Cordelia glanced at Horace and Simon. Horace gave her a little nod as if to say it was possible. Simon’s face was carefully blank.
“Is that why you won’t let Horace in?” Simon asked.
“I was hoping to find out enough about him to fill in the gaps I missed, but…” She shrugged. “You’re all tightly shielded yourselves.”
“You should have fucking told us from the start!” Cordelia shouted, unable to contain her anger any longer. “You should have sent a telepathic message to us when it first happened! Simon could have fucking fixed him.”
Horace put a hand on her arm, but he didn’t send any calming waves her way. Good, she wanted to feel her anger. She stared at Liam, caught up in a mix of pity and horror. How much about her did he actually remember? Being kids together? Being partners? There was a time when they were practically the same person. Did he remember that at all?
That probably depended on how much shit Patricia was full of. She could easily be using this brain damage story to cover for how she’d fucked over his mind in the first place.
“Let me.” Simon stepped forward, hand out. Liam pulled his head back as if alarmed, and Cordelia tried to remember if Simon had ever healed him before. They’d never been the best of friends. Liam probably still had some resentment about when Simon had healed the Storm Lord after Liam had gone through all the trouble of shooting him six times.
If he even remembered that.
“I see the damage,” Simon said quietly, his eyes searching Liam’s face. Liam’s expression relaxed as seconds ticked by. Simon’s healing had a soothing effect that even Liam couldn’t ignore, no matter how pissed off he was.
Simon turned a pitying look Cordelia’s way. “There was substantial damage, and the brain’s a tricky organ. Even if Patricia had been intimately acquainted with his neurons and all the pathways of his brain, she would have had a difficult time rebuilding it exactly as it was.”
“I did the best I could,” Patricia said, sounding sulky but also guilty. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Liam said, turning to her. “I told you it was.” With a sigh, he looked to Cordelia. “She asked me if we should tell you, and I said no. I remember…bits and pieces of my life. I thought that, as time went on…”
Cordelia swallowed hard, not knowing if she should mourn the lost memories while he was standing right in front of her. He was dead, and he wasn’t: a walking corpse. “No, it’s okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t…” She breathed deep. “You should have fucking told me, Liam!”
“You would have looked for a solution that isn’t there,” he said.
She pointed in his face, anger taking over every other emotion again. “I will decide just how much shit I can handle. Nobody can do that for me. If there’s a problem, I want to know.”
His gaze was steady, but she caught a hint of a smile. “Understood.”
“I can help,” Horace said. “I’ve worked with amnesia patients. There might be more there than you realized.” When Patricia turned a resentful glance his way, he raised his hands, drushkan fashion. “Not saying you did a bad job, but unless you were the healer or the psychiatrist among the Atlas crew, I have more experience.”
She put on a smile. “The blocks are there to protect what memories I could retrieve from the paladins and whatever else he’s currently building. It’s too late to start over. Who knows what else he might lose?” She looked to Cordelia. “I’m not lying. I don’t have a personal interest in him, not like you, but with Naos here, I knew…I had to make amends after how I treated you. Fixing the mayor is how I’m doing that. Please, we might have handled this badly in the beginning…and just now…but I know what I’m doing, really.”
She said, “we might have handled,” including the brain-damaged guy in her fuckup. But he’d said he hadn’t wanted to tell anyone. That sounded like the old Liam. He would have been afraid they’d make him give up being mayor.
And Cordelia supposed they were lucky that Liam wasn’t actually her puppet. He was walking and talking on his own. A few people had told Cordelia that Liam and Patricia had had several long, loud arguments, so he wasn’t just doing whatever she told him to do.
“Where do we go from here?” Cordelia asked Liam. “If you want to start over with Horace, we can find someone to take over the mayoral duties. You’ll have time to heal, and then, you can be mayor again.”
