Cordelia gasped as Pool leaped between the trees, Nettle at her side. Lea had cleared the way for her.
“Oh fuck!” Cordelia would never be able to catch up with them. But she had more than one way to help. She left Lea to his work and went back to the paladins near the trunk. “Watch my body,” she said to Carter, one of her fellow exiles.
He nodded. As she lay down on the branch, he stood over her. It took a moment to relax since she knew her people might be wounded or floundering, waiting to become prog chow. She focused on her breathing, thinking about how to help Pool, help Nettle. With a desperate shove, she pushed free from her body.
She hung motionless, blinded by the lights of three queens together. Quickly, she flew toward the closest and headed upward, searching for Pool. Still on the move, she was easier to spot than if she’d been standing still. Drushka barred her path at every turn, but Nettle and her warriors made quick work of most. Some caught sight of Pool, but instead of hesitating as the sixth queen’s drushka had, these fell at Pool’s feet. Cordelia thought they were bowing at first, but they sought to block the way with their bodies. Either the Shi didn’t want Pool hurt, or she couldn’t overcome the drushkan resistance to hurting a queen. They piled in Pool’s way, and her party slowed to a crawl. Cordelia spotted the tendrils of light connecting Pool to her drushka, just as the drushka in her way were connected to someone in the distance. And from these trees, another light stretched into the swamp, probably the connection of these queens to the Shi. That light was mottled with ugly gray spots, infected by the hatred of the Shi.
Cordelia flew to Pool. “My armor lost its charge. Some of the others are unpowered, too. We need to end this.”
Pool glanced to the side as she clambered over a pile of drushka. “Go to the second tree, Sa, and find the queen. Touch her. I will merge with the third myself and the second through you.”
“Right.” Cordelia streaked away. She didn’t relish the idea of being a conduit again. Her fight with Naos hadn’t exactly been pleasant, and she didn’t really want to get in a mind fight with the Shi. Her spirit didn’t need any new scars, but if that was the only way forward…
The second’s tree had gotten tangled in a swamp tree, but she’d be free soon enough. Cordelia headed for the light of the queen herself even as she wanted to run. Maybe all she needed was some human backup. She called as loudly as she could for Horace and felt the tingle as he answered.
“Are you hurt?” he asked in her mind.
“I’m going to help Pool fight the queens. I might need your help.”
“There are so many wounded!”
“The faster I do this, the faster you can see to them.”
He sent his frustration, but she shook it off. He could be as frustrated as he wanted as long as he stayed with her. Cordelia threaded through the branches and finally found the second queen.
She stood hidden, fully encased in bark; only her light shone through. After a deep breath she wished she could feel, Cordelia dove inside.
* * *
Pool felt her drushka dying, felt the deaths of the old drushka as they succumbed to wooden blades or metal bullets. So much death, and none of it necessary. The humans could no longer afford to be merciful, not with the drushkan hordes and the attacking queens. She had to stop this.
As more drushka sought to bar her path, she snarled in frustration. Even Nettle and the fiercest warriors could not cut their way through so many. Reach ran at Pool’s side, crying out for the drushka to give way, promising that they would be free.
“Up,” Pool cried, leaping to a branch above. She sensed Cordelia flying closer to the second queen; the third was close. She ran faster, leaving her protectors behind, but these drushka sought only to slow her. One leapt at Pool’s legs, but she jumped, swinging to another branch before dropping again.
She rolled as she landed and saw the trunk just ahead. The third queen stood encased just as the sixth had been. Only a hint of her body showed through her trunk. A host of drushka stood before her, faces contorted into feral snarls.
Pool screamed, putting all her rage as a queen into the cry. The host before her shrank, but she heard an answering scream from the mind of the Shi.
Pool hurled herself into the press of drushka, pushing through. They grabbed and sought to pull her down, but she persisted, taking one shaking step after another. They hung from her arms and clutched her legs, but she stumbled onward, a wordless cry on her lips. She stretched an arm toward the third and closed one fist over a lock of green hair.
