by Richard Fox
“That’s right.”
“Ha!” Keesla snapped her fingers. “I knew it. Smart move. Fastal’s the best commander they have…and a decent Tyr, for a blighted. Now for a matter of protocol. I will see you.”
“Pardon?”
“My caste walk among the blighted. Unknown and undetected. It is here in the Mists that we can be as the One True God made us. We don’t have to hide behind the blight of lesser Tyr. To bear a caste marking is not done, not when you have a true face.”
“If you insist.” Sarah pressed the release behind her jaw and her synth layer sloughed off. She winced as the dermis anchors released their grip and her face tingled in the fresh air.
The guard muttered a prayer and flashed the same two fingers over the back of his hand in the same gesture she’d seen before.
“You’re not…exactly like Turley. More tan.” Keesla approached slightly, but her face was still hidden in shadows.
“Our skin tone depends on our need for vitamin D levels…solar damage…it’s a trivial part of our biology, but socially and historically, it was a major bone of contention. Now you see me. Satisfied? Why am I here? What do you need me for?” Sarah asked. “Why would you send a team for my husband? You’ve got Turley.”
“Turley…” Keesla pulled over a stool and sat down. “He is a problem. Rather, that he is of the human caste causes problems for the Hidden, despite what he’s done for us. What do you know of us?”
“I know you exist because Turley contacted me after I arrived. He told me of his…predicament with the Hidden. How you captured him and kept him in jail for a time.” She looked around. “Guess I’m following suit? But that’s all. That you exist, that you’re working with Turley and…then there’s the legends about you.”
“That we have no souls as we bear no marks from the gods. That we steal children, our men paint other caste’s marking onto their ketafik to seduce women and leave them with children that are killed within minutes of being born for being ‘abominations.’ That we are blamed for every single fault a blighted suffers that they choose not to believe is their fault.” Keesla folded her hands on her lap.
“We were hounded for centuries while our tribes still lived on the main continents. We had to take to the sea to survive, and eventually, we found the Great Mists. Here we could remain…hidden. And in time, we returned to the rest of the castes, disguised as them. Which you can appreciate,” she said.
“I can. Being mistaken for a Hidden was a very real concern for us…we didn’t want to be burned at the stake because Tyr knew us with different faces. So we settled on being Linkers, who are always suspected of being Hidden anyway,” Sarah said.
“What you know of the Hidden beyond the Great Mists…is not the reality of my caste in our home islands,” Keesla said. “We have a Queen and she commands all efforts beyond the Mists, but she doesn’t have the power that Menicus has. Had.”
“Then the Queen brought me here because…”
“Turley has a phrase…something about an ohs-trich and sand, coupled with ‘an object not in sight is not of concern.’”
“Out of sight, out of mind,” Sarah said.
Keesla snapped her fingers. “That. For centuries, we’ve been safe behind the Mists, behind the ring of bickering Islander nations that keep others away…it wasn’t until the Slavers were burned alive that the rest of the world proved to be an issue for us,” she said.
“The children,” Sarah said, nodding.
“More than that,” the Tyr said. “We suffered far worse than that. We thought if we stayed out of the affairs of the blighted, we wouldn’t be bothered. But we share this planet. We all feel the same wind.”
“I feel a ‘but’ coming.”
“But factions of us believed we should have intervened in that war sooner, kept the powers off-balance…or stopped the blighted from ever getting the power of the atom. We hid from the world and we paid the price. Now the human caste is here…and we have a similar problem. An even worse problem.”
“Turley said…he said he was preparing you all to fight.” Sarah looked away.
“You met Turley in person twice. The last time you saw him was six years ago. And you think that every message you received from him through the network was him?” Keesla asked.
“Oh…oh no. You mean you’re…not going to join with the rest of the Tyr and go to war for your own survival? Because that is exactly what’s at stake for you.”