“With everything I have to do in the city and Naos in town?” He grimaced. “No thanks.” He affected a pose she’d never seen from him, relaxed but on guard. She knew a lot of paladins who never seemed to go off duty, but he’d never been one. When he relaxed, he did it all the way, at least on the outside. Inside, he was the same bundle of knots as everyone else.
She didn’t know whether to hug him, hit him, or introduce herself.
“We need a plan,” Simon said. “For Naos. All cards on the table.”
Cordelia had no idea what that meant, but if it was about showing secrets, she was in. She told herself there’d be time to repair Liam’s fractured memory after they’d dealt with Naos. She’d sit on him if she had to, but she’d get the old Liam back.
Chapter Ten
Shiv wrapped her arms around herself and keened, keeping to the shadows of the tree that had been part of her former home in the swamp. Never had she felt such sorrow, such horror. Her tribemate had attacked a queen and a queen’s tree. He had done it in defense of her, but even so, it was wrong! Her mother had shared stories of her fight with the Shi, and even when that great queen was threatened, the drushka had only sought to bar her mother’s path or restrain her, never to harm, and it had not even been in their thoughts to harm the tree.
Now, Lyshus had done both, and he did not seem to understand the crime he had committed, one that would not even blossom in the thoughts of any other drushka. It had to be her fault; she had turned him into a monster.
Sitting on the floor at her side, he stared at her with worried eyes, his body much longer than it had been scant days ago when they fled from her mother. He had only seen two full moons. He should have been as high as her knee, but his head reached her waist. And with the power he had pulled from Shi’a’na and put into Shiv, she was nearly a foot taller than she had been. Her trousers halted halfway up her lower leg, and her sleeves stopped at her elbows.
She would not have cared save that it was a reminder of how everything had changed. When she had fled from her mother and into the swamp, she thought of nothing except escape. The journey and the few days following had been a nightmare of running and stopping only to listen for signs of pursuit. The swamp seemed to be listening, watching, judging. They had eaten sparingly as they journeyed farther into the thick ropy branches of the swamp trees until they reached Shiv’s former home.
The small camp her people had once lived in stood in ruins, abandoned nearly nine months in the past. The drushka had made a small village that humans could visit before they knew about the queen and her tree. The houses they had built among these trees had been reclaimed by the swamp, even in so short a time. Vines covered them, and tiny sprouts sprang from the walls.
Shiv crouched in the middle of the house she had called her own, but the roof had caved in under a deluge, and her scent had been replaced by the smell of mold. Outside the window, her sapling waited, tall enough to carry her now. It did not feel as drushka felt, but she called to it anyway, unwilling to seek comfort from Lyshus, not yet.
When the tree reached a branch through the window and touched her shoulder, Lyshus breathed out, a sigh and a keen. He sensed her sorrow and her reluctance to take comfort from him. It confused and frightened him and made him even sadder.
“Do you not see?” she yelled. She shared with him the memories of what he had done, trying to impart her horror and the idea that he must never attack a queen’s tree again.
He ceased keening and cocked his head. His own memories countered hers: she had been in pain, and he wanted to stop it. His was a child’s under
standing with too much power behind it.
Shiv groaned and took his shoulders. “Lyshus, you must never harm a queen’s tree. I should have taught you this lesson before, I suppose, but…” She should not have had to. It should have been part of his blood, her blood that she had passed to him. “Perhaps my blood is tainted, but whatever the reason, you must see how the trees connect us.” She fed him images that her mother had offered her when she had asked for tales of the old drushka, how a great tree had split the world in the very beginning of things. Its seeds broke open and became the creatures of the world, and one of those creatures was the drushka, the first Shi.
She shared memories of her own childhood. She had felt how Shi’a’na’s tree was connected to her drushka, that without it, they would have no connection to the living world or to one another. Without it, they would die. No drushka could live without that connection, without a tree to sustain them.
