“The brave hunters return,” Zineda said lazily. “And empty handed, again.”
Marikan To knelt and bowed her head. “Alas so, my Lady Zineda,” she said, letting her voice ring through the deck. “We have followed now all the trails in this sector to no avail. We await your wishes.”
Zineda sat back and waved her hand. “We expected nothing more. I do not doubt your efforts or skill, but if the artifact could be so easily discovered, Nozuki would not have tasked his mightiest servants with its retrieval.”
“Of course,” Tahariel said with a tart note in her voice. “Still, better to be thorough.”
“Indeed,” Zineda replied, paying her little attention. “We have entered the edges of the Ulyxis system, and our brethren and allies gather. Soon we will approach the world by stealth. We are less than a day away. Warlord Mamaro To is preparing for the coming battle. We will require your skills in the attack.”
Marikan To bowed again and felt a thrill run through her at the thought of a straightforward fight. “I serve with devotion and joy, Lady Zineda. I request only a chance to refresh and rest.”
“Naturally. Go and sleep. Prepare. You have served us well, and we shall not forget it.” She had stopped regarding the women altogether.
Marikan To nodded and rose. She turned and strode from the room. Not until she stepped through the door did she realize that she had not been formally released; the dismissal had been so clear. She sighed as Tahariel joined her.
The alien put a hand on her shoulder. “That went well enough.” She licked her lips and looked thoughtfully at Marikan To’s expression. “Didn’t it?”
The noh frowned slightly and started off slowly down the hall. “Enough. I should have waited for her to actually dismiss us.”
“She’d forgotten about us before you even stood.”
“Yes,” Marikan To said, and immediately felt guilty. She shook it off. “Let’s get that food.”
“And then I should return to Lady Amelial,” Tahariel said. She sounded a bit sad. “Though, if the Source is going to show up here, perhaps I should stay.”
“I thought you didn’t like us,” Marikan To said too quickly. She glanced away from Tahariel’s questioning expression. “Well, you do spend a lot time complaining.”
Tahariel laughed. Marikan To realized that, for all the smiles and apparent good humor, she had never heard her companion laugh.
“I do, don’t I? Well, there’s a lot to complain about, as I see it. But by comparison, this,” she spread her arms, “is so much better than being cooped up at home.” She shrugged. “And there, I don’t get to complain much at all.”
Then Marikan To laughed. Not much, and not hard, but it lifted her immediately.
“So maybe I’ll get to stay a little longer. And I can’t say I wouldn’t welcome a chance for a simple bloodletting. I’ll report in and see what my mistress desires.”
“We live to serve,” Marikan agreed, though the notion bothered her a bit.
Chapter 13
Hydra’s Will, Ulyxis system, Alliance space
It took Marikan To a few minutes to fully realize that she had awoken and perhaps another ten minutes of staring at the inlaid ceiling to admit that she would not go back to sleep. She pushed aside the thin blanket and rolled to sit beside her pallet. As leader of her sisterhood, she could have taken one of the private chambers around the edge of the long hall reserved for the Sarva of Dragon Fleet To. Indeed, she reflected with a tinge of longing, several remained unclaimed even now. She had many reasons for merely claiming a cleared platform among her sisters in the main chamber, and she generally did not regret it. The closer connection and camaraderie with her fellow hunters had proven too useful, both in the field and in the—sometimes deadlier—politics of her people. She yawned.
Lakmi shifted, turned a bleary eye on her, and tucked her head back again. Marikan To scratched the cypher under her neck feathers, and after an obstinate minute, she began to make a low, happy sound in her throat. Marikan smiled at her companion, the source of so much joy and trouble.
“If only you’d told the priestesses that Nozuki was sending you to me,” she muttered to the owl-like creature, “they might not dislike me so.”
Lakmi raised her head and looked at Marikan with one eye. “They didn’t need to know.”
Marikan chuckled, but the sound died in her throat as a faint, tantalizing scent caught her nose.
Marikan sniffed and looked around. The scent passed again, there and gone like distant blood on a shifting wind. It must have been what had drawn her awake. While her missions in pursuit of the artifact had not been too taxing physically, they had drained her mentally and emotionally, and she needed sleep before battle. Still, something kept her mind from rest. Now that she sought for it, she found that the air had a tang to it beyond the usual comforting smells of her home. A slippery and pungent flavor ran under the normal scents. She dressed automatically and picked her way silently from the hall.
Though they maintained a day and night cycle, a dragon ship never truly slept. The priestesses, warriors, slaves, and slave masters who saw Marikan To prowling the corridors gave her a wide berth and asked no questions. Though she had spent many of the years since acquiring Lakmi detached to Kasaro To’s command, she had grown up on the Hydra’s Will and could still walk its corridors blindfolded. Yet now, she twisted and wound her way through the halls and passages like a nervous animal. The elusive scent seemed always just ahead of her, and at times, she thought she could hear something like gentle water.
“Has someone snuck aboard?” she whispered to Lakmi.
The bird said nothing. She flitted from one perch to another along Marikan’s path, always watching her Knight with a keen interest.
