by Sarah Zettel
Praeis raised her eyes and opened her mouth.
“Do not say you don't understand.” Aires Byu leaned forward. “You went against your sisters when you traded Urisk Island and four thousand lives for a swift peace. You are an isolated, alien thing in this respect.”
Praeis felt her fingers curl and her ears try to fold up. She held herself rigid. The Queens spoke nothing but the truth. She could sit and hear it. She could. Her daughters leaned closer to her. She felt their warmth and drank it in. They knew the story, most of it anyway.
Aires watched all this, but the set of her ears did not change. “Yet, you can build accord like no one we have ever met, and we have met masters of the art. You can deal with enemies and make them come to terms.
“We sit isolated here for the propaganda of holding our Ancestor's city. Our people work among those who are building consensus against us, in an attempt to bring them to our side, but there is little they can do to sway whole families.”
Praeis licked her lips. “There is a group of Humans called the Bedouin who have an ancient saying that describes us well. They say ‘me against my sister, me and my sister against my cousin, me and my cousin against the world.’ ”
Vaier Byu laughed. “Very good. Who knew the Humans understood such things?”
“Praeis did.” Aires Byu dipped her ears again. “Praeis knows many things, and she will tell them all to her Majestic Sisters, will she not?”
Praeis's ears flickered back and forth. “About the Humans, Majestic Sister, or about my blood sisters?”
“Ancestors Mine!” Ueani hurled a scrap of rice cake into the heating pit. “You're being asked to spy for us, Praeis Shin. To get out there and find out who's with us and who isn't. To subvert those who aren't over to our side, if you can, and to give us their names if you can't. You have your own friends out there. Get them. Work with them. We cannot allow this disaster we've created to fall apart. There are too many dead bodies and unattended souls out there as it is.”
Praeis's jaw hung open. She panted, but got control of herself and closed her mouth. Theia pressed close to her side, and, reflexively, Praeis wrapped an arm around her.
Vaier and Aires Byu both glowered at their sister.
“I don't care!” Ueani Byu jumped to her feet. She began to pace back and forth, working figure eights around the chairs. “We've had enough subtlety here. We are the Queens-of-All, and there's no one to hear our voices but cooks and shit cleaners! We've got to get out of here, back into the thick of our lands and people, but we don't know where we can go in safety or whom we can trust. You”—she stabbed a finger at Praeis—”are going to find out for us! You are going to gather the loyal following we need, and you are going to hand us your living sisters to try for high treason if we tell you to. Yes? Good?”
Ueani Byu stood there, feet spread, fingers flexing. Praeis felt her heart beat wildly. Her nostrils clamped shut and her ears cringed. For a moment, she thought if she refused, her Queen would go for her throat.
Praeis swallowed hard and forced her nostrils open. “Why me?” she asked, ashamed at the weakness in her voice. “It cannot be that my Majestic Sisters have no allies.”
“Because you have traded t'Therian lives for peace,” said Vaier Byu. “We have no one else who has done that. We may require you to do it again. Once before, you were our hands and eyes and did for us things which no one else could, or would do. We can trust you to act for us as we can trust no other.”
So there it was. The real reason she had been allowed to come home. The Queens needed someone who could and would betray her family. Praeis looked at the floor. The harbor islands sprawled under her feet. She panted hard and did not try to stop herself.
At last, she closed her eyes and raised her hands. “Obedience first, obedience second, obedience third.”
It was nearly dark by the time Praeis and her daughters were released from the Queens’ presence. Two soldiers Praeis didn't know drove them out of the city and into the working lands. Walls enclosed factories, fields, and orchards, so it was like driving through a cement maze.
Here and there, the walls opened up to reveal distressingly weedy lawns for the crematoriums. Praeis remembered only two on the whole length of road between the city and home. Today, though, she had counted eight, and each one of them had its fire going. The familiar, dreaded, sweet-sour burning scent from the bodies being burned before their ashes were commited to the earth of the Ancestors filled the damp wind. At the smell, both Theia and Res grew quiet and huddled closer to her, and Praeis held them gratefully.
