“Inharmonious?” The shadow was a moment in continuing. “Well, I never could sing.”
“If I’m so worthless why am I not dead? Why are you gloating outside my door?”
“Merely thinking of different ways to squeeze you.”
Nana forced a laugh. “You imprison Tachba for a living, is that right? Has that ever worked, the sinister threats? What do they ever get you?”
“Usually just that, a laugh,” the colonel admitted. “You people are impossible.”
“We laugh a lot, neh?”
“But you all stop when your air runs out. It’s a struggle. Legs kick, arms flail. Fingernails get broken. The choking brings out the wrinkles around a girl’s eyes. It’s all quite terminal—even the pretty ones like you don’t care how they look at the end. You just die.”
“I—I guess there’s only one way for me to know that for sure.”
“Does it bother you, Nana, having all your beauty for nothing? Would you have lived differently?”
This one worries about looks. Nana stared into the dark, remembering what the elegant woman looked like. “We have the same hair.”
“We do not!”
“How do you keep yours down? With all the moisture—”
“I don’t creep around in smoke-filled drinking clubs, for one. At least, I don’t usually. Take your hair into the sunlight sometime to dry it out. Also, I’ve heard something about beer.”
“I don’t drink,” Nana said, trying to smile.
“It’s not for you, dear. It’s for your hair, and the people who have to look at you.” The voice changed. “Are you now at your ease?”
“What comes when I am at my ease?”
“It means I can start my questions over again.”
Nana reached for the wall and felt its roughness under her fingertips. When she moved, pacing the walls, her mind started to work again; her feet seemed directly connected to her thoughts.
Presently, she said, “I can’t believe I have so much personal attention. Tips for my hair, the breathing right outside my door. I must either be special, or the colonel is not sufficiently busy.”
“I do have some things I need to take care of,” the shadow allowed. “Anyway, if I can’t get answers out of you, I will bring in Sethlan or Diggery and give them worse treatment.”
“If you’re threatening me with their torture,” Nana said, “then you have not spent enough time with them.”
“Would you really turn them in?”
Nana wondered for a moment. “There is only one of me, and millions of them.”
“I feel the same way. Also, whenever I act for their general welfare, they seem to have to die.”
The voice seemed to be waiting, and Nana finally felt calm enough. She said, “Won’t you open the door?”
“And…see you?” The shadow paused. “No, when I open the door, I will have to become the colonel, and you will have to become the insurrectionist. The pretend queen who wants to destroy our civilizing hold on your people. I’d rather remain as an unseen voice, so I can’t be herded by my responsibilities to the empire.”
“What is happening on the front?”
“It’s all chaos,” the shadow said. “You Sessies aren’t moving; you’re refusing every order. So of course we’ve pulled all our Haphan units off the line. The South is probing, and now your people are dying in droves.”
“The South is taking ground?”
“Not yet. It’s still teetering. We have a few hours before the breakthrough. What did you have planned, Queen? Is there anything that can be done?”
Nana chewed her lip—had she heard queen or Queen? And if she didn’t answer, was she off the hook?
“Tick, tock,” said the voice. “Another hundred boys just died. A hundred vital, profane, flighty Sesseran boys, gone. I can’t miss them more than you, Nana, because you’re the manleader, aren’t you? What was your plan to keep Ville Emsa from being sacked?”
Nana wanted to answer directly, but didn’t like what she would have to say. “Calling myself queen was good for getting questions answered, but it crept up on me. The South can be led, that’s all I’m sure of. You put an acknowledged Queen in the right place, speaking sense to the right ear, and the South can be led.”
“That…that is all you had?”
Nana was stung, mostly because she deserved it. “Of course that’s all I had. It’s not like dashtas are allowed to meet and make plans. You also pulled sculls, helpies, and even Colonel Trappia out of my unit and killed them! Between you, the new space ship, and the atomic bombs, I was lucky just to break the Haphan’s grip on the front line.”
