There Before the Chaos

by K. B. Wagers

  He grinned at me, but it faded as he turned to Fasé. “I didn’t think Farians and humans could have children.”

  Fasé snorted. “That’s what the Pedalion has always said, but it’s not a biological thing, it’s just anathema. All Farians who go off-world are temporarily sterilized to prevent such a thing from happening. They knew it would be too hard to prevent us from having relationships with humans, so they just made reproduction impossible.”

  “Not ’impossible’ if the Shen found a way around it,” Emmory said.

  “True,” Fasé admitted, shaking a finger at him over her shoulder. “I suspect the Shen’s return home had something to do with it, but Aiz has been less than forthcoming about it. They came back to Faria for revenge and to undo what had been done to them.”

  “Fasé, what’s going on with the Farians?” Zin asked. “You mentioned a civil war back at the estate, and I’m reasonably sure you didn’t mean the fight between the Farians and the Shen.”

  “Yes and no. The fight between the Farians and the Shen is so old. But at home, it is worse than just a war; the division is religious in nature. There are some who will choose to follow the Shen. Some will follow the Pedalion. And others will follow me because of what I represent.”

  “Which is what?” I asked.

  “A healing,” she replied. “An end to this conflict. An end to the hate.”

  “People are always going to hate.”

  Fasé smile was almost apologetic. “We are not people. We are Farian. Our faith is so interwoven into our society that there is virtually no separating it, but the reappearance of the Shen now, when the future that the Council of Eyes has spoken of seems to be coming to pass, will rip it out by the root.” She sighed. “I am not blameless in the chaos to come. There are those who will follow me because of what I see. Ours is a third faction that is not welcomed by either the Farians or the Shen, though at present the Shen seem much more receptive to the idea. There are still some on both sides who will try to erase me.”

  “As futile as that endeavor may be,” Sybil said. “The box once opened can be closed again, but the world will never be the same.”

  “Is this because of what happened on Red Cliff, Fasé?” Alba asked.

  “Yes,” Fasé said, turning her golden gaze to Emmory. “I started something when I saved you, and whether for good or ill, there’s no stopping it now. We would have lost both of you that day.”

  “Can we trust Aiz?” I asked, trying to ignore the pressure that the thought of losing both Emmory and Zin put on my chest.

  Fasé’s laughter floated into the solemn silence that had filled the room. “Not in the slightest, Majesty. But he has his uses and does occasionally tell the truth. The trick is figuring out which is which.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “You’ll need to.”

  I stared at Fasé for several heartbeats, but she didn’t elaborate on her ominous statement and I finally surrendered with a sigh.

  “Fasé, what is this future you are talking about?” Caterina asked.

  “Yes, sorry.” Fasé held up a hand and made a curious gesture, thumb and middle finger touching as she brought her index finger to her left eye, then her right, to her mouth and then to the center of her forehead. “Better to have Sybil tell you.”

  Sybil made the same gesture with her left hand and said in halting Indranan. “I am Sybil Delis, third future-seer of the Council of Eyes. I was the one who saw this future.”

  19

  Holy Shiva, what?” Alice’s exclamation rang through the stunned silence. I sighed and rolled my eyes at the ceiling, counting to ten before I looked down at Fasé.

  “More than your jailer, Fasé. Bringing one of your sacred future-seers to my empire and applying for asylum with her is a piece of need-to-know information.”

  She smiled at me, unrepentant. “Now you know.”

  Everyone started talking at once as I pressed the heel of my right hand between my eyes, and I snorted in amused laughter as I heard Caterina say, “it gives me a little comfort that you are as shocked as the rest of us, Majesty.”

  “Quiet.” I didn’t raise my voice as I dropped my hand into my lap. Silence fell once more. “Sybil, forgive me for the rude question. Are you here of your own free will?”

  “I am, Your Majesty.”

  I nodded, privately pleased that I could manage to keep such a stoic expression while my brain grappled with the idea that the two Farians in front of me were thousands of years old, if not older.