Finally, the road took a sharp corner and the walls opened up again. This time, though, Praeis saw rain damp grass and a few sprawling trees no one had ever bothered to prune.
Then she saw home.
Its walls were smooth white cement. She and her sisters had spent hours scrubbing the cursed things. Any breach of family discipline would get them sent out with hoses and soap. Four adolescents sat on top of the walls, either as lookouts or just looking. As the car drove past the wall, the daughters turned and shouted. Praeis couldn't understand the words.
Behind the walls Praeis could just see the four chimneys and peaked slate roof of the main house. The wide wood and iron gate glided into view. The timbers were a little darker than they had been, and there were flecks of rust on the reinforcing iron bars and hinges, but it remained the entrance to her home.
Their driver braked roughly and gestured to the roadside. “Here we complete our commission.”
Praeis dipped her ears. “Thank you. With me, Daughters.”
Resaime and Theiareth clambered out of the car, fast enough to make themselves clumsy.
“PRAEIS!”
Praeis barely had time to turn around before the gate swung open and the floodwave of family broke against them. Cousins crowded around, becoming a blur of hands and faces as they were hugged and touched and tugged at. Voices laughed and called, and babbled out more questions than could possibly be answered. Praeis felt warmth mounting inside her. With half an eye she watched her daughters. Res and Theia hesitated a little. They'd seldom had such a crowd around them, but they quickly relaxed into it, touching and being touched, laughing, naming themselves and having names called back to them. A fierce happiness surged through Praeis, one she hadn't felt in years. She was passed from hand to hand. She grasped arms and shoulders and ears, shouted names and greetings until she was hoarse. The happiness in her blood and skin filled her with fire and strength enough to make her drunk and dizzy.
Then, she looked up and saw that the hands she held belonged to her sisters. Proud, wide-eyed Senejess, and warm Armetrethe, who'd lost her left arm in a skirmish years ago.
“Armetrethe! Senejess!” Laughing, Praeis threw herself into her sisters’ embrace.
“Praeis!” Their strong arms wrapped around her. They all whooped with love and joy as they held one another, drinking in scent and sound and solid presence.
I'm home. I'm home! thought Praeis, almost delirious with the wonder of holding her sisters.
“Well, come now!” Senejess finally said. “We cannot stand here making riot in the streets. Let's get ourselves indoors.”
With her sisters’ arms tight and strong around her shoulders, Praeis let herself be steered toward the house. The cousins and daughters flocked around them, blocking the view of the grounds and the outbuildings. Here and there, she caught a glimpse of a familiar wall, or cluster of stones in the garden and her heart lifted until she thought it could go no higher.
They spilled through the doors of the main house and into the great room. The family fanned out, dropping onto the sofas arranged in clusters around the tiled space. The vibrant greens, blues, and golds created stylized scenes of sea cliffs and forests to surround them all. The tall slit windows let in the daylight to mix with the mellow light of oil lamps. Praeis inhaled the scent of warm oil with a start. The electricity probably wouldn't come on until after dark. She hadn't thought about power ratio
ning in years.
Still, the room was as she remembered it. It was beautiful. It was home.
She collapsed with Senejess and Armetrethe onto a sofa. Res and Theia dropped straight to the sand-colored mats that covered the floor with a cluster of cousins about their own age, languid and relaxed.
They talked easily for a while, about the colonies, about the daughters. The conversation turned colder and drew them closer to one another as they talked about the plague and the long lists of the dead.
Finally, Senejess shook Praeis's shoulder lightly. “Tell us what the Queens were so anxious about they couldn't let you come home first, Sister.”
Between their cousins, Res and Theia stiffened, but said nothing.
Praeis struggled to rise above the enveloping warmth that surrounded her so she could choose her words carefully. “They wanted my thanks for their pardon, Sister, and to inform me I was now their official representative.”
Senejess looked from her to Armetrethe and pulled Praeis into a close embrace. “I'm so glad, Sister.”
