Empress of Forever

by Max Gladstone

  Diving, as a kid, on the Great Barrier Reef, before everything got bad, Viv had whirled in living jewels: bright red damselfish, spotted trout, butterfly fishes wiggling through the claw-sharp coral, great lengths of grouper and cod and even, once, a massive lumpy wrasse, and, far off, occasionally, sharks. That was the Mirrorfaith fleet: those colors, that darting motion, that range of scale. For every stained-glass continent, there were hundreds of smaller gem craft—not to mention the ranked cross-legged meditators they passed who seemed to need no ship at all, their eyes closed, robes floating in vacuum. She’d seen fleets before this—Xiara’s was nearly so massive—but those were dead, drifting, or dominated by a few minds. This was a civilization.

  “Why is it on fire?”

  The Archivist turned her head an anatomically improbable degree to look at Viv as they flew. She didn’t speak, save for the furrow in her brow.

  “That ship over there—”

  “The torch,” the Archivist replied when she saw where Viv was pointing.

  “And that one.”

  “A dawnblade.”

  “They’re burning.”

  “We are addressing infections after the most recent assault,” the Archivist said. “You see that temple’s aft pane cracked, those shards which used to be lances.” She indicated each with a precise gesture, always palm up. “Every three days, the Pride strike, in greater numbers. Every three days, we beat them back.”

  “I didn’t feel a battle.”

  “You would not, in the cell. Not unless it went badly for us.”

  “I’ve heard so much about this place,” Viv said.

  The Archivist did not ask from whom. She knew.

  They approached an enormous tree in spreading vacuum, its leaves green and purple and orange, its trunk carved with stylized faces. One opened its mouth to receive them, and closed it after.

  They marched her up a winding stair within the hollow of the trunk, while scholars zipped up and down its core. After four hundred steps they stopped at an unassuming hatch. “You,” the Archivist told the war monks, “may wait outside. Our review will take some time.”

  “We will observe,” the shadow said, “and report.”

  Which told Viv most of what she needed to know about ’fleet politics. She had been studying the Archivist as they walked, seeking the woman Hong had told her about, the wisdom and calm. She wore her body like a mask. “Very well. If you do not mind boredom.”

  The door opened onto a long branch planed flat, with no railings on either side—why would monks who could fly worry about falling? They moved single file along the branch to a spreading leaf at the far end, which supported a table, several straining shelves, and the robed kelp forest Viv had last seen twitching on the Grand Rector’s floor. “This,” the Archivist said, “is my assistant, Brother Qollak.” He bowed, spreading the strands he used for arms like fans. “Please. Sit.”

  “You must understand,” Qollak said with a voice of water and vines, “you represent a remarkable opportunity: an organism independent from the Cloud.” He lifted a tray from the top of one shelf and set it on the table before her: on its surface, a puzzle box. “We cannot, as yet, verify your other claims, but we can address the mystery of your cognitive mechanism. There’s never, in the ’faith’s experience, been anyone like you—someone all flesh.”

  “There used to be a lot of people like me,” Viv said.

  “Please don’t take this the wrong way. As an experimental subject, you are without peer. We must learn the shape of your cognitive processes. Open the box, please.”

  She tried to reach for the box, but the short chain clinked against her manacles. She looked to Qollak, then to the Archivist, who was watching, in her own flat way, the shadow monk. Who did not move.

  Apologetically, nimbly, Brother Qollak lifted the box from the tray and dropped it into Viv’s lap.

  She rolled her eyes, lifted it, turned it over, tested sides. A weight lock. It came apart in her hand. Fifteen seconds. “When they tested me when I was a kid, they put candy in these.”

  “I could have Sister Cellarer bring us candy, if you like,” Brother Qollak said.

  “I’ll live.”

  Twenty seconds. Forty-five. Three minutes. Twelve seconds. Thirty minutes. The next one took an hour and a half, because it was too big to hold in her lap, and the war monks still refused to unchain her.

