In Extremis

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  It felt strange. He was sure he should have hated it, but he didn’t.

  The Worldlord’s tower was the highest on the hunting estate and its balcony led into a receiving room. Deputy-East allowed the Worldlord to land first before lighting and padding through the chamber that had once been kept dim for the comfort of a dying alien pet. The windows were now set for maximum light, but the Worldlord had not removed the box-like bed where Gentle had slept. Deputy-East hoped that boded well for his errand and entered the study.

  The Worldlord had already taken a seat behind his desk and was bringing up displays.

  “Just like that?” Deputy-East asked, confused. “You’re not going to ask me what I’m doing?”

  “Oh, I plan to ask you,” the Worldlord said. “But I thought I’d prepare in case you convince me to mobilize my resources on your behalf.” He leaned back in his chair, arms folded. “Is it on your behalf?”

  “No,” Deputy-East said. “I’ve had a message from the Sword. And… Worldlord… huntbrother?” At the male’s twitch of acceptance at the intimacy, he continued, “There are… things… I haven’t told you about the Sword and the situation after I escorted him offworld that you now need to know.”

  “’Now,’” the Worldlord said. “So you hid them from me. Until I became useful.”

  Denying that seemed craven. “Yes. But only because that knowledge… it’s dangerous, huntbrother. And I suspect it may be painful to you personally.”

  “Is that so?” the Worldlord asked, skeptical.

  Deputy-East flinched and looked away. “Fine. You have a soft heart, huntbrother, and you did a terrible thing that you don’t know about yet and I didn’t want you to suffer that knowledge unless it became necessary. All right? It was cowardly of me, but there it is.”

  In the ensuing silence Deputy-East struggled with his need to fidget. Standing here waiting reminded him of reprimands he’d suffered from his superiors in the past, and it was hard not to feel like a guilty child. Particularly around the Worldlord, who was already not only a male of supreme and quiet assurance, but also a sire several times over, and of offspring he had taken a personal interest in rearing.

  “You had better tell me what this terrible thing is,” the Worldlord said at last.

  “Well,” Deputy-East said. “Dainty. You remember Dainty.”

  “Of course I remember Dainty.”

  “And to make you feel better, keep it in mind that I raped Dainty several times!” Deputy-East hastened to say. “And I don’t even remember the first time well, since I was taking a call. But the other times. I did a very bad thing—”

  “Deputy-East!” the Worldlord exclaimed, exasperated. “What exactly am I supposed to feel better about having done!”

  “Ah, Dainty. Dainty was not actually a human.” Deputy-East inhaled and got it all out in a rush. “Dainty was the Emperor. The deposed one. Who is not as deposed as the Usurper would like.”

  The pupils in the Worldlord’s eyes welled so suddenly Deputy-East took an unintentional step toward him. But the other male raised his hand. “How did you learn this? Without being killed for all that you did?”

  “When I took them offworld—Manufactory-East had destroyed the Sword’s shuttle, so he needed me to fly him—I brought them to the rendezvous point with the Sword’s vessel. He made contact with them to arrange the transfer, and the comm officer was interrupted by…” Deputy-East, remembering the moment and his sheer incredulity, “…by a male calling himself the Admiral-Offense, asking for the Exalted Emperor. Dainty answered. They talked as huntbrothers would have. And I…” He shuddered, eyes closing. “I fell down and waited to die. But he didn’t kill me, Worldlord. He said that my actions had guaranteed my loyalty to him, and he left me alive.”

  The Worldlord’s expression hovered between incredulity and wonder. “And then?”

  “And then the Sword told me that the war was here, and it was between the Usurper, who will tear apart the Empire, and the Emperor, who will do his best to keep it together. And that we had to choose sides. And that he would call for me, one day.”

  “One day soon, apparently.”

  “Sooner than I expected,” Deputy-East agreed.

  “And was he right?”

  “Huntbrother?”

  “The Emperor. When he spoke of your loyalty. Was he right?”

  “I… yes. Of course.” Deputy-East folded his nervous wings. “What else?”

  “What else?” the Worldlord asked, surprised. “He was so weak he permitted his own abuse at your hands. He cried under you, Deputy-East. He let me decorate him with chains and piercings. He kneeled at our feet. Worse, he kneeled at Manufactory-East’s. You would follow a male who not only failed to prevent his own degradation, but who will not punish us for its perpetration?”

  “I… I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Deputy-East admitted.

  “How did you think of it, then?”

  “I didn’t think at all.” Deputy-East looked away, and the memory of it flooded him. The slim, solemn figure, staring down at him. The utter stillness of that gaze. The Emperor had not seemed strong, because strength was something Deputy-East associated with will. The Emperor had felt… inevitable. Like wind, or the airlessness of space. “I saw him when he was speaking to the Admiral-Offense. I saw him when he looked at me. He was… he was Greatness.”

  “Greatness,” the Worldlord murmured, tasting the abstraction.

  “Huntbrother, you valued Gentle,” Deputy-East said. “You let your Alliance slaves go. Did they not let you put chains on them? Didn’t they kneel at our feet? If we were wrong about them, are we wrong about him?” He paused, then added, “The Sword says Gentle is in stasis and the Alliance surgeon believes she can be healed.”

  The Worldlord’s head jerked up.

  “The Emperor—the un-deposed Emperor—he counts those aliens among his allies,” Deputy-East added. “If we side with him, we will have an Empire that has greater congress with them.”

  “And you think I want that.”

  Deputy-East snorted. “I’m easily agitated, Worldlord, but not stupid.”

  The Worldlord laughed, low. “Fine. But do you want it?”

