Zanj rolled her eyes and raised her claw.
“Wait.” Viv lifted herself from the withering grass. The ground beneath her hardened, lost that loamy cushion, felt more like the soil of broken Orn. “Please.” Zanj seemed unimpressed, but hadn’t killed him yet. “You worked with the Empress?”
The kid knew a lifeline when he saw one. “I served Her—we all do, the whole Grayframe. But I spoiled a … I guess you’d call it a meal. A meal of dreams.” Viv wondered what that meant, and remembered the Empress’s voice, the burning hand in her chest, and stopped wondering for now. “She wanted to make an example out of me—to shame my family, my brothers and sisters. So She broke me, banished me, cast me out into the black. Away from everyone I knew. Alone.”
Zanj wasn’t buying it. “And you stole people to keep you company.”
“No! I mean, at first I didn’t know what I was doing. We share wants, hopes, thoughts all the time, back home. That’s how we talk. When I found the matter siphon, I was almost dead; I drank, desperate. When people wandered toward me, I caught them without meaning to. But they kept coming. It took months before I realized what was happening, and when I did—” He paled and shrank. The trees around them curled down fernlike, shrank into the ground, revealing rubble and skeletal ductwork; the pink sky flickered, paled. “I started saving them instead. I hoped I could give them to Her. To replace what I lost. I thought maybe if I offered Her enough dreams, She’d forgive me. She’d forgive the Grayframe. But I guess you’ll kill me now.”
To Viv’s surprise, Zanj looked to her for directions. “Well?” Viv hadn’t thought she would remember her ground rules in the heat of victory.
Viv knelt beside the kid. He looked lost, simple, scared. What he had done, what the Ornclan did to appease him, made her feel dirty. But he did seem contrite, at least when faced with the prospect of punishment. And she could use him. “Do you know the Empress’s ship?”
“I grew up there. Know it up, down, in the Cloud and out. My family serves Her—that is, unless She’s killed them by now.”
“I want to steal something from her.”
His expression, which had been hopeful or at least desperate, closed at once. “Okay, never mind. You’re crazy. Kill me now.”
“If we got you to her ship, could you help us?”
“I’ve been banished. If I try to pass through the borders of the palace She’ll notice me at once, burn me from the soul out.”
“I can get you in,” Viv said.
“Bullshit.”
Zanj, still holding Gray down, looked done with this whole conversation. “Can I kill him now? He did ask.”
“I broke Zanj out of her prison. I can help you.”
His eyes widened, flashed blue, narrowed. He made a face like he’d just seen a car wreck. “What are you?”
“Just meat,” Viv said. “Meat without a soul. The Empress can’t bind me, and I can get you home. If you guide us, and fuel our ship.”
“Ship!” Gray laughed at that, claws notwithstanding. “Who needs a ship?” He looked, expectant, from Hong to Zanj, then at last to Viv again, and his face fell. “Oh. Right. You’re really all meat? That must be so frustrating.”
Zanj growled. “I still say we kill him.”
The wind of crumbling paradise blew through Viv’s close-cropped hair. “If you’re traveling with us, I need you to promise—as binding an oath as you can make—that you’ll give up stealing dreams. And swear you’ll help us.”
“Swear,” Hong said, “on the Lady you serve.”
“I’ll do you one better.” Gray closed his eyes, and stopped struggling. His voice lost the squeak of adolescent protest. He sounded younger, reciting words he’d learned singsong from teachers long ago. “I swear on my death, on the chain of all my family since the first, on old Earth.” As he spoke, the words spread golden through the gray of his body, and sank like treasure into him.
“Wait,” Viv said. “Earth? You know Earth?”
“Of course,” he answered, confused. “Earth is the egg that hatched the world.”
She’d unpack that later, if there was anything there to unpack. “Does that work for you?” she asked Hong, who said, “Yes.” Zanj rolled her eyes, but she released Gray’s neck and stepped off him.
Viv offered him her hand. “Welcome to the crew. Don’t make me regret it.”
