, low lives, businessmen, anyone hoping to strike it rich. You’re different. Petite, not young, but an innocent wanderer. Where do you come from?”
“I was once told I must be one of the fairy people, and I held on to that.”
Seeva blocks the man who said it from her memory. She never knew her parents and always wanted to believe she had some magical or mystical background. It helped her through her adolescence.
Seeva throws another slab of meat into a cage. “You?”
“I’m simply a guard of the Pearl. My parents came here looking to strike it rich. So I was forced to grow up watching violence on the daily. Now I’m paid to keep those who control the wealth and power safe. I can punish offenders of all types, including those who harm chariot animals.”
Good. At least there’s one beneficial law on the Pearl. But this woman’s acting overly nice, pretending she wants to get to know me. “At least you’re strong. I’ve always been small and weak.”
“And as beautiful as the eyes of your proia.” Saysana pivots slowly and marches away.
Beautiful? An attraction … or an off-handed compliment to someone who shares similar opinions?
Midnight cats pace, hunting for prey within a forest of metal bars. Meorse beasts chew cud with the sound of jackboots slogging through mud, steam rising from the folds of their nostrils. Sour musk undercoats the Pearl’s sickeningly sweet floral incense. The sensation of a mental connection with the animals restrings and grows taut.
Seeva will keep the animals strong while contemplating her route to Drumeth. She will wait for the games, for Revival Day.
Nyranna
I wish to join your Whisperer and Strider uprising.
Nyranna sends her Whisper to the anonymous man who has been contacting her, the man who is only a glow fly spark of a neuron in the galaxy of her mind.
She wanders alone on a winding trail inside a vast cave network, on a planet from her childhood, the distant walls a translucent green, a crystal labyrinth that emits a faint luminescence. An aroma of time permeates the air, overpowering the tang of conifers and powdery blossoms. Viscous water bubbles, rolls, and pops around the trail, around downed limbs and trunks of trees that have fallen from the ceiling.
Overhead, stalactite trees grow downward, branches fanning outward in wings of needles to catch the green light of the walls. Snarled brush and long purple grasses flourish against the tree trunks in the distance above. The cavern air feels thick, heavy, damp.
Nyranna wears her autumn Elemiscist robes now, shimmery glass that she thought was so beautiful when she was a child. If only she knew they were false, beauty concealing indentured servitude, slavery, making Elemiscists stand out, to be noticed, to be more easily mon
itored.
She wonders about the deadly spider she released, how it’s scuttling through the Northrite’s palace, searching for an unsuspecting victim.
I don’t have time at the moment, the man answers from the spark in her head. I’ll pass on the contact point of an anonymous Whisperer who can assist you.
Nyranna feels the presence of a new contact, a golden-orange flare in a distant hemisphere of her mind. Now she can contact this person via Whisper without knowing who they are or where they are located.
Nyranna paces, her impatience a mountain of pressure. Her Elemiscist overseer from Uden could detect her linkchain at any time and determine that she’s no longer in the vicinity of the Northrite. Then he would hunt her down.
A small table of wood scarred by the utensils of many meals sits beside the path, beside a bench. How many times had she eaten here as a girl?
Nyranna sits and sets a bundle of wrapped food and a crystal blue decanter on the table. Two spoons and a jar of quoresamberry jam, as green as a forest. She spreads the jam over yellow bread and places a spoon on the table across from her with the decanter.
I wish to join your cause, without reservation. Nyranna sends the Whisper to the unknown contact, the solitary dot of wavering light in her head.
If this is some kind of Northrite or Uden test, and Nyranna continues along this path, she will be discovered and put to death. The other option is to remain their servant-slave, destroying her body by overusing the elements for someone else’s gain. To die young and oppressed.
How her mother died.
Images of her young mother burrow up from the crypts of her memories. Suppressed memories, those Nyranna never wants to relive but can never truly forget.
In a span of a few years, the mother she loved changed from a vibrant, healthy woman into a hunched maid whose skin turned ragged, her nails, gums, and eyes blackened. All because the Royal Father forced her to Stride and Whisper far more than she was capable of handling. All for someone else with more power, for their needs and desires, without adequate compensation.
Soon after, her mother passed. She withered, twisting into a gnarled corpse, a grotesque mummy of the woman she’d been. There is no adequate compensation for such atrocities.
Her mother was more slave than servant, just as Nyranna is now. Back then, Nyranna was a child who needed her mother more than anyone. Nyranna needed her mother far more than she needed her father who never stood up for either of them.
I appreciate your enthusiasm, Whisperer insurgent, an older female voice answers. The Kindling’s researched you and granted you his trust. We know you’re a first-ranked Strider-Whisperer amalgam with determination, but patience is paramount in this operation.
This woman preaches patience while Elemiscists suffer and die? I can curb my tenacity for a bit while we gather allies.
Patience in our insurgency spans decades, the woman responds.
Nyranna chokes on thick jam. Coughs. Her blood seethes. She drinks from a bottle, stands, and starts back down the trail, between mounds of purple moss.
I won’t last decades.
Then I suggest you find another group of insurgents. We’ve been following the man we call the Kindling for nearly two decades now. Our members have expanded to the outer reaches of the galaxy. We have a small fighting force of Silvergarde and have infiltrated most organizations. Espionage takes time.
The Silvergarde? That’s who it is. The pacifists. Although they do aid the oppressed and are oppressed themselves in terms of galactic governing power.
The Kindling believes we still have much work to do before a full unveiling of our insurgency, the woman Whispers.
The scuttle of a rodent sounds in the moss ahead but quiets as Nyranna nears.