“Hold on a moment,” the shadow said. “What’s this about atomic bombs?”
“It’s already sorted out, colonel,” Nana said. She didn’t want the colonel disappearing to investigate bomb trains. “The bombs are Haphan. Landing-day bombs, moved into Ville Emsa to punish everybody when the city falls.”
“That could not be true,” the shadow said flatly.
“No? Then how about this: they are Haphan bombs but we are unsure who ordered them moved. Some of us can’t believe the Haphans would go this far.”
“We never would. None of this is true. Those weapons are painstakingly inventoried and protected. They don’t simply go missing, for shit’s sake. No, you’re feeding me trench rumors.” The voice firmed as it spoke. “This is a diversion. Nice try, it has the flavor of truth. You slight girls are audacious.”
“As you like,” Nana said curtly. See, Sethlan? I brought the bombs to the Haphans for you, and now you have your answer. In a way, Nana was glad, because the bombs were hopefully being dealt with, and they only distracted from the request she wanted to make of the colonel. “You asked about my plans to save Ville Emsa. I need to get to the front. If I can’t get to the front, then I can’t forestall the South’s attack. Colonel Tawarna, you must let me out of here. You must let me out as soon as possible and move me to the break-through point.”
The shadow was quiet, almost long enough to give Nana hope. Then, “Silly creature, you can’t just walk into a horde of Southies and find the big boss. They are actual animals. Thinking, talking animals, like from a children’s story. The meeting must be carefully prepared.”
“Everybody thinks they can be queen.” Nana turned away from the door. All this hindsight about what she hadn’t done was wearing on her.
Then the shadow continued. “But after you find someone to talk to, and you get them to listen, what then?”
“Sessera independent,” Nana mumbled.
“Oh, fresh. The Moon Kingdoms would never allow that, and neither would the local Haphan Empress. You are truly without a clue. This is the talent that floats to the top, in Sessera’s time of need? How in hell did you convince your Sessies to follow you?”
“They convinced themselves.”
“You have no real plan or strategy. In fact, were I to keep you in this cell or release you, it wouldn’t make any difference at all.”
“Then I may as well be set free, neh?”
To Nana’s surprise, the shadow said, “May as well.”
There was a new sound, metal on metal, imperfectly fitted. The woman on the other side of the door had grasped the handle and moved it. Nana stepped smoothly behind the hinge of the door and freed the ball-handle of the finger-knife from her hair. A moment later, the latch stopped moving.
“Wait,” said the shadow. “If I open this door I’ll probably get attacked or stabbed. I know how you snappies say thanks.”
Nana kept her voice level. “Stabbed with what?”
“You slight girls hide knives everywhere. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“Haphans never listen when we tell them they’re wrong,” Nana waffled.
“With the front collapsing, I’m as good as dead anyway, so why don’t I just—” the latch jiggled again. This time Nana didn’t bother to move.
Nana added, “This is the oddest interrogation I’ve ever heard of.”
“Not interrogation. Job interview. I see the next steps as clearly as you do. I see that if things stand as they are—the front crumbling, no Haphan leadership to be found, our military in disarray—then the Southies will break through, sack Ville Emsa, and bolt into the northern Haphan-held territories. In the end, all my people are dead, and civilization is gone from Grigory IV. Is that what you see, Queen?”
“Yes,” Nana said.
“Yet in your enduring wisdom, you locked down our Tacchies with a stop-order. Even if you desired it, the army could not reorganize in time.”
Unfortunately that sounded right too. “Yes.”
“So to save the empire,” the shadow finished, “I must help the new Queen succeed.”
“What?” Nana blurted.
“To save my country, I must help Sessera become independent.”
“What?”
“I’m talking slowly so you can keep up,” the voice drawled.
“You’re a Haphan talking sense,” Nana shot back. “Of course I’m confused.”