He took her hand, eyes wide as if seeing for the first time. Viv wondered if this was the first promise he’d made—or if he was simply shocked to find a thread of hope, a rumor of home. His hand felt soft. “I won’t.” She believed him. “Thanks, boss.”
“Don’t call me that.”
The last of paradise blew away in a stiff breeze and left them in the rubble atop the manufactory dais, ringed by broken steel and crystal arches, crumbled masonry, and the dead. The real Orn smelled of dust and metal. Amid the ruins, she heard cries, groans, Ornclan waking from long slumber to find their perfect visions melted into this. And among them, a woman’s voice, aware, alive, in full command of her faculties: Xiara running toward them, calling Viv’s name.
Viv felt barren, wrung out, and happy. She’d solved the problem. Seen through illusions. Worked with Zanj and Hong not as a passenger or package, but as a partner. A leader, even. No one died today. She’d saved lives, and gained a source on the Empress whose information wasn’t three thousand years out of date. Not bad for an illiterate meatbag without a smartphone to her name.
Then she looked up. And up. And cursed.
They’d been trapped in the tree for hours, Zanj said. At the time, Viv hadn’t worried—they had more pressing concerns than their deadline. Survival, for one.
Not anymore.
Not with a three-mile-long hate fractal ringed by fighters overhead.
21
“IT COULD BE worse” was, in Viv’s experience, a phrase people tended to use when they didn’t see exactly how. So when Zanj used it, as they peered down onto the Ornclan camp from the shelter of a crumbling crystal tower, she didn’t bite the lure—only watched, and stewed, and tried to think of a solution.
Xiara did not have Viv’s experience. “How?”
“Well,” Zanj said, “they didn’t expect me, so they only sent one Pridemother. It’s not even very large as these things go. Plus, your Chief brought our ship here. Otherwise we would have had to dodge Pride halfway across Orn.”
“But there must be a hundred drones between us and your ship. Not to mention the fighters.”
“Those are not fighters,” Hong corrected gently. “Our holy books call them close air support.”
Viv laughed, then realized Hong was looking at her funny, and rolled back her sound-memory tapes a few seconds: he had slipped into a different language just then, sonorous and ancient as a priest’s Latin, and the translation gimmick followed him. “Sorry,” she said, to Xiara more than Hong. “Don’t worry about me. Keep going.”
“I can’t see the Ornclan at all.”
Hong’s face, his voice, his body compressed to a grim line. “The Pride have no reason to suspect your Chief has betrayed them, but they will keep the Ornclan under guard until Viv is theirs. Your people will be corralled, safe. However, if the Pride cannot find us, they may seek compensation for their failure by harvesting your clan’s blood.”
Xiara looked sick. “What do you mean, harvest?”
“Your germline piloting adaptations and your nanobiome are valuable. As long as they’re in system…”
Viv grabbed Xiara’s shoulder in time to stop her from sprinting out of their hiding place in a futile attempt at rescue. “Don’t worry. We can fix this. We just need to be smart.”
“Why?” Gray sat on top of the wall in what would have been plain sight if he had not made himself transparent for the purpose. He kicked his crossed legs, unconcerned. “We can just eat them.”
“Don’t eat people.”
“The Pride count as people?”
“The Pride,” Viv said, “count. So do the Ornclan
. Who might die in the crossfire if we’re not careful.”
“Fine.” He sounded bored.
Xiara glared at him. “I still can’t believe you’re working with this monster.”
“I’m not a monster,” Gray said, haughty. “I am a Gray of Grayframe.”
“You kidnapped people and ate their dreams.”
“Look.” He raised his hands. “I said I was sorry! I didn’t even know what I was doing at first, and I promised Viv I wouldn’t do it again.”
“You forced my mother to break hospitality.”
“I didn’t force anything. I took over the manufactory, sure. What was I supposed to do? Die?”
“Is death so fearsome to you?”
“Yes!”
“Quiet,” Viv said. “Both of you. Before the Pride hear you.” They shut up, at least. “You,” with a finger jabbed at Gray, “apologize to her. Sincerely.”
Gray rolled his transparent eyes, but when he saw the expression on Viv’s face he sobered fast, and turned to Xiara. “I am sorry I kidnapped your people and ate their dreams.”