  “Fasé, how old are you?” I asked before I could stop myself.

  “Six, maybe seven thousand years, Your Majesty.” She waved a hand. “Like Sybil said, we tend to lose track.”

  “You don’t look a day over twenty-two.”

  Her laughter danced out into the air, and Sybil said something in Farian that made Fasé laugh harder. I cleared my throat and the pair sobered.

  “I am sorry, Your Majesty,” Sybil said. “Fasé’s current body is only twenty-two, so it’s not too far of a stretch.”

  “You’re immortal?” This question came from Zin and carried with it an awe I’d yet to hear from him.

  “I suppose that’s the easiest way for humans to understand it. Our physical bodies age—though significantly slower than yours even with your medical advancements—but our souls remain. We are born and we die. When we are born again, we remember the time before. We keep our names from one body to the next because it pleases the gods for us to do so,” Sybil replied. “That’s the official line anyway; honestly I think it’s just because it would get really confusing if we kept changing names.”

  “How much trouble are we going to be in for granting you political asylum?”

  Sybil shook her head. “None, Your Majesty. Adora will bluster and threaten you, but she will do nothing. The Pedalion will do nothing.”

  “How can you know that?” Caterina asked. “You’re putting us in a very dangerous position here.” She held up her hand before anyone could protest. “I’m not saying we will turn you away, but we need to consider the consequences here before we make a decision that could throw us into a war with one of our oldest allies.”

  “They will not go to war with you right now,” Sybil replied. “The Pedalion cannot risk driving Indrana into supporting the Shen. In all honesty, the war with the Shen is a blessing for us. I will not downplay the threat Fasé’s message represents to the Pedalion and their grip on power. We are risking a lot making this move now and asking you to do the same. But move we must because the time is fast approaching when there will be no choices left.

  “The Pedalion will be very unhappy about you sheltering us, Your Majesty, and no war will prevent Adora from issuing threats in the hope that you will capitulate. I would advise you to watch your temper with her. If you untie her hands by engaging in hostilities against Faria, they will feel justified in responding to them.”

  “Duly noted.” I waved a hand. “We’ve gotten rather far from the topic, though. Sybil, the future you saw?”

  “Yes, my apologies.” Sybil spoke to Fasé for several minutes in Farian, then inhaled, and for a moment the world seemed to freeze around her.

  “I saw a Star in the cold, empty black of space. A blue-green jewel of a planet. Home to warriors capable of shattering worlds. There would be no hiding for virtuous monsters or unjust gods from the accelerated—” She frowned, then spoke to Fasé while still looking at me.

  “What do you humans call the birth again?” Fasé asked.

  “Childbirth?”

  “No, of the universe,” she replied.

  “The Big Bang?”

  “Yes.” Fasé nodded. “But not that.” She was frowning and moving her hands outward from each other while Sybil waited patiently. “This. Spread is an incorrect word.”

  “Expansion,” Johar said, and everyone turned to look at where she was leaning against the mantel.

  “That!” Fasé nodded.

  “There wou
ld be no hiding for virtuous monsters or unjust gods from the accelerated expansion,” Sybil continued. “I saw a light that is not light spreading. We all fight—we will all die. We surrender—we will die. There is no true shelter for sides that will collapse without each other to lean on.”

  “I have a feeling that loses something in the translation,” I muttered into the silence that followed, and an uneasy laughter met my remark.

  “How can you know the planet you saw is Pashati?” Caterina asked the question, and I shared a look with Alice over the suspicion in the matriarch’s voice.

  “It was seen,” Sybil replied. “I have seen many futures, Matriarch Saito, but none so clear as this one. None with the enduring power to shape the whole galaxy as this one does.”

  “How do you know that for sure?” Caterina pressed, waving a hand. “There are billions of stars, plenty of governments that use stars in their iconography. That’s a leap of faith to claim this applies to us.”