The shadow liked that. She snorted, then laughed out loud, a trilling laughter which sounded so sad. “Sessera might be lost, but it cannot be gained. I know the Haphans have lost the province, but it cannot, must not be captured by the Moon Kingdoms. Sessera must survive and thrive on its own.”
Nana stared into the dark, eyes wide. Though she knew she was in a cell, imprisoned, undergoing some form of psychological gameplay…the woman on the other side of the door sounded serious, perhaps less serious than sad, which itself made it even more believable.
“You want Sessera to be independent?”
“If Sessera can be a buffer against the Moon Kingdoms, it will save the empire, and a lot of lives besides.” The shadow paused. “There’s fighting on the street outside this building, it sounds like.”
“My people are coming for me?” Nana asked.
“Too much noise to know what’s happening.”
“If you come into my cell, I can keep you safe.” Nana smiled, and heard the shadow laugh.
“Listen, Queen. I’ve sent my Sergeant Ho and a few last sensible Sesserans to the staging area near mile seventeen. It’s where we had the forward hospital and some heavy artillery before we pulled everyone out. You only must remember mile seventeen. Any soldier can lead you there; it’s where the new units arrive on the train. That’s where the Southies will probe first.” The shadow’s voice turned intense. “And when they probe, Queen, they will discover that you made a…gesture. They will find that you’ve requested a parlay. You’ve requested a meeting in the most old-fashioned, respectably gruesome way possible. Even if they don’t take the invitation—though they will—they will dither long enough for the Queen of Sessera to appear and perhaps wrest control of the situation.”
I will live, Nana thought. She was willing to believe it now. “What exactly did I do? If I may ask. What was my special ‘gesture?’”
“You’ve read a few of the histories, at least?” the shadow asked. Nana answered curtly. “Then you’ll know about the throne of ancestors, the special body of judgment.”
“Yes,” Nana lied. She’d never actually cared for those parts of history, but she wasn’t about to confide this to the Haphan. “You were prepared all along for this.”
“One sister to another, one dashta to another, you must always think two steps ahead. Here is a tip for when you meet the South: they don’t trust or believe in female leaders any more than you believe in yourself. They’ll be dismissive of you, and that’s your strength. That’s often a woman’s strength. There is nothing in the history of the Moon Kingdoms, or in all the southern continent, to prepare them for the northern idea of a queen. The South is too violent and populous, and they never achieved enough stability to have real manleaders. Their women are either factory mothers or sterile throwbacks like yourself, who are smothered right at birth.”
This matched the stories Nana had heard as a child, stories her sisters repeated to her often. Apart from that, she had little else to go on. The Haphans stifled as much information about the South as possible.
“I’m a throwback,” Nana said. “They’ll hate me.”
“They will love you, Queen, but they don’t know it yet,” the shadow said. “You’re built into their very pollution. They have no guard against you. They’re primed and ready to be controlled. I only wish the Queen was me, like I planned. I would have cut into them like a hot knife in cold fat—” The shadow paused, then blurted, “Oh no, it’s Warty! Why is he here? He can’t be here!”
Nana ached to open the door. “Gawarty is here?”
“This is the wrong place for him. Daddy, I guess. Probably sent him back here for his safety, and now he’s walking into a slaughter house.”
“Keep Gawarty safe,” Nana said, not sure if the voice still listened. “We like him at the Observers, as a sort of pet.”
“Same here. My name is Jephesandra Liu Tawarna. Remember me in an hour, when our roles are reversed.”
Then the shadow disappeared. Nana turned away from the door and found her neck was sore, so closely had she been watching the band of light on the floor.
So she had hope, and from the unlikeliest source. All she had to do was survive the chaos she suspected was about to swamp the Haphan Quarter. Nana finally just pulled the finger knife from her hair and rested her hand on the latch. With her eyes closed and her breathing quiet, she imagined she could hear through the walls simply from the vibrations in the transmissive stone floor. The world was ticking on without her, and she had to wait to return to it. She tried to prepare herself.
What, exactly, was a throne of ancestors?