  “I can do more than this,” Viv said after the hour-and-a-half box. “These are toys. Give me a lock you’ve never been able to open. An artifact you’ve never known how to use. I know you have corpses of Grayframe somewhere in this fleet. Hong told me—”

  She fell from the chair, and her skull bounced off the floor. Her ears rang. Her cheek was a mat of pain. Pretty colors ebbed from her vision, and the room returned in hazy outline: the shadow monk stood beside her toppled chair, seething, and the Archivist between them, arms out, furious.

  “—are present,” Viv heard the Archivist say, once her ears stopped ringing, “on my ship at my sufferance. And you, Brother Lailien, dare strike a relic—”

  “She is no relic,” the shadow monk hissed. “She speaks secrets. She speaks the Brother Heretic’s name.”

  “We have all said his name,” the Archivist said. “And when his time of penance is passed, he will join us once again.”

  “His mind is clouded. He will never survive penance.”

  “You are wrong. And she does not know our ways, and is not bound by our discipline. You would not strike an apprentice.”

  “She is no apprentice.”

  “She is my field of study. The Hierarchs will back me in this. You and your fellows are here by the Grand Rector’s request, not by her order, and at my sufferance. You will not touch her again.”

  Lailien said nothing. He did not draw back. But the Archivist turned from him anyway, flitted to Viv’s side, and helped her stand. The room swam. Her cheek ached. Her cut had opened, either when he hit her, or when she fell.

  “Are you well?”

  “I think so,” Viv said truthfully. “I can take a punch. Even from an asshole.”

  Qollak reached for another box, but the Archivist waved it off, impatient—and drew from a pouch at her belt a metal ball the size of a closed fist. She set it in Viv’s hands. “Try this.”

  Lailien took a step forward, but came up against the wall of the Archivist’s eyes.

  Viv turned the ball in her hands—no shifting weight, no visible seam. Hollow, or else lighter than it looked. The Archivist watched her expectantly; the shadows of Brother Lailien’s body whirled, dense and dark.

  Viv tossed the ball on the table. The Archivist caught it before it could roll off. “Is this a joke?”

  Lailien stepped back. The Archivist slipped the ball back into her pouch. “That’s all,” she said. “Thank you.”

  They walked her back down the turning stair, out the carved mouth, flew her through the ’fleet again toward the ornate vicious beauty of the Monastic Sphere. Down the hall, to the room of golden filigree. She wondered how many days might pass until she left it again. Her dreams were getting worse.

  “Leave us,” the Archivist said, and before Brother Lailien could argue, snapped: “You’ve done quite enough already. If we are to study her, we need her trust. Brother Qollak and I can handle her—and you’ll be right on the other side of the cameras if she surprises us.”

  The war monks left, Lailien last. The Archivist watched as they receded. When the door shut and vanished, the Archivist drew a small crystal from her pouch, set it on the floor, and stomped down hard. Its shards burned with a familiar green flame, and the lights sank red.

  She walked Viv back to the dais, guided her into the bubble, and unlocked her chains. “I am sorry,” the Archivist said. “We can speak privately for now. You must understand, the subject of Hong’s betrayal remains sensitive among the ’fleet. He was loved; that is how he could lead a wing to battle without the Grand Rector’s permission. Even those who loved him
now find themselves unable to speak his name. I heard him testify: he liked you. He thought he did the right thing, bringing us to you. I am sorry the Rector’s monks fall so far below his standard.”

  “Where is he?”

  “In contemplation.” Again, her face was a mask.

  “But where?”

  The Archivist said nothing, and turned to leave. The green flame had almost consumed the crystals on which it burned.

  “Let me see that ball again. Please.”

  The Archivist drew it forth and passed it to her as if it were an enormous pearl. Viv hefted it in both hands, and with a twist of her wrists, split it open.

  The ball expanded; its seemingly solid surface unwound into a lattice of thin silver wire. A crystal within pulsed twice, then flared, carving bright trails that resolved, once Viv was done blinking, into whirling dots of light: a galaxy, her galaxy, as fully detailed as the map in the Empress’s throne room, points of interest picked out in ruby and orange and green.

  She looked across the map to the Archivist, and saw that grim, ever-judging face melt into wonder.

  “You’ve never opened this before,” Viv said. “Have you?”