  I was grateful for her skepticism. Caterina was grounded. Her first and only thought was for the well-being of Indrana. According to Alice, being out in the black had given Caterina a clarity she was lacking before, and while she could worry a subject to death, I wasn’t the least bit sorry about her focus where this was concerned.

  “Caterina, we Farians live and die by the futures our seers bring to us,” Fasé said. “It is what shapes policy. What has shaped our interactions with all humanity since the first time we made contact.” She smiled. “It is all right if you don’t believe it, but what you must believe is that both the Farians and the Shen believe in this future. They will do everything they can in service to it.”

  Sybil nodded. “These are old words, Matriarch. I saw the future that would come to pass well before the Shen broke from us. Before Indrana even existed. Before humanity existed. We waited for you. We made sure we were the first to greet you. We have solidified our place in your empire—as helpers, as warriors, as healers, and as watchers.”

  “You invaded us without firing a shot,” Caspel said, horrified, and my heart thudded in my chest.

  “I suppose you are not wrong,” Fasé replied after considering his words for a moment. “We did weave ourselves into the fabric of all humanity and especially Indranan society. Though we didn’t seek—still don’t, I’d imagine—to conquer you. Would you still be Indrana if you were under our rule?”

  “Fair point,” I said. “What about the Saxons? Or Wilson? If Indrana is so damned important to you, why didn’t Faria step in when my family was being slaughtered?”

  Silence dropped like a rock in high gravity and I pressed my lips together, as surprised as anyone over my sudden anger. Fasé and Sybil both stared at their laps, but finally the older Farian lifted her head to look at me.

  “It had to be you, Majesty,” she said. “I’m sorry. We didn’t intervene because I saw all of this—the wars, the dead. And you—on the throne of Indrana.”

  “I—I need a minute.” I got to my feet and walked blindly to the balcony, closing off the voices echoing through the room as I pushed the door shut behind me.

  Anger screamed through me, ugly and sharp enough to cut through a bulkhead. They’d seen all of this and done nothing to stop it. Everyone I loved could still be alive.

  You’d never have met my brother, or Zin and the others, Portis whispered.

  “You’re asking me to choose between you. That’s cruel.”

  It’s just life, Hail. I could so easily picture him winking at me. Everything we do is a choice between one thing and another.

  “Hail?” Alice’s voice accompanied the sound of the door opening and closing again. My heir came to stand at the balcony next to me.

  “They let my family die. They’re supposed to be our allies, but they just stood by and watched as this empire was nearly destroyed. For what? To put my inexperienced ass on this throne? They could have stopped all this.”

  “They’re not gods, Hail.” Alice put a hand over mine where it gripped the railing. “Don’t give them that kind of power. Whatever they see, or know. I don’t believe they could have stopped what happened. Wilson was responsible. He killed your family. You’ve put him down and let that anger go. Don’t resurrect it now.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “I know.” Alice pulled me around to face her, reaching up to cup my face in her hands. It was so forward of her, even in private, that her next words washed away my anger like a wave. “I know it makes you angry to hear that they saw this coming and didn’t do anything to stop it, but hear me out. I’m grateful you’re here. I grieve every day for those who were lost to Wilson’s madness, but I am equally and eternally thankful for you and Taz and this baby and the fact that Indrana never would have made the kinds of changes she’s headed for if you hadn’t shown up and knocked us all on our ears.”

  I pulled her into a hug. “I was doing really well not crying until that.”

  “You’ve got about fifteen more seconds before one of our BodyGuards knocks on that door, so get it out of your system.”

  I laughed and released her, dragging in a breath and exhaling. “Thank you.”

  “Of course,” Alice winked at me when someone knocked on the glass. “Told you.”

  I opened the door, answering Emmory’s searching look with a quick nod.

  “Majesty, I am sorry.” Fasé held her hands out to me as we came back into the room. “That could have been handled better.”

  “Yes, it could have.” I squeezed her hands and then sat back down.