She did not have time for niceties, for the careful extraction she had done with Sky. She dove into the third’s mind, a queen far younger than her whom she had never met. The Shi had dominated the third’s mind with ease. There was almost nothing left. But even as the Shi battered her with anger, Pool gained a foothold, taking what was left of the third in a firm, savage grip.
Pool reached for Cordelia’s unique mind and found her connected to the second queen. Another wounded mind. Though the Shi was connected to both, she was also connected to the other queens, all but Pool and the sixth. Her attention was divided, and she did not have Cordelia’s formidable will spurring her on.
“We must wake her, Sa,” Pool said. “Show her what it is to lead.”
Cordelia assailed the second’s mind with stories about leading her people, of what it meant to sacrifice oneself. She layered on recriminations. The drushka were dying, could she not see it? Did she not feel anything for them? Her duty was to them, not to the Shi.
It was not completely true, but now was not the time to point that out. The Shi focused on this interloping mind, trying to push it out, but it was clear she did not want to touch it, did not know what to do. Pool used her confusion to gain more ground with the second and third, to try to pull their true selves out. Every time the Shi turned her attention to the third, Cordelia made a thorn of herself again with the second. Then as the Shi looked that way, Pool would make headway with the third, and the Shi howled in frustration. The second was beginning to feel the mind of Cordelia, too, was wondering what to make of her, and her curiosity pushed her further from the Shi’s grasp.
“Come out, sister,” Pool said, keeping hold of the third’s hair, trying to use that pain to wake her. The drushka around her had gone still, as if they could no longer move without orders. “Your name,” Pool said, digging. “Your name is…” She dug until the third cried out in pain, her drushka crying with her. “Your name is Nau.” Pool opened herself to this queen, this stranger, hoping the action would free her more. “Come out, sister.”
But Nau was too afraid, and the second seemed the same. Pool wrested more control from them and sought the connection to their drushka, commanding the attack to stop. They hesitated but went still. She sensed them muttering in confusion, stumbling, hands to their heads as the Shi fought to regain control.
Pool dug her hands into the bark and began to rip it away, the sharp pieces cutting her fingers with stinging slices. The queen inside was breathing hard, gasping, face creased in pain. Pool reached in and tore her loose from her birthright-turned-prison.
Nau’s eyes rolled upward as she shuddered in Pool’s arms. Pool called for Reach and felt her near. “Stay with me.” She lifted Nau and hurried toward where Cordelia’s spirit waited with the second. As they ran, Reach sang, keeping Nau alive.
“Sa, make the second queen angry.”
“You got it.” Cordelia cursed the second, calling her a coward, claiming she was not worthy of being a queen, that whatever trick of birth that made her a queen had been a mistake.
Pool would have answered such a challenge in a moment. The mind of the second shuddered, seeking to attack what it could not. Pool picked up speed, whispering to the third’s mind, trying to bring her drushka to peace. The Shi continued to push in with brutal force, and her rage beat at Pool like thrashing wings. All around them, drushka fell and screamed in agony, rolling from the branches and plummeting to the swamp below. How ma
ny would die from this? How many would be forever broken?
“Stop this!” Pool called to the Shi.
“Traitor! Rebel! Murderer!” the Shi screamed. “I will not let you corrupt them!”
The third’s lips trembled as she tried to speak along with the mind words. Pool staggered, but Reach’s arm pulled her upright, and now someone joined Pool’s other side: Nettle, helping to carry her and Nau.
Inside the Shi’s rage, Pool caught memories of dead drushka. The Shi was still scarred by the murders among her tribe two hundred and fifty years ago, one of the first meetings between humans and drushka. She had been the seventh queen then, but she still hungered for the humans’ death. She saw herself as rescuing the rest of the drushka from the same fate. Anything that was not drushka was the enemy. She did not understand the shortness of human lives, and she could not see her way past the ancient loss. Pool grieved for her, but the Shi rejected the feeling.