  “I… don’t know,” Deputy-East said. “What do I know of aliens? Or even care? But I do care about a male who is intent on tearing the Empire apart. There is no prospering in war unless you’re in the war trade, and even then you have to not die to reap the rewards. I want to grow old and indolent and have three dozen air cars and the leisure to fly them. For that, I need a stable society.”

  Now the Worldlord was laughing in earnest. “Only three dozen?”

  “I think three dozen would cover all the models I’m interested in,” Deputy-East said modestly.

  “And I am betting you checked.”

  “It’s no good to buy without doing the research…”

  The Worldlord waved a hand, still chuckling. “All right. Tell me about this request of the Sword’s, then.”

  “He says…” Deputy-East trailed off, less out of uncertainty and more in wonder that he remained so fixed in his purpose. The calm had not abandoned him. “That the Empire’s Second is planning on starting the civil war here, in this system.”

  “What?” the Worldlord hissed, straightening.

  “By forcing the muster to gather and letting them idle long enough to forget their shared purpose—fighting the war—and remember their old hatreds. And then when they find themselves all together in one place….”

  The Worldlord’s nostrils flared. He looked up at Deputy-East and in that expression Deputy-East saw their shared knowledge of the probable survival of anything larger than a meteorite after all the Empire’s system lords and all the Empire’s sector naval fleets started a civil war above their heads.

  “He wants us to spy for the Emperor,” Deputy-East finished. “I plan to do so. And if you can help…”

  “Not only can I help,” the Worldlord said, “I have a message for you to take back
to the Sword and this Greatness.” He smiled thinly. “Go get a tablet, Deputy-East. You will want to take notes.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The next alien the pirate brought for her, two days later, was also winged, and the sight of this particular species incited a flurry of visceral memories: the mildewed chill of the holding cell beneath the harem tower; the quick, liquid sounds that had characterized her perception of Universal before learning it herself; the stench of fear and saltwater tears. “Malarai,” the Queen whispered, staring at her newest “gift.”

  “I thought we’d go through all the things with wings first,” the pirate said with a sly look the Queen found repugnant. “Go ahead.”

  The Queen had Touched this alien and drawn her pattern from her and from that pattern became herself a Malarai, with the wings properly on her back this time but feathered rather than leather.

  Two days later it was an Aera, a tall Pelted female with long, silken-furred ears, fur, and a pointed nose. The wings this time had been stunted things growing from her ankles, and the pirate had been particularly proud of them: “Not many winged Aera anymore. It’s breeding out of their genepool.” Then an immense and unlikely alien with a serrated beak bound shut—she’d learned a great deal about the Change from that one, that her size was limited by her mass but that her mass could be distributed very cleverly, if she was becoming a hollow-boned bird. After that, a Glaseah like the one the Queen had met on the transport that had brought them here, an angry, brown-coated centauroid whose leathery wings felt more familiar when the Queen stretched her own, but the rest of it…

  The pirate laughed. “Never had four feet before?”

  “No,” the Queen replied curtly, because her own clumsiness mortified her. Of all the shapes she’d learned, the centauroid was the least familiar.

  “Don’t worry,” the pirate said. “You look better as a Phoenix.”

  The Queen had never known a Chatcaavan willing to discuss the Change with her, and if any of the winged Chatcaava she’d known had ever Touched and learned patterns, she hadn’t seen the evidence. All that she knew of the Change she’d learned through trial and error, experimenting with her grandsire’s slaves. Prior to her arrival here, she’d known three shapes, and because her first had been poor facsimiles she’d guessed that practice improved the fidelity of the patterns learned by Touching, and practice at the Change improved its speed and allowed Change without balling up one’s mass. She’d assumed this was the limit of what practice accomplished.

  But by the third new shape, the Queen’s skin felt odd to her, even in her normal body. She paced her quarters, mutilated wings hunched against her back, and chafed her arms. Her skin didn’t peel off, but she kept hoping it would… that if she rubbed hard enough she would reach the tingling underneath. She’d once suffered a partial Touch, and this sensation reminded her of that feeling, but without its urgency. She didn’t feel sick. Just… strange. Uncomfortable.

  It had never occurred to her to wonder if there were diseases of the Touch and Change. Could too much Change destroy? Would she forget her natural shape? Was there a limit to the number of patterns a Chatcaavan could learn and remain sane?

  Did she really want to learn these things by experiencing them?

  Did she have a choice?

  For days, Sediryl did nothing but dance attendance on her prey, making coquettish comments and promising things with her eyes, and for days, Kamaney teased her at dinner and left her to pace her quarters, wishing she could tear the walls apart. Her allies only exacerbated her fears: Maia checked in daily with information about the pirate’s far-too-concrete command structure, but with a distracted air that boded ill; Qora’s inscrutability did not invite confidences and Vasiht’h remained distant and erratic; and the Queen… Sediryl feared for the Queen most of all. Her idea about the shapeshifting gift had seemed ideal, but every time the Queen took a pattern she seemed more disoriented. The Chatcaavan had assured Sediryl that the shapechange wasn’t physically taxing, but what if she was wrong?

  And all of this was in vain if she couldn’t get Kamaney to trust her.

  It had been hard, so hard to be idle. All this flirting didn’t feel like work, though it exhausted her, left her drenched in sweat after she’d misjudged a comment and had to scramble to fix her image in her target’s eyes. Relegating the work of data gathering to Maia felt like an abdication, even after her one abortive attempt to leave the guest bloc. Her guards had acquired friends, all of whom had escorted her back to her quarters, and she’d spent that entire night allaying Kamaney’s suspicions. It made the paucity of Maia’s findings all the more maddening, because what could she do with lists of people’s names