“Not all the Hidden believe that. And then there’s the question of just how much of a fight we could offer…what we’ve heard from the Azure Islands…”
“You’ve got graphenium armor. Battle rifles—”
“We do not have magic fighter planes that defy gravity and break the laws of physics! Or walking metal monsters! It will be a slaughter, even if our capabilities are improved.” Keesla crossed her arms.
“Give me…give me a cup of water.” Sarah looked at a small tray next to the guard that held what she asked for. The guard looked to Keesla for approval, then brought over a small tin cup filled to the brim.
“This is the Corporation’s total strength,” Sarah said, then poured it on the ground right at her feet.
“That’s incredibly rude here,” Keesla said.
“This is all the territory they can control.” Sarah tapped her foot in the puddle. “The Tyr have the numbers. You’re everywhere on this planet that our enemy wants to go. You need the will to act.” Sarah pressed her hands to her chest, pleading.
“This Zike that’s all over the airwaves, is he a fool?” Keesla asked.
“No…far from it.”
“Then he knows exactly what his capabilities are. What will he do next?”
“An old tactic from our people’s past: when a powerful nation doesn’t have the manpower to take on a larger force, they divide and conquer,” Sarah said.
“The Free State…those lunatics.” Keesla looked away for a moment. “But that is a far problem. You have a more pressing issue right in front of you. The Conclave demands to see you. If you want to survive, you need to listen very closely…”
****
Sarah was caged in the back of a rickshaw. Again. This time surrounded by guards, all of whom pelted her with furtive glances as her synth layer was off, leaving her head and shoulders exposed.
A pair of guards pulled her cart to a wooden set of arched double doors with iron rings for handles. They stopped outside a coliseum with no windows. Stone carvings of winged lizards adorned the upper level where the roof disappeared in the mists.
Muffled voices came through the door, a pair of male voices arguing.
“So, you all get out much?” Sarah asked, startling the guards. “You know the kingdom’s tongue? Islanders?”
One guard holding a rickshaw pole turned around, then picked at his hair and rubbed it between his fingers.
“Sure, why not?” She flipped some of her auburn hair over the front of her shoulder and leaned forward.
The curious guard touched it, then swiped his hand down the front of his battle armor.
“So maybe they don’t let Dr. Turley walk around au naturel,” she said.
The arguing within grew more intense, but it didn’t seem to faze the guards. There was a clunk and the double doors went ajar.
Sarah swallowed hard as the guards opened them and she was pulled inside.
Five concentric rows of seats ringed the inner wall, filled with Hidden men and women in white robes. Each wore an ivory disc painted with dark markings that matched the ketafiks of the rest of the Tyr castes, and some had gold-rimmed badges on their left shoulder. All were silent, staring at her intently as the wheels of her cart squeaked against a stone floor. There were more Tyr on her left than her right, and the ones on the right seemed to have far fewer badges than those on the left, who were a bit older.
A massive bench on the far side of the coliseum from where she entered was unoccupied.
While Sarah understood she was the cent
er of attention, her eyes were on the wooden stake in the center of the room. At its base were piles of wood and kindling.
“Look at this!” A Tyr rose from the stands and held out an open hand. “Look at this…thing.” He was a bit past middle age and wore a single badge with Islander caste markings on it.
The translation bead in her ear picked up all the Hidden dialect for her, an upgrade left by Turley.
“Do not be so cruel, Baron Narog.” Another Tyr rose on the other side, an elderly man with a chest full of badges. “This one claims to be an ally, like the good doctor.”
“We don’t need her, Rand. We’ve never needed the human caste. We’ve only ever needed to trust in the One True God and his deliverance. Well…it is here!” Narog slammed his hands on a wooden railing in front of him and his side of the chamber burst into applause.
“You don’t know that!” Rand raised a fist and the room went silent. “You are so blinded by faith that the first hint of the prophecy you can divine blinds you to all other options. You feel a tug on your line and think you’ve got a silver beak, but it may be a red maw coming for you.”