When Pool reached the second, the bark had already opened, and the second lay along the branch, struggling to get to where Cordelia’s spirit hovered, trying to answer the challenge. Kneeling, Pool gathered both queens into her arms. “Stay with me, Sa. Help me keep the Shi at bay.”
“She doesn’t know who she’s fucking with,” Cordelia said.
Pool laughed at the thought, and it helped her focus. Humor was no longer part of the Shi, so it was not part of the second or third. Pool shared the humor with them along with all the joys of life. She showed them Cordelia’s courage, her loyalty.
“That is human,” Pool said. “Knock them down and watch them rise. Like pests, ahya, but does the pest not survive? It can swarm. Better to be their allies than their enemies.”
The two queens pondered this, and that thinking gave them room to think about other things, so much of life that had been denied them for so long.
“Speak your name again, sister,” Pool said to the third.
“Nau,” the third said, her eyelids fluttering.
“And you, sister?”
The answer was weak, breathed more than spoken. “Lasa.”
Their names opened their minds further, and Pool slackened her grip, letting the queens become themselves again. She held their hands as they shared so many memories: mothers and fathers, mates long dead, the image of a floating flower, a saleska, and a thunderstorm that fascinated a young queen-to-be. Their thoughts swirled like leaves in a high wind.
Pool shared some of her own memories, only a few, not wanting to overwhelm them. She sprinkled in humans: the slings, the feel of their smooth skin, their bright smiles, and easy laughs. The Shi tried to fight against the thoughts, but Cordelia repulsed her with human taunts. As Nau’s and Lasa’s minds expanded, the voice of the Shi quieted to nothing.
“Nau,” Pool said. “The humans would call you Leaf Fall, but Lasa, yours is not so easy. Spirited, is how I think they would say it.”
The two queens tasted the names in their minds, identities they had not been aware of before. Their hair dangled down Pool’s back as they rested their heads on her shoulders. Reach sang to them, comforting them, and Pool felt Sky, the sixth queen, coming closer, her shawnessi spreading through the wounded drushka. Sky came to them aboard the second tree and knelt with her fellow queens. Shawnessi from all four tribes surrounded them, singing in concert. Leaf Fall and Spirited raised their heads and blinked at the sun-streaked swamp as if they had never seen it before. They touched Pool, the tree, their drushka, caressing all like newborns.
When Cordelia approached in her body, Horace at her side, the queens ran their hands over her metal skin. Cordelia stood and bore it with a scowl. Pool smiled, hoping the shawnessi could grant Cordelia some serenity. Horace let his powers play over all of them, and the queens reached to touch him, too. With a smile, he hugged each one, so free with his embrace for those who needed it. They wrapped their long arms around him and pressed his forehead to theirs before moving through their drushka, needing touch, craving it.
Pool moved away with Cordelia and Horace. “They will reconnect with their drushka,” Pool said. “It must seem as if they do not know them at all.”
“And when they’ve recovered?” Cordelia asked. “Will they help us or stay back like the sixth?”
“We will speak of it later.” She kept a connection with the queens as they wandered among their drushka and looked out among the humans. Leaf Fall gave Pool a memory, and she stopped, her heart wrenching.
Nettle and Reach looked at her sharply. Cordelia turned, too, and Pool felt her curiosity.
“What is it?” Horace asked as he looked between them.
Pool hurried through the limbs, heading for the image Leaf Fall had given her. Cordelia would be angry, but better she see it herself than be told.
“Where are we going?” Cordelia asked as she followed. “Is there…” Her voice faded as she looked into the swamp.
A row of bodies swung from trees in the distance. Cordelia stepped to the edge of the branch as if trying to get a better look. Nettle took her arm to keep her back, but her eyes were locked on the bodies, too. The image Leaf Fall had fed to Pool, a row of murdered humans, swung lazily, fifteen of the captives. Their bodies were slack, heads tilted down or to the side, away from the vines that circled their necks and led to the limb above.
“Fifteen,” Cordelia mumbled.