He sat still, his green hair hanging limply around his face. It had grown with the rest of him. She smoothed it away from his silver eyes. His gaze flicked to her tree, then back to her. “Tree,” he said softly, learning speech now that he was large enough to use it.
She sucked in a breath, but as oddities went, speaking at just over two months seemed the least dangerous. “Ahya,” she said. “The trees are important.”
He frowned, and she received the impression that her tree was most important, connected to them as it was. Shi’a’na’s tree was less important, could be sacrificed.
“No! If that tree dies, all its drushka will die! Shi’a’na, Nettle, Reach, your…” She had been about to say his parents, but they were already dead.
Lyshus did not grieve. They were nothing to him. And he only recalled Shi’a’na as a thorn to Shiv and to him, someone who had tried to keep them apart and then—as he saw it—had tried to hurt Shiv. Of Reach he had several fond memories but only as the mother of Little Paul, with whom he liked to play.
“Yes, yes!” She latched on to that memory. “You must…help protect Little Paul’s mother!” She could not think of the right words. He should venerate the trees on his own. It should simply be part of him. Even though she loved to hear the stories sung aloud, Shiv had known from birth that the queen’s trees were sacred. As a queen, she would fight another queen if she had to, but she would never harm a queen’s tree. The very idea made something deep inside her shudder.
Lyshus had no echoing shudder. He sucked his teeth, still not able to see beyond the two of them. He was broken, and it was her fault. Her blood had done this to him. She wanted to wrap her arms around herself and keen again, but she had to do something with the two of them. They could not keep running blindly, but if he could not understand why the trees were untouchable, he could not be around other drushka.
She caught a thought from Lyshus. Little Paul was human, not drushka. Even if Shi’a’na’s tree died, taking Reach with it, Little Paul would live. He grinned, happy his friend would be safe.
Shiv nearly threw him from the house. He simply could not see beyond his circle. He loved her. He loved her tree. He even cared for Little Paul, but beyond that, he did not understand why he should care for anyone else. It did not seem part of him.
Her thoughts turned dark. He was an abomination and could not be allowed to live.
Shiv’s insides ached at the thought. She clasped him to her and keened anew, punishing herself for wanting his death but believing it all the same.
They should both be thrown into the swamp to drown.
Lyshus patted her back in lazy circles. She could still feel his confusion, but he had no guilt over what had happened. His sorrow was all for her and her pain. She felt his power reach out, but instead of connecting to her tree, his reach extended further.
She pulled back. “What are you doing? Are you reaching for another tree?” She shook him lightly. “Do not!”
His power kept going, his eyes losing focus. She raised a hand to slap him and bring him back to himself, but his reach passed the other drushkan queens, not even slowing as it raced along, seeking someone, something.
“Oh my, my.” The human voice sounded funny in her head, echoing, distorted, as if it was shouted down a hollow log filled with whining insects.
Lyshus’s grasp tightened on Shiv’s arm, and he smiled, though his eyes remained glassy. “Help,” he whispered.
“Certainly, certainly,” the echoing voice said. “I’ll help if I can. I never expected to hear from one of the tree folks. I thought your minds were…off limits.”
Shiv could not close her mouth. The only humans she knew who could speak with the drushka as they could speak with one another were Sa and Simon, and that was because they had bonded with the drushka through Shi’a’na: Sa with her spirit self and Simon by taking in queen’s blood. Horace had tried to use telepathy with them, but he could not succeed.
And this was not Simon or Sa or even Horace. “Who are you?”
“You knocked on my door, honey. I think it’s only right you start the introductions.”
“Help,” Lyshus said again.
Shiv stared, searching his small face for any emotion beyond earnestness. Could he reach out to telepathic humans as well as other queens’ trees? But why reach out to this voice? Why not find Sa or Simon or Horace, all of whom he had met? Who was this…
Lyshus shared his reasons. Shiv had needed help, and she did not want him to reach for other drushka, so he sought the most powerful human mind he could find, and some power of his let him connect. Shiv had heard the humans speak of this powerful mind, one they feared, the one who had come from the sky. “Naos.”