Travelogue: On the Corpse Arts
The corpse arts are the hidden mystery of the Tachba. What little is known has been stitched together from hints and clues by generations of recognized crackpots and disavowed conspiracy theorists. One hundred years of trench war and, before that, fifty years of conquest have generated a thin volume of folk tales but not one shred of enduring proof.
The most generous historians will sometimes concede, to wild-eyed students or fringe journalists who ply them with liquor, that the corpse arts are completely forgotten in the provinces under Haphan control. The implication is that the corpse arts are not forgotten in the Moon Kingdoms to the south.
Visitors are advised to overlook this lead because no further progress will be made. For example, if one observes that a practice must exist before it can be forgotten, Haphan manners permit the observation to go unanswered. If one observes that the Imperial War College recently removed all reference to the corpse arts from the public archive, including a student thesis on the subject, the observation will be dismissed as too specific to reflect genuine indifference to the answer, therefore ill-mannered and probing. If one discovers a printed summary of the thesis in a forgotten corner of the War College library and writes the author, Jephesandra Liu Tawarna, one will receive a glamorous autographed photo in the post, but no further help.
The corpse arts, as any kind of formal skill set, may now only exist in the tropical south, where death and decay have long been friends of the living. The practitioners, the carcassans, were originally inspired by the coalescing lifeforms indigenous to Grigory IV. Fishpods are clumps of minnow-like fish that aggregate to make larger, more intimidating prey. Likewise, when food is scarce in the forest, a brainbird will call together swarms of starving birds, which coalesce into a birdbear and then attack larger creatures.
In the same way, the fast-closing wounds of the Tachba can be exploited to create new shapes of life, called “obtained men” in the scattered texts. The same flesh that Tachba soldiers pinch together to close an injury can also be pinched to other parts of the body, and even to other bodies. The same Tachba nervous system that routes around damage to reestablish limb function will also route to new limbs. No one knows how the derogatory term “snappy” came into use, but it may be from the forgotten days when limbs were collected from battlefi
elds and pressed against the stumps of amputees, until one was found that would snap on, stick, and eventually thrive.
The folk tales are full of provocative clues. There are accounts of how the greatest Kings-of-Kings additively enhanced themselves into vast creatures. They added more legs to support their weight, and lived in pools of water for the buoyancy. They used supplemental torsos as booster pumps to move unfathomable volumes of blood. They did this, ultimately, so they could outthink their enemies. The snapped-together bodies were required to feed the clusters of decapitated heads that dangled off their spines like ghastly fruit pods. These fabled kings eventually turned stationary and became “nought but thought.”
These are only folk tales—stories to terrify children—never confirmed, from the darkest corners of Gring. Sophisticated, educated Sesserans believe none of it. The only recognizable link in modern society is a deep suspicion of anybody who is immobile and who seems undeservedly intelligent.
(The South: Sella Wrist-Snap)
Sella
Sella Wrist-Snap dropped into the Haphan trench. The other fingers of his hand fell in behind him, landing with utter silence in the debris. They bent at the waist with their rifle stocks on their hips, turning sinuously to match the shadows cast by a wooden ladder burning nearby. These men had hunted together since childhood, and Sella didn’t need handsign to know they were confused. The trench was deserted.
“The lolly trench,” Sella signed. The Haphans never went overland between their trenches; they used odd little feeders called lollies. Sella’s squad found one shortly, a dog-legged thing with step-ups facing south at each turn, so that in case the trench was overrun, the Impies could still defend the path to the rear.
They moved in utter silence. The barrage, which had gone unanswered by the imperials for hours, finally petered out as the Southie gunners’ attention wavered. Why shout if no one listens? On the Haphan side there was only wind, and the ticks and groans of the woodwork from the bunkers—which were also empty. It was quite possibly the first time Sella had heard himself breathe in six years.
The Eternal Front: A Lines of Thunder Novel (Lines of Thunder Universe) Page 45