Horace had his hands to his mouth. “Why in the world—”
“It is a warning,” Pool said. “Done by the Shi.” She touched Cordelia’s and Horace’s shoulders. “The other queens did not do this, Sa. They have told me that the captives are held by the Shi.”
“What’s left of them,” Cordelia said, her face tight with anger. By the way she clenched her fists, Pool knew all mercy had deserted her. As she stared at the swinging bodies, Pool could not help but agree.
Chapter Nine
Simon was happy he didn’t have to worry about space, at least. Dillon had had three large rooms all to himself in the Yafanai Temple. Simon put Pakesh, Little Paul, and Evan in the bedroom to sleep. Shiv and Lyshus went into the study along with the sapling. The view of a large tree in the courtyard seemed to make Shiv happy, surrounded as she was in a human city.
That left the sitting room for Simon, with the only door into the hallway. The kids couldn’t escape without alerting him, and anyone who came knocking was probably looking for him anyway.
Late at night, Mila came to feed Evan again. Simon set up a schedule with her and paid the only way he knew how, by soothing her aches and pains. Now he stayed up even later, going through Dillon’s papers by lantern light. He hadn’t found anything about food production or distribution. Dillon had no doubt fobbed that responsibility off on others, much as he did every task he didn’t enjoy. Simon found one bizarre paper titled “People Who Want to Kill Me” and stared at it, wondering what exactly had prompted it.
He couldn’t help but think of Dillon’s face slack in death. The man who’d killed him had run away after the deed was done, and Simon had never seen him again, never knew the reason why. Maybe he’d been a servant who’d had enough of Dillon’s shit. That seemed likely.
Simon read the list of possible killers again. The servants weren’t listed unless they counted as “Renegades.” He peered at a crossed-out name that might be his, but it seemed Dillon had changed his mind. Simon rolled his eyes. Dillon probably thought Simon didn’t have the stones to kill anyone.
But, a little voice inside him reminded, he hadn’t killed Dillon. He’d merely held Dillon still so someone else could kill him. On the one hand, he was a little ashamed he hadn’t done it himself. On the other, he was relieved. His hands were cleaner, never mind what Miriam said about responsibility.
Simon folded the paper and put it aside with others he intended to throw away. He turned to the next when Shiv wandered out of the study and flopped onto a pile of cushions. Simon didn’t need to read her to see the sadness in her body, the way she drooped and couldn’t seem to focus. He stayed silent, let
ting her decide when to speak.
“Before Lyshus,” she said at last, “I wanted to explore this city.”
He set the papers aside. “Taking care of a child is hard work.”
She slapped her thighs. “Ahwa, it is not that. My feeling is…” She spread her hands. “Unexplainable. Stronger than motherhood, perhaps, or motherhood multiplied? I do not know. I am not simply myself. I am a queen.” She rested her chin in one long-fingered hand. “I did not know what that meant before. How can my mother, my shi’a’na, stand it? How did she care for me when I was an infant while being queen to the tribe?”
Simon nodded, though he was certain Pool had help when Shiv was a baby. “It must be hard to have to do it on your own.”
With a ghost of a smile, she glanced at him. “Overwhelming, but then, I wonder how I ever lived without Lyshus. When my tribe grows, maybe I will change. Maybe once Shi’a’na frees the old drushka, some will come to me.” She stared at the ceiling, eyes half-lidded. “The idea pleases me. It is my purpose, but then I think…” A thread of irritation and fear wafted from her like a sour smell.
“So what’s wrong?”
She stared at nothing. “My mother rebelled against our people. I am more rebellious than her, a queen born of a queen. What if Lyshus is more rebellious still? What if everyone who joins my tribe…” She trailed off, worry and fear roiling off her.
They were interesting questions. Simon leaned back and thought about it. He was still getting to know the drushka; they were endlessly fascinating, mixing his love of botany with his skill in biology. “I guess Lyshus is an unknown, sort of like you. Since queens don’t usually have their own children, no one knows what the tribe of a queen’s queen will be like. Since you’re both unique, I guess you’ll have to wait and see what happens.”
Children of the Healer Page 15