  She shook her head.

  “I am who I say I am. I am what I say I am. And I can do more than this. But time’s running out. You must have a place where you keep the real treasures: the relics too big, too dangerous, too weird to use. The Grayframe bodies, the star maps, the encrypted gods. There’s so much more to your world than your Grand Rector dreams. You know, I know: you don’t want to worship the Empress. You want to grow beyond her. I can help.”

  “The Grand Rector would kill you for that suggestion,” the Archivist said.

  “The Grand Rector isn’t the ’faith,” she said. “At least, that’s what Hong told me.”

  The side of her face ached—but no blow fell.

  The green flame guttered. “Archivist. What’s your name?”

  “Lan,” she said.

  “Nice to meet you, Archivist Lan. I’m Viv. When you’re ready, come for me. But don’t wait too long.”

  The flame died before the Archivist could respond.

  51

  TWO MORE DAYS passed, to judge by spans of artificial night. Viv paced her cage and slept when she could. Her dreams often woke her.

  They grew more vivid. Shreds of image knit to narrative like flesh closing around a wound. She stood astride a star, thrumming with hunger and control. Magnetic fields danced through the aurora of her mind, and space around her fuzzed and popped with cosmic background static like blood’s rush down a vein, like a heart that took ten billion years to beat.

  But she had no heart, in these dreams.

  She had hands instead, and bodies by the millions, both planet-sized and infinitesimal, autonomous yet wedded to her will like an octopus’s arms, each form framed for a different purpose, this for eating planets, this for burning suns to cinders, these for building ships, those for winning wars. With hands the size of planetary rings she held a spark, a shell, a mystery box, and played upon its surface with light and sound, teasing the secrets of victory from a knot of superdense computing matter. Viv wanted what lay within the singularity—she needed it—but when her tools began to pierce and pry, pain wracked her, tore her, as if these knives of light had pierced her own arm and peeled.

  She woke panting, scared, her heart hammering in her chest. But each time she had the dream she woke later, with a sense she’d lasted longer, drawn nearer to her end. Hong, wherever he was, would have suggested they find an oracle to read her dream, but Viv could manage without. She’d dreamed of the Empress before, and thought those dreams only trauma and aftermath, the usual dance of psychological recovery that often hurt as much as the initial wound, because the human mind had assembled itself haphazard from spare parts meant for something else. But while she had been a victim in those dreams, she had also been Empress. She held her own heart in her hand. Triumph thrilled her despite the pain. And now, she felt the Empress’s victory loom. Not long now. Weeks? Days?

  An earthquake startled her awake on the second night to find the filigree chamber awash in red emergency lighting, and she thought it was too late, that the Empress had come for her. But the explosions and crashes and sirens—the first noise she’d heard in two days louder than air through the vents—made this battle sound like a more even fight than the Empress would permit. Perhaps Zanj had snapped, or been discovered, and relished the chance to fight.

  Viv worried first for the monks who set themselves against Zanj, without knowing the age and power of the being they fought.

  Then, because sometimes even heroes died, she worried for Zanj.

  Then the floor cracked open and tumbled away into space, and she began to worry for herself.

  Hate fractals burned against ’fleet ships in the black. They attack us every three days, Archivist Lan had said. Viv had envisioned skirmishes, perhaps a single immense Pridemother like the one Zanj fought off on Orn.

  This dwarfed that scale. Flames filled the night, and shards of metal and glass. War monks fought solo, wrapped in skinfields, trailing light, and wrestled thorns. Guns the size of moons spoke, and others answered. Motes twisted in the void. She realized they were bodies.

  Outside, a hate fractal shattered; its shards broke a stained-glass hull that showed a woman kneeling in meditation. The Pride ships made smaller explosions when they broke, and burned green and blue as often as red. Of course: no need for an oxygen atmosphere in those.

  Viv felt a breeze at her feet—no, a cool draft blowing down.

  Air escaping through the grate.