Finally, when they had circuitously reached the ship’s port side and still seemed no nearer to their goal, Marikan sighed and slipped into a prayer chamber. She was a level above those that the priestesses reserved for their own use, and the cell-like prayer chambers lined the outer hull of this area. Their armored glass windows revealed the full spread of space, the millions of stars in the galaxy and the absolute blackness of the nothing beyond. Marikan knelt on the room’s firm cushion and stared out. She still felt drawn, but she could not say where.
“It smells like a trail, doesn’t it?” Lakmi asked quietly. “You act like you’ve got the scent of blood in your nose.”
“I feel like I do,” Marikan admitted. “But it’s not that. This is—Sweeter? Sharper? I’m not sure. More like mint than salt.”
Lakmi slid the sharp edges of her beak across each other. The sound made many people wince, but Marikan To had learned to ignore it.
“Well, if this was a trail,” Lakmi asked, “what would you do?”
“I’d look for signs, for clues, but there’s nothing here.” Marikan To drove her fist into the padded wall beside her and sighed. “I didn’t realize how much this bothered me.”
“This isn’t what’s bothering you,” Lakmi said, her voice low and firm. “Admit that.”
Marikan huffed and said nothing, but she did nod after a moment.
“That’s a start,” Lakmi allowed. “So if you want a distraction, you need to embrace that. Do what you feel you must, not what you think you should. What do your instincts tell you?”
Marikan eyed the bird askance for a few seconds. “That what we’re after is out there.”
Lakmi nodded. “All right. If you’re sure, let’s take another look.”
Marikan To stood and approached the window. The vast sweep of stars shed glittering light across the massed ranks of dragon ships. She could see the familiar shapes of Dragon Fleet To arrayed around them. Mamaro To had called in nearly every ship not assigned to the Anointed One Kasaro To for this raid. To her surprise, she recognized more than a dozen ships from Dragon Fleet Rah. Most of the pirate captains had arrived as well, and the ragged vessels kept a wise and respectful distance. To her right, the glare from Ulyxis’s sun painted th
e pirate craft in garish shadows. She could see the light growing brighter. By her estimate, they had perhaps two hours before they reached the planet’s near-space defenses. The battle would be fierce and fast, the only way the noh knew how to fight. The anticipation of battle grew in her as she surveyed their forces, but the stirring sight did not reveal her prey, and she snarled in quiet frustration.
“Now, now,” Lakmi chided. “Down girl. Calm conquers. Deep breath and take a closer look.”
The cypher’s eyes burst into light, and fire-red esper shone out in a torrent. Across their connection, Marikan felt that power pour into her, felt her body lift and her mind open. She turned her eyes back to the blackness, but they did not reveal anything new to her. Instead, she smelled it. She inhaled sharply, shocked, and cried out.
Lakmi broke the flow of power. “What?” she asked. “What did you see?”
“Nothing,” Marikan To said when she had caught her breath. “But I recognized the scent. I knew it when you fed me your strength.” She regarded the anxious cypher with wide eyes. “Esper. I smelled esper. I tasted it. I heard it flowing like an unseen stream.”
“What kind of esper?” Lakmi asked as Marikan To gathered her things.
“Every kind. That’s why I couldn’t identify it. It smelled like every kind of esper, and it’s coming from out there. I smelled it coming through space and into this ship.”
Lakmi squawked and launched into the air. “That is the Source.”
“The what?”
“The Source of all things,” Lakmi replied, as if she were speaking to a great gathering. “The gateway of esper from here to beyond and back again. It is the key that opens the way and sets the shape of what will come.” Ribbons of destruction and essence esper rippled out of the cypher and haloed her in the dark room.
Marikan To set a gentle hand on her cypher’s ruffled head feathers and stroked them back into place with her claws. Lakmi blinked and settled onto her Knight’s forearm, the esper fading behind her.
“Shhh,” Marikan said. “Calm conquers, remember? I’m sorry, little one, but I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
“I—” Lakmi paused to collect her thoughts. “The Source is, well, the point of all this, of everything. It’s the goal and reason for the Knights, the cyphers, even the Calamity as far as mortals are concerned. It is the reason cyphers appear, the thing that all Knights fight for, and the ultimate prize at the end of time.”
“Not to build it up too much,” Marikan said with a grin.
“Sorry,” Lakmi replied, quiet. “There’s no reason you would know. Cyphers know all this instinctively; we manifest with the knowledge.” She shrugged as best an avian could. “But in any case, the Source is the object of all our searches. Though something has interfered with this process of late.”
“What does this Source look like?” Marikan asked as she pushed to her feet.
Lakmi flapped gently into the air. “I do not know; it is protean. But we need to find it, wherever it is, and get to it. Now.”
“Then keep up,” Marikan To called, already sprinting out the door.
Though empty of slaves or the skilled noh wayfinders, the cavernous rift embarkation chamber still held a portentous weight. Marikan To slowed a bit as she entered, keenly conscious of her rushed and nebulous plans. She went to the wall sconces that housed the various types of rift generators and selected a portable model. She took it to the center of the staging space and began to adjust its settings.