“Every blighted on the Azure Islands has been slaughtered,” Narog said. “How much more obvious does it have to be for you and yours?”
“Why don’t we ask the human caste what their intentions are?” Rand came down a set of stairs near the bench and walked onto the floor. He continued addressing both sides of the room as he walked around Sarah’s cage. “Sarah Clay, is it? When did you arrive on our world and what is your mission?”
Sarah wanted to stand, but the cage wasn’t tall enough. “Ten years. We came through a portal from another star ten years ago. We took on Linkers’ marks and lived among the kingdom. We studied you. Learned your languages and culture, with the intention of presenting your world as equal to human space, as a place to be preserved and protected…”
Rand cocked an eyebrow at her. “You weren’t here to collect information on the nations’ military strength? To learn where we—the Hidden—had built the bastion for our people?”
“No, no…I wanted to learn how humans and Tyr could be so much alike when our home worlds are so far apart. A greater mystery of the cosmos,” she said.
“Yet your caste knew exactly where to strike at the kingdom!” Narog shouted.
“When it’s time to cook a grish, is it that difficult for you to know how to kill it?” Sarah called back. “My people have waged war through the stars for centuries—waged war against ourselves and nonhumans as the need arose—and it wasn’t until recently that we fought a race that could beat us. As proud as the Tyr are for finally defeating the Slavers…as you are now, you wouldn’t stand a chance against the full might of humanity. You’re dealing with a single colony ship and the mercenaries they brought with them. I believe you can win against that, or my family and I would have gone home and left you to the inevitable.”
“But this ship will wipe out the kingdom. The Worthy Peoples. Every Tyr with the blight on their bodies?” Narog asked.
“They will.” Sarah nodded.
Narog raised his hands and his faction rapped fists against the wooden rail in front of their seats.
“They won’t stop there!” Sarah shouted. “I’ve seen them eradicate entire thinking races, races with souls like we all have, just to clear out more room for humans. You think these mists will hide you? The Corporation already knows you’re here. You can’t hide from them.”
“What does this ‘Corporation’ know of us?” Rand asked.
“Little more than what I knew when I first arrived. That the Hidden are a subspecies of Tyr and—”
A small metal plate struck the bars of her cage.
An elderly Tyr woman stood up on Narog’s side and brandished a crooked finger at her. “We aren’t the same as those blighted filth! We are as the True God made us!”
Rand swiped the plate away from where it was spinning near Sarah’s feet. “She only gets that one outburst,” Rand said with a wink.
“Humans won’t see you as a higher caste.” Sarah grabbed the bars. “You’re all—every caste—indigenous people to be removed. But I came here knowing that the Hidden were real. I didn’t meet any until Dr. Turley found me and told me how you brought him to the Mists to learn more from him and—”
The room broke out in chuckles.
“I found Turley in a Slaver ship hold.” A Tyr from Rand’s side stood up. “He thought he could infiltrate those barbarians without fully knowing their ways and was being sent back to their homeland to be executed for disrespecting a chieftain. I heard of this and thought it was one of my fellow walkers amongst the world.” He tapped a badge with Slaver markings. “Imagine my surprise when I figured out that Turley wasn’t a brother, but something else entirely.”
“He told me that…that lying son of a bitch.” Sarah gripped the bars harder.
“What did you tell your caste of us?” Narog asked again.
“Nothing.” Sarah dropped her hands to her sides. “Turley and I are part of our own ‘hidden’ society. One that’s working against the xenocide—the complete destruction of alien races. That Turley was working with you to give you new technology…weapons…none of that would be told to the Corporation, only to our society.”
“So the human caste that destroyed the Azure Islands knows nothing of our true strength?” Narog asked.
“No. Zike and his people believe Turley died many years ago and the Tyr had no warning or time to prepare for their arrival,” she said.
“Then I say let the blighted die!” Narog raised a fist. “We have fulfilled our duties to the One True God. We remained apart from the blighted. Our blood and our people are pure. Now he has sent his vengeance. The human caste are his instrument and we will be rewarded with peace so long as we stay virtuous and true!”