Slowly, Praeis realized she was, but that Senejess was also disappointed. She was hoping for more than Praeis had said. A cool thread began to ease through the warmth of her blood. Her skin rippled, and she extricated herself from her sister's arms. “They didn't mention money yet, of course. Is that not how it always is with the Majestic Sisters? Order now, pay when you work out how.”
Before they laughed, another look passed between Armetrethe and Senejess, just a flicker, but nonetheless too long to be imagined.
“So,” Praeis tried hard to sound completely conversational. “Tell me how things stand in the Council of True Blood.”
Armetrethe shrugged. The stump of her missing arm flailed outward. “It is full of arguments as always. Not everyone accepts this Confederation. Some find petty ways to assert what independence we have left instead of working toward effective solutions.”
Well, Sisters, now we have exchanged ambiguities. Praeis tried to relax again, to sink back into the rivers of warmth and be washed away on their currents. She did hot want this. She did not want to be apart and afraid. She wanted her birth sisters. She wanted them so much, she felt tears welling up in her eyes.
“Ah, nothing new then,” she said softly.
Armetrethe touched Praeis's shoulder with her one hand. “What is it, Sister?”
Tell them, tell them. There is no need for this. You can be birth sisters again. They'll forgive you anything, if you tell them now. Your daughters will have their cousins, and you will have your sisters blood and soul again. Tell them.
But there was that silent look between Senejess and Armetrethe that stood for all they had not told to her.
“Nothing, Sisters. We spent a good deal of today under stress, and I am tired.”
Senejess swallowed. “Of course. We are careless. There is food waiting for you. Daughters, you will bring our meal to the serving tables.”
The daughters scrambled to their feet in a ragged chorus of “yes, Mothers.” Res and Theia went with them as they hurried to the kitchen alcoves to pull platters of sea fish and shellfish, baskets of both flat and raised bread, and deep bowls of legumes, milled and seasoned so sharply, Praeis could smell them where she sat.
The daughters set the food on the serving tables. The dishes were passed around, and the talk turned to nothing but food. The things they ate as children, the prices of shellfish and legumes, the superiority of this food they ate now compared to what could be gotten in the colonies. Time and again, Praeis's soul reached out, seeking the warmth and easy rhythms she had felt when they first arrived. A few times she thought she almost found them, but they always slipped away again.
She cast a glance at Res and Theia. If the daughters felt the unease between their mothers, they were doing a fine job of hiding it. They seemed absorbed in one another, talking about homes and Humans, the food, all the vast strangeness of Mars and the Solar system, of what it was like to travel in space, of all the technological miracles that Humans produced.
The sky darkened and the plates and bowls emptied. The overhead lights came on as the electric service started up for the night.
Then, suddenly, Armetrethe asked, “So, what is this assignment the Queens have given you as their representative? You did not say.”
Praeis's fingers fumbled reaching for a slice of bread. “The Queens say they need a diplomat.” She concentrated on scooping some of the legume paste onto her bread. “They want me to help build support for the Confederation.”
Senejess's ears curled. “You are supposed to understand the complexity of the Confederation agreement and our Great Family's response to it? After living apart from us for twenty years?”
Praeis bit down on the bread, savoring the spices, the smooth richness of the legumes. It helped hold back the bitterness that welled inside her. “No. I am supposed to learn about it. Surely I'll have the help of my sisters for this, or have you resigned your position on the Council of True Blood?”
Armetrethe opened her mouth and shut it again. “No. We have not resigned.”
“Good.” Praeis tried to sound nothing but pleased. “Then you can take me to a session, and introduce me to the Councilors. I'm sure there are many new Wise Sisters I will need to get acquainted with,” she paused. “And many grievances.”
Armetrethe's stump quivered. “I wouldn't class the objections of our Wise Sisters in Council as grievances. Until you understand the situation, you shouldn't either.”