She closed her eyes, remembered the mixed scents, as she manipulated the spatial controls. Long centuries of scouting ahead of the dragon fleets made her intimately familiar with such devices, but she would freely admit that she lacked the wayfinders’ instinct for locating just the right place for a rift. Still, as she moved the proposed opening, and the device’s probing fields weakened reality, the smell of esper grew stronger. When it weakened, she adjusted the device again until the scent filled her senses.
“This is it,” she muttered. Her eyebrows rose when she noted the device’s rendering of her destination. “A pirate ship? Why would it be on—” She shook her head. She could figure that part out later.
The jagged disk in her hands began to vibrate as she set its activation sequence. It purred, as if pleased, and the air in front of her tore apart with a sound like ripping flesh and breaking bone. Beyond, she saw the dark, grimy interior of a starship. Rift generator in hand, she stepped through into a cool, greasy atmosphere.
She stood in a service corridor. Conduits and ductwork ran along the ceiling and walls. She smelled coolant and lubricant and sweat and hot metal. Under all that, though, she could smell the esper. She searched for a moment, and it seemed like it flowed away behind her. She crept carefully after it, her bow ready, and paused at each intersection. Three times crewmen in untidy coveralls and stained red-on-black uniforms passed by, and she drew shadows around her with esper to go unnoticed.
When she found a ladder with a sealable bulkhead at the top, she climbed up carefully through three decks. She moved more cautiously as the areas around her grew busier, but she could smell the esper more strongly now. She slipped off the ladder and ducked unseen behind a stack of supply boxes in what clearly served as the ship’s kitchen, among other things. She watched the sparse crew bustle around, a mix of species and all rough and ready types. She had fought corsairs before and knew them as tough, if often ill-disciplined, fighters. The half dozen she spotted looked equally adept with ladles as with swords and pistols.
Near the far end of the kitchens, the trail lead to a heavy, sealed bulkhead door that she had to grease with esper to keep from creaking as she opened it. A quick glance through the doorway revealed a massive open space beyond. She slipped in and closed the door. Erected against the far wall were seven large enclosures made from shaped metal bars. They curled and twisted in the rough forms of cages, all large enough to hold a fully armored Hatriya warrior. Only two held prisoners, however, neither all that large.
On the left, a small woman in torn and stained clothing sat against the bars. Marikan To noticed the chains attached to her left wrist and right ankle had a strange, glossy shine. Small motes of esper rose from them. The whole thing smelled wrong, like muted esper but corrupted and rotting, and Lakmi bristled her feathers at the sight. In the next cage sat another woman, dressed incongruously like the domestic servants Marikan had seen throughout this galaxy. She was a machine, however, one of the strange, sentient robots the noh had encountered in greater and greater numbers recently. Both women seemed to be asleep, though Marikan wondered if that term quite applied to the robot. Chee, she remembered. They called themselves chee.
She took a deep breath and nearly choked. The scent of esper wafting from the chee almost overwhelmed her. She slunk closer and inspected the cages’ locks. She thought she could force the gate, but she doubted that its pitted, clumsy lock was the only thing keeping it secured. And it likely had alarms. She crouched by the cage, indecisive, and finally retreated back to the sheltered space by the bulkhead door. She pulled out the rift generator and called up the return preset. The humid, fragrant air of the dragon ship tickled at her nose. It did not comfort her for some reason, but she darted through without examining the emotion.
Several rift acolytes had arrived, beginning to prepare for the massive rifts needed for the assault, and they looked at her strangely when she tumbled out of the air. She ignored the confused priestesses and abandoned the rift generator on the floor of the embarkation room as she raced toward the control deck. The Hydra’s Will had awakened in her absence, and warriors of every discipline had started to assemble. She darted and pushed through corridors and twining side passages and did not slow until the paired Hatriya at the control deck’s armored doors challenged her. A barked order from within stopped them.
“Let her approach,” the warlord’s voice boomed out.
Marikan To still nodded respectfully to the guards as she hurried past.
Marikan To hesitated, caught off guard by the question. She dropped to her knee and lowered her head. “Forgive me, my warlord, but I have not overseen their preparations. My guthrra are reliable and know their duty.” She winced slightly at the automatic choice of words, given her own recent breach of duty, and pushed on. “I have been pursuing a—a trail.”
“What?” Zineda perked up, turning her gaze fully on Marikan To. “You were to be resting and preparing for this battle. What could have pulled you so strongly to draw you from your duty?”
There’s that word again, Marikan thought. “I do ask, again, for forgiveness, but—”
“Peace, my lady,” Mamaro To said, giving them both a calm look. “To be independent and follow her instincts is the place of the Sarva, and the finest of them become satra for that reason. She has done her duty in training her subordinates well, so her guthrra are more than capable of preparing her sisters for this attack. If Marikan To felt compelled to follow a trail, then she should do so.” He smiled. “That is also her duty.”
Zineda nodded, though she still looked unhappy. Marikan To could not blame her.
“But now she is here, and eager for a fight, if I read her right. I must go oversee the Hatriya vanguard. Make your report to High Priestess Zineda and then join your sisters. Together, we shall bleed this world until we find what we seek.” He strode from the dais and the control deck, calling for his armor.
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