A handful of Tyr from Rand’s side crossed the room to join Narog’s.
“And we will permit the great injustice that fell upon our caste to be waged on the blighted!” Rand shouted. “I have walked amongst every caste, every nation, and it is that same fear and ignorance that drove our people to the Mists that you’re repeating. The Islanders allowed us passage to the Mists when the Slavers and Toilers drove us from the last prophet’s land. We only survived because of mercy from another caste. Now we must have no mercy on our fellow Tyr?”
“The last prophet was murdered,” Narog said. “The temple burned. Our people killed wherever they were found. One small mercy does not excuse all the suffering we’ve endured. The prophecy—”
“Did not come from the last prophet.” Rand wagged a finger. “It came from his wife after taking oaxa to commune with gods we don’t believe in.”
“She had a vision of the prophet, not the false gods.” Narog raised his nose.
“Excuse me?” Sarah slapped her bars. “Human here. I’m no expert on your religion, but I can tell you that Zike doesn’t know about any prophecy and he absolutely does not care. The bulk of human space’s problems came from not wiping out an alien race. They experimented on a species that was on the verge of extinction and it blew up in their faces. Zike won’t risk making that same mistake. I need you to believe me.”
“You speak with a demon’s tongue and give a demon’s promise,” one of Narog’s group said. “You’re trying to guide us away from the prophecy and the final test before the gaze of the True God.”
“And you all are risking our survival on faith.” Rand reached into the cage and touched Sarah’s shoulder. “A living, breathing human is here, swearing exactly what will happen to us, but you still believe the words of a grieving…widow repeating an oaxa vision. What if you’re wrong? Eh? What if you ignore the proof right in front of your eyes and the human caste chooses to come for us last? Will you dance in the streets as our homes burn, thanking the humans for-for releasing your soul to the One True God after you’ve proven yourself so faithful? So faithful that you abandoned our chance to survive?”
“What is th
ere for us to do, Rand?” Narog asked. “Abandon our faith and join with the blighted to fight the humans? You paint a picture of our final moments, but imagine the irony if we reveal ourselves to the blighted and they choose to attack us out of ‘ignorance and fear’ instead of the humans? There will be no respite for us once the blighted know of the Mists. We will be just another grand crusade for them now that the Slavers are beaten.”
“You don’t have to…you don’t have to join kingdom armies and win a grand battle like at the Plains of Martydom.” Sarah shook her bars. “You simply have to convince Zike that fighting the Tyr is too costly and he’ll leave. Then you can keep the humans from ever coming back. I’ll show you how to do it. I have a spaceship that can—”
Two massive knocks thudded against a door behind the bench.
Tyr rose to their feet and pressed palms to their hearts. Even the guards around her bent their heads and followed suit.
Doors slid open and a figure in pure white robes with a cape over her shoulder strode onto the bench. A golden strip of cloth was tied to her forehead and wound through her hair.
Sarah’s jaw dropped as she realized she’d spoken to the Hidden Queen before. Keesla.
She leaned against a golden rod atop the bench, then slid one hand across it. The Tyr took their seats and remained silent.
“This is the other,” the Queen said, “obviously.”
“Our discussion continues on how best to advise you, My Queen,” Rand said. “We remain…divided on a consensus.”
“There’s no majority yet,” Narog said, motioning to the many Tyr seated around him, “but we’re approaching one.”
“As much as I appreciate the Conclave’s vigorous efforts to understand the problem we face,” Keesla said, drumming her fingers against the golden rod, “we do not have endless time for debate. Is the human caste a threat to us or is she not?”
“Her caste is the will of the One True God made manifest,” Narog said. “They are here to rid our world of the blighted and restore us as the only caste pure enough to receive the God’s bounty, all his blessings, yet she denies what she is. She demands we side with those that would work with our oppressors, save the blighted from the doom they deserve!”