“Righty-o! So, now you know me. And you are…” Shiv felt the telepathic fingers reaching for her, but just as with Horace, they could not penetrate her mind. The contact went through Lyshus, and he was sending only her loudest thoughts as queens did with their drushka. She felt the frustration of this Naos, and it pleased her. Through Lyshus, Shiv had control, and that meant she had what Sa would call a bargaining chip. Naos could not invade her mind, could not even really sense her, so no hurt could be done that way. And it seemed as if Naos wanted something from her, and if that was so, they had a place to bargain from.
“I am Shiv, daughter of Pool. I seek your assistance.”
Mind fingers danced along their connection, seeking a way in like burrowing worms. “You’ve come to the right place, honey. I’m sure we can figure something out.” Naos sent images of a place in the mountains to the north where a great bulk of metal waited. “But I can’t leave just yet. I invited a lot of company. You’re welcome to join. I can tell that you’re special, so I’ll make extra room for you. I’m sure we can come up with a solution to any little problem you might be having. And in return, well, I’m sure you can find a way to be useful.”
Shiv looked for human deception but found none, not knowing the mind markers for such. She would have to look this Naos in the eyes and see for herself. If she could help, so much the better. And if she could not, Shiv supposed she would have to get used to traveling the land with only Lyshus and her sapling for company. They were not safe living this close to so many drushka.
And the drushka were not safe from them.
* * *
Cordelia tried to stay close to Liam as they put together a team to journey north. Everything was in the shit. Pool was upset about Shiv’s rebellion and Lyshus’s attack on her tree. All the drushka were freaked out by it. Nettle had been so shaky and jumpy that Cordelia had just wanted to hold her and tell the world to fuck off.
To make matters worse, fucking Fajir had taken the opportunity to escape, and the drushka were unable to say whether Lydia had left on her own or if Fajir had taken her. Samira wanted to go after them, but Fajir was no fool. She’d stay on the move, and she’d be watching for pursuit. She’d either kill Lydia or hide them both so they’d never be spotted.
A group of drushkan trackers reported that Fajir had gone north. All Cordelia could promise was that they�
�d keep their eyes open for Lydia on their way to visit a mad goddess who would pummel them with asteroids if they didn’t play her stupid fucking games.
And Liam had brain damage and might never be the same again.
Cordelia wanted to punch someone for that alone. Too bad she’d given up her drunken street brawls.
Liam had been watching her from the corner of his eye all morning as they collaborated on getting supplies together and outfitting the paladins. He’d had some good ideas on how to put teams together. It would be really weird if all he could remember from his former life was the lessons his mom had tried to beat into his head.
Now they sat in the Paladin Keep, reading over supply lists. “You all right?” she asked as he sighed.
“Yeah.” But he sounded tired.
She went to clap him on the shoulder but hesitated, not wanting to…hurt him or anything, even though Simon said he was as healthy as he could be under the circumstances. “It’s okay to rest.” When he glanced at her, she shrugged. “Or whatever. Have a mead, relax.”
He smiled slightly, and it seemed a little sad. Well, why the fuck not? Everyone was a little sad at the moment. “Too much to do.”
She cleared her throat, not wanting to push. Maybe she should get Reach to speak to him. Drushkan healers didn’t take any shit when it came to who needed a rest. “Well, um…” She gestured to the list of supplies. “At least the shortages here are under control. Now that the weather’s leveled out, the plants are doing better.”
He smiled a little wider. “True. Lucky that.”
“Well, luck and Simon. He’s been working with the plants and says we’ll have an early harvest.”
Liam only grunted, but his shoulders seemed tight, his body poised as if to run or strike.
Cordelia rolled her eyes but said nothing. At least he remembered his nonsensical jealousy of Simon. Every little bit helped, right?
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