Praeis dipped her ears. “You're right. I'm sorry. I spoke too soon. I need to get started on my mission immediately, though. We only have two weeks before the relocation begins, and we need as much consensus as we can get before then, or things won't go smoothly.” She met her sister's gaze. “After all, we can't make the Humans do everything.”
“I don't see why not,” muttered Senejess. “They enjoy it so much.”
Praeis felt the skin on her back ripple. Now, we hear something real.
“Have there been problems with the Humans, Sisters?” She popped the half-eaten slice of bread into her mouth.
“Nothing that couldn't be solved by reminding them of their place.” Armetrethe picked at the shell of a shrimp in the seafood bowl. One of the daughters, Oan, took it from under her hand and peeled it for her.
The daughters all remained respectfully silent during this exchange, including her own. Praeis was proud and thankful. Now was not the time to add poor mothering to the list of charges her sisters had surely piled up against her.
Armetrethe bit down on the shrimp and tore it in two. “The Queens deal with our enemies,” she mumbled around the mouthful. “But they refuse to speak firmly with our servants, and they wonder why the Great Family is unhappy.”
“Humans do need reminding who has created their positions from time to time.” Praeis laid a sympathetic hand on Armetrethe's shoulder. “I have contacts in Bioverse. A few words to the proper superiors will go a long way.”
“Thank you, Sister, that will surely help.” There was no warmth to Armetrethe's words.
Praeis edged closer to her sister. “Have I misspoken? Is there something else I should do?”
Armetrethe squeezed Praeis's hand briefly. “No. No. I'm sorry, Sister, you mean well, it's just …” Armetrethe's ears fell back against her scalp.
“It's just that you do not understand,” finished Senejess. “It is not your fault. You did not watch this plague spread and grow even after its origins were supposedly destroyed. You did not see the Queens-of-All wiggling and squirming in d-light at this idea from the Getesaph, the Getesaph, to bring the Humans swarming down on us. What is the ‘Esaph's real plan, hmmm? What are they going to do once our daughters and carrying mothers are all caged and helpless in these city-ships, hmmm?”
All at once, Praeis became keenly aware of Res and Theia across the room with their cousins. Her shoulders stiffened. “I have seen the plague, my Sisters. Jos and Shorie are dead of it. Ten of our daughters are
dead of it. It is because of Human help that anyone survived in our colony.”
Senejess gripped Praeis's arm. “And what did the Humans do about it?”
Praeis's brow furrowed. “What they could. They helped us treat the symptoms, and create more effective quarantine measures. They kept the sick comfortable and safe, just as they intend to do aboard the city-ships. I have seen the designs for the hospital sections. They are models of cleanliness and efficiency. Our sisters will be well taken care of by those who have made great strides in understanding the nature of these illnesses.”
“But they found no cure?”
“No,” said Praeis warily. Tension sang between her sisters. It worked its way into her skin like a draft of cold air. Her heartbeat sped up, and her skin twitched and bunched. “They said it was more than one disease, that the weapon had mutated some wild viruses, turning them deadly. They said they'd have to go to All-Cradle to find the source and the cure.”
“So!” Armetrethe slapped her thigh, triumphantly. “If they cured the plague, they couldn't come here to us, could they? They'd have no reason to, would they?”
Praeis felt her ears tip backward. “What are you talking about, Sister?”
Senejess leaned even closer. “When the plague broke out, the Getesaph dropped a fusion bomb on the Octrel, destroying, they said, the creators of the plague.” Her intensity thrummed through Praeis's mind. “A year ago, after over a million of our Great Family sickened and died, the Getesaph and their allies contacted the Humans. No one knows what passed between them. Then, they start this idea of Confederation. Bring the Humans in, give them control over our fates, let them take charge of our home. Oh, all for the most benevolent reasons, of course. Let the mighty Humans wipe out the plague and clean up the radioactive zones.”
Dizziness threatened. It had been so long since she'd been with so many family. The room was full of them, all their consciousnesses pressing against her, demanding attention. Her sisters both touched her, and it was as if they touched will and soul as well as skin. She wanted to relax, to let the feelings carry her away to calm and love.