If this group truly has a fighting force and numerous Elemiscists already in their ranks, it’s past time for Nyranna to join them, to free the Elemiscists from bondage, supplant the Northrite’s and Uden’s power. The chances that her spider will kill even a single Northrite councilmember without being released into a specific chamber is minute, and the other two arachnids she plans to save … possibly to sell, possibly to release upon the Royal Father of Uden and her overseer, the High Overseer. If only the deadly spider she released could reproduce by itself …
Will these insurgents eventually support her vision of true victory: a monarchy of Elemiscists ruling the commoners? Or will they see that only as another form of oppression?
Nyranna will start simpler. She returns a Whisper, Does anyone in this group keep an eye on the Ruin, the ravaging storm out in the drifters?
The contact points for nearly a hundred Elemiscists arise in Nyranna’s mind like the lights of ships dotting a black ocean, all still anonymous but reachable, planted there by this other Whisperer.
Yes, a new voice, a young woman, says, one of the stars in Nyranna’s head winking. The powers that be wish to ignore it, and so a Strider friend and I have taken it upon ourselves to keep our group aware. Last I saw, what looked like a ball of maroon moved through space and collided with a moon outside of Anihelios. The moon crumbled to dust as this Ruin continued on unscathed, the dust of the moon sliding away like a slipstream into the emptiness.
That’s much different than what Nyranna saw: a storm of blackness. It must be the same if it was at Anihelios.
We should all meet face-to-face, Nyranna Whispers, holding her breath. Have a formal discussion.
There’s no reply. A minute dwindles, then two, five, ten. Nyranna meets a branching junction of the caverns. So quiet and empty. She can’t do this alone.
These insurgents must be so afraid. Maybe if they had more power backing them, they would grow bolder.
An image of Adersiun marching before his rank of Everblades springs into Nyranna’s mind, an Elemiscist who can control all six elements. Although she doesn’t know him, he seems to fear nothing, the Everblades an actual force of Elemiscists in control of their own fate. They live by their own rules. Maybe Adersiun desires more Everblades or colleagues. Nyranna does have a Whisperer contact within the Everblades from her time as Uden’s first-ranked Strider-Whisperer, a man she never spoke to directly, a man who wouldn’t know who she is.
Whisperer of the Everblades, Nyranna begins, after mind-hunting down a blue-tinged dot of light in her head. I must remain anonymous at this time for the sake of my people, but a resistance of our kind is rising from oppression. We wish for Adersiun and his mighty Everblades to join our cause. We Elemiscists seek freedom, control of our own lives. We detest serving others, decimating our bodies for their bidding. I wish to take this even further, tip the scales, obtain power over those who cannot control the elements. Show them what they have done to us.
The Everblade Whisperer does not respond either.
Nyranna chooses the tunnel to the left—tighter, more trees, the green light fainter—and dumps a lone sapling out of a sack, the sprout from Anihelios, one walking tree pilfered from the destroyed planet. Its roots start to crawl across the moss, its shoot slowly following.
“Go climb, like I did,” Nyranna says. “Grow, up there. Become a tree for a little girl to sit in some day.”
Nyranna walks past trickling waterfalls, backlit in green. She worries now that the Everblades will turn her in to Uden or the Northrite if they find out she sent the Whisper, and if they cannot, she worries they may alert those in power to the possibility of a rising insurgency.
That was brash. I should have thought this out. Will I destroy with one Whisper what this group built over a decade? Nyranna has never embraced patience; it’s a slow, lingering rot that overcomes stagnant bodies.
You will not attempt to undermine my insurgency! the voice of the Kindling shouts into Nyranna’s head while another Whisper is planted at the back of her mind, in a quiet tone with a pinpoint gleam, echoing in the vaults of her psyche until the Kindling’s communication ends. Calling a meeting without my authority. If we meet face-to-face and are caught, we may all be tortured for th
e identities of our members. Then, every one of us will be exterminated. You must think if you wish to join us.
Then the waiting Whisper rolls out into Nyranna’s consciousness, the voice of the young female who reported on the Ruin. A few of us are willing to meet, to take the first step. What do you plan, first-ranked Strider-Whisperer?
Nyranna smirks. The magnitude and breadth of her power is a detriment to her freedom but a source of respect among her kind.
Nyranna relays a list of times and potential areas to meet, places they can all Stride to, find each other quickly, and return to their masters before half a standard hour passes.
Her back twinges a bit—reciprocal damage from sending so many Whispers—but it’s nothing more than a spasm, and this time it’s worth the strain. The Whispers were her choice, sent on her terms, not her Royal Father’s.
Be careful, the young woman says to Nyranna. A bounty hunter working for the Majestic Space Pearl is tracking a Strider-Whisperer amalgam. I doubt it’s you, but there aren’t many of your kind. He hunts who’s being referred to as the ‘seeder of the spider,’ what they’re calling the murderer of Staggenmoire’s king as well as a smattering of others around the galaxy who have died by the same method. This bounty hunter’s killing those in his path with some horrendous virus or radiation poisoning that’s going unnoticed by modern detectors. Some victims don’t even know they have been a target until they start showing signs, and by then their deaths are inevitable. Others die instantly. Some believe this same man is also murdering women and scrawling strange symbols upon their bodies.
Thank you for the warning. I look forward to meeting you, Nyranna replies, recalling what the hunched doctor told her as well. Someone is looking for her, looking to kill her.
Nyranna wonders if people across the galaxy have already decided that it was her who killed the king of Staggenmoire and initiated the first conflict in millennia, escalating interorganizational tensions and an ensuing intragalactic war.
The Forgotten Sky Page 24