Xiara glared at him, grim and earnest as a blade. Gray looked back at her, nonchalant at first, but his eyes widened slowly and his shoulders slumped as he appreciated the depth of her anger—either truly contrite or faking it well. “I really am sorry.”
Xiara frowned, and he winced, and Viv wondered if maybe he really was sincere. “Xiara,” she said gently. “He promised to help me. If we sneak past the Pride we’ll get him offworld, far away, and he’ll never bother your clan again.”
“Very well,” Xiara said, and Gray relaxed. “Monster.” His shoulders sank again.
“Great. Glad that’s settled. Now all we have to do is find a way past the Pride.” Viv pushed herself back from the ledge, touched her knuckle to her lower lip, and turned the problem over in her mind. She felt comfortable, familiar, and after a few breaths she realized why. Everyone was looking at her. Waiting for her to tell them what to do.
Everyone except Zanj. Who was lying on a small pile of rubble, juggling three pebbles one-handed, and watching the clouds.
“Do you have anything to add?”
Zanj’s lips revealed teeth in a long, lazy smile. “No. You got us out of his mess.” With a tail flick toward Gray. “Who knows how long I would have kept fighting if you weren’t there? And while I understand the outlines of our, let’s call it a deal, I’m still not clear what sort of violence I can do without offending your sensibilities. I know what I’d do in your shoes. But you want to lead. So, lead.”
Viv was half-tempted to launch into her plan just then—but injured pride would fester. Besides, there was always the chance Viv had missed something. She needed Zanj as a partner, not a passenger. She needed them all. There was too much galaxy for her to beat alone. “What would you do?”
Zanj’s face softened with surprise at being asked. She rolled to her feet, catching the stones she’d been juggling in the process. “As I see it, and as per usual, Viv’s the problem.”
“Thanks.”
“If we could pull you through the Cloud, I’d suggest we hit them fast, then jump away, leaving a big enough trail that the Pridemother and her brood will follow us. Then we could lose them in the Cloud, or at least take the fight somewhere with fewer bystanders. But you need a ship.”
“Can you lead them away, then double back?”
“They won’t all follow me. They know you need a ship, so they’ll keep a guard on the Question.”
“What if we both took off at once—and you made a bigger splash, to draw them off track?”
Zanj seemed less bored by that idea. Her tail twitched. “That could work. If the ship had fuel. And if we had a pilot.”
“Gray can fuel us up.”
His head spun around three hundred degrees on his neck; somewhere in the field of space behind him, a white bird struck a Pride ship’s effector field and vaporized. His skin reproduced the exchange in sordid detail. “What?”
“You’ve been eating straight from the matter siphon for months. You made that whole paradise. I bet you can make fuel for the Question.”
Gray did not exactly radiate confidence. “Boss, it’s really not the same sort of thing. I can build anything, but I need time, and feeding fuel right into an engine—”
“Can you do it?”
He held his hand flat and tilted back and forth: maybe?
“Close enough.”
“Which still leaves us in want of a pilot,” Zanj observed. “Unless Gray can fly and fuel you up at once.”
“Fly? Like, a ship?” He laughed. “What kind of backwater rube do you take me for?”
“I’ll fly.” Xiara stood on the rooftop between them, looking brave and, as their eyes settled on her, more and more unsure. She glanced from Viv, to Hong, to Grayteeth, to Zanj, and back to Viv, her hands clenched, knuckles white. “If you’ll still have me after what the Ornchief did. I want to get him off my world. And I want to go with you.”
Viv wanted to hug her, but didn’t let herself. Xiara had talked about her dreams of flight and of the stars like they were some grand adventure that would happen to someone else: of course I’d go into the world, fight demons and evil empires, risk death, dismemberment, abandon my home and family without any assurance I’ll return, all to reclaim the sky my mothers were denied. It was one thing to want that, and another to live it—to leave the life you’d known, and step onto a road you once thought a dream.
“She’s never flown,” Hong pointed out. “She’s never left the planet.”