  Christ. She looked up, as if seeking divine intervention, but in fact staring into the surveillance cameras, at the jailers who’d taken such unsettling care of her these last few days. But no aid came, no bubbling in the floor, no sealing of vents. Doubtless they had other jobs, what with the ’fleet under attack. She’d have to fend for herself. As per usual.

  At first, panicked, she tried to break the glass; hammered it with her fists, struck it with her shoulders, kicked it so hard she tumbled back to the floor and lay panting and dazed. Stupid. Wasting time, not to mention air. If she managed to escape, what would she have done? How long could she survive in a vacuum?

  Some sections of the ship had to be intact, pressurized. Didn’t they? She could get to them, or try.

  But she wasn’t going anywhere. Fine. Move on.

  She had to survive until the ’faith could save her, or Zanj, or Xiara, or someone. How much air did the bubble hold? A few hours’ worth, maybe? Too much time passed, and panic, the speed of her heart, the nearness of that great gaping jagged maw of space, of the battle outside—another hit like that could snuff her in an instant—the terror of the moment blotted out memory.

  Stop fixating on details.

  First, strip. No time for embarrassment under the circumstances. They’d taken her ’faith robes, replaced them with a black coverall, which, actually, helped: she couldn’t have torn the robes. These were machine-woven, sturdy, but with nails and teeth she managed to tear a long ribbon from the arm, and fold it over some of the grating. Vacuum sucked at the cloth, but couldn’t pull it through. When she set her hand above the ribbon she still felt eddies in the air, but better that than the draft she’d felt before.

  More ribbons. An adult woman’s surface area came to about 1.6 square meters, a little less than that minus head and feet—so, that’s the amount of cloth she had to work with. (Why, Viv, do you remember human surface area, and not more useful facts like how fast people metabolize oxygen?) Subtract maybe a quarter meter for the head. The dais was about a meter and a half in diameter, the air grating maybe five centimeters wide. She could paper it three times over, give or take, if she was careful.

  She didn’t have the time or the tools to be careful.

  Ribbon by ribbon, she covered the grate; math bearing its usual relationship to engineering and to production, she managed to stretch the fabric over
the full circle twice. She worked in dim red light, in staling air, by flashes of battle. She distracted herself from fear with analysis.

  Space battles ran staccato, bursts of destruction followed by regrouping, adjustment, devastation. Why? Maybe the fight moved from Cloud to physical space and back; maybe superior computation here replaced glandular physical abstractions like morale and tactical momentum, which, if you thought about it, really worked out in the long run to an instinctive calculus of advantage. Part of their war would be a war for position, and part for the computational resources required to win. Much of this battle took place in a realm Viv could not sense: countermeasures answering countermeasures, paradoxes deployed against paradoxes.

  Ah yes. That abstraction, that sesquipedalian verbiage, that was oxygen deprivation kicking in.

  It was so much easier to wander the many chambers of her own mind than it was to force herself to move. Her chest heaved but the air that reached her lungs was thin. Her limbs felt heavy, and her head felt light. She checked her ribbons again, fixed one that had slipped off the grate. Gravity still seemed to work. The ship wasn’t dead. Just broken. Now she could only lower her heart rate, breathe shallowly, and survive until rescue came. Or until she died.

  Don’t panic. She caught herself laughing, which of course wasted more air.

  Cross-legged. Sit tall and still, core engaged. Breathe in, and out. Thoughts arise—let them. Thoughts fail. Notice yourself thinking, notice that thought for what it is, an experience arising from your being in the world, no more significant than that, no less. The battle outside her broken chamber: a thought. The Empress, prying at Viv’s world: a thought. Her impending death: another.

  What was she doing here? She said she wanted to save these people, to rescue this future from the chains she, or a version of her, had forged around its throat. But could she? Assume she was strong enough, smart enough, assume sufficient dedication, determination, assume she could gather allies, assume that she could work that hard, be that smart, lead that well. Weren’t the same instincts and powers she trusted now the ones that had led her—or someone so indistinguishable from her that her own machines could not recognize the difference—to rule this galaxy, to crush opposition, to eat and archive worlds? Was she really trying to save anyone? Or did she simply look at the Empress and see a power that was hers for the taking—a throne she had, in fact, already seized?