  “So, I have a question,” Johar said, and all eyes in the room turned to her a second time. “As vague as that future is, it doesn’t sound very cheery. Why wouldn’t the Pedalion be doing everything in their power to keep it from happening?”

  “Because they can’t. It would end everything.” It was Sybil, not Fasé, who answered the question. “Billions of years of expansion snapped back to the starting point in a blink of an eye. This was the best future I could see. It’s not always a choice between good and bad outcomes.” She smiled softly, and her next words echoed Dailun’s from earlier. “Sometimes we have to make the best of a bad situation. Make our choices and ride out the wave. Survival is paramount, no matter the cost.”

  The room fell into an uneasy silence and I let it linger for a moment. We were trapped between battling asuras, and anyone who’d read a single ancient text born of our homeland on Earth knew that mortals frequently came out on the losing end of those encounters. I’d seen my share of religious fights over the years and knew with bone-deep certainty that Fasé was right. Logical reasons mattered very little when the fight was about faith.

  I rubbed a hand over my bare arm, trying to still the gooseflesh that had risen up, but there was no antidote for the chill in my soul. Religious fights were messy, and Indranan had landed right in the middle of what was possibly the oldest one in the galaxy. I remembered again what Fasé had told us while we were fighting to get my throne back about the Farians and humanity. It wasn’t a question I wanted to ask in front of everyone, so I stood. “Does anyone else have any questions of immediate concern, or can we wrap this up?” I asked, looking around the room.

  “I have plenty, Majesty,” Caspel said, also getting to his feet. “But they can wait until we get our guests settled and everyone else has had a chance to think about the information we’ve just received.”

  I glanced Emmory’s way. “I need to talk to Fasé alone,” I subvocalized over our private com link, and he nodded. The other Guards in the room started ushering people out as the conversations continued. I caught Fasé by the arm. “Fasé, do you remember when you told us the Pedalion was going to wipe out humanity, but that the future-seers stopped them?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “Is this—” I swallowed. “Is this why?”

  She stared at me, her golden eyes wide and her expression so alien it ran shivers down my spine. “What do you think, Majesty?”

  “Bugger me. Fasé, w
hat am I being dropped into the middle of?”

  “Not dropped, Majesty. You were born to do this. As much as Sybil is convinced this is a future that will come to pass, there is still a measure of doubt. No future is set in stone; that defies the very laws of the universe. But you—I have a great deal of hope now that I am back with you.” She patted my arm. “I will see you in the morning when you need me.”

  “Those two make my skin—” Johar shuddered as a finish to the sentence and I turned from Fasé’s retreating back with a sigh.

  “It doesn’t get any less creepy—that’s for sure.”

  “So, what did I do to piss Caterina off?” Johar passed her glass to me and I took a sip of the Hyku vodka, grimacing a little as the alcohol burned on the way down.

  “Nothing, why?”

  “She kept looking at me.”

  “Oh.” I laughed and handed the glass back over. “That’s not you. That’s me. They all think I should be more discerning about who I talk politics with, but you’re practically family, you’ll be an Indranan citizen soon—” I winked. “And I’m in a mood.”

  “You were having a royal temper tantrum and decided to use me for it?” She grinned at me from behind the rim of her glass, and I didn’t even try to stop the laughter that burst into the air.

  “I hate you. And yes.”

  Johar sobered. “She’s not wrong, Hail. I know you trust Hao and me, and Dailun; but, well—” Lifting a shoulder as she took a drink, Johar swallowed before she spoke again. “You’re going to have to move on from your previous life. Really move on, not just claim to have done so while you’re still acting like a gunrunner.”

  “I am a gunrunner.” The reply was automatic and Johar laughed at me.

  “That’s just reflex. You were a gunrunner and you were very good at it, even if your morals got in the way. You and I both know that life is over for you.” Johar tipped her glass at me. “Now you’re an empress and you are surrounded by some very intelligent people who know a shit-ton more than we do about empires and economies and the like.”