Zanj, on the other hand, looked interested. “Viv doesn’t have a soul, and we don’t hold it against her. Much. Xiara has the nanome, the training, she knows the songs of Orn. She’ll do.”
Hong blinked, looked away, raised one hand to his temple, paced.
Zanj raised one eyebrow. “Go ahead.”
“You can’t be suggesting we put someone who’s barely seen a ship, let alone flown one, in the cockpit.”
“I’ve seen the people of Orn fly.”
“You also thought the city would still be here!”
Xiara didn’t seem to have heard either of them. She was watching Viv—to see if the gift she’d offered would be honored, or cast aside.
Hong had a point. Hong had all the points. If this were a board meeting, he’d have the charts and graphs, the carefully formatted and cross-checked statistics on his side, all the transitions right. And if this were a board meeting, Viv would have agreed with him. You couldn’t manage by heroics. You couldn’t manage by the way Xiara looked right now, afraid, desperate to prove herself, and brave. You couldn’t manage by a young woman’s total unflinching faith that she was born to fly.
“We won’t be able to come back here for a long time,” Viv said. “You know that.”
“I know,” she replied. “I’m ready.”
Zanj clapped her on the back. “Kid, we’ll show you all the stars you can handle.”
“I,” Xiara said, “will be the judge of that.”
Viv held out her hand. “Welcome aboard.” Xiara followed her handshake into a hug that hurt Viv’s ribs—then she broke away, blushing, and saluted. Viv didn’t mind the hug or the salute, but there would be time to sort it all out later.
“Thank you.”
“Okay,” Viv said. “Here’s how I see this going down.”
* * *
IT STARTED WITH Zanj.
They hadn’t spent much time on this phase of the plan, leaving the particulars of the distraction up to Zanj’s sadistic imagination.
Viv tried to envision it from the Pride’s perspective: Kentaurs scuttling over the gnarled rock-hard ground beneath the Ornclan’s palace grove, guarding their quarry’s ship while close air support buzzed overhead. The Pridemother’s inaudible modem screams bound them in a web of telemetry and bloodthirst. With the Ornclan under guard, no minor annoyances would disturb their mission—no fleet in this sector of space could hinder them. They were supreme, they wer
e fierce, and they would find what they had come to seek.
Zanj walked out of the ruins, juggling three stones in one hand.
A hundred Kentaur heads spun toward her at once, and locked. Her chest danced with laser sights and other forms of targeting Viv lacked the words to name. Close air support warmed up plasma cannon and fléchette launchers and no doubt all sorts of nasty ordnance. The Pridemother lowering overhead turned its thorn-brains upon her.
Zanj looked up at the close air support, at the Pridemother. She shaded her eyes with one hand, and squinted. With her other hand she caught the stones one by one.
“Surrender,” said the Pridemother through all her drones at once. “Lay down all arms, submit to binding, and identify with your true name.”
“I am not armed.” Zanj’s hand tightened around the rocks. Several loud cracks and a disconcerting hiss of escaping heat echoed through the windswept silence. “I have had quite enough of bonds. And as for my true name—” She opened her hand, and revealed a single tiny gem, its sides still smoking. “You don’t deserve it.”
Then she threw the gem overhand, not just at but through one of the close air support hate fractals. The ship veered to the side, spoiling targeting solutions as its mates spun out of formation to avoid a crash. Guns spoke, but not before there was a loud pop inside Zanj’s skull and her eyes burned white. There was too much noise and fire and confusion for anyone to see her smile as she moved fast and broke things.
Viv ran through the firefight. The four of them had spent Zanj’s distraction working around the clearing’s edge until they had a straight shot up the ramp into the ship; the others were slow off the block, stunned, perhaps, even now, by the violence Zanj could unleash when she wanted. Maybe it looked even more impressive if you had some connection to the Cloud.
If you had a soul.
Either way, Viv ran. The battlefield around her, over her, was very bright and loud and hot. She wasn’t worried for Zanj—she was worried for herself. The pirate queen, she was coming to realize, was a lot more likely to survive whatever the Pride could bring to bear than Viv was to survive as a bystander to their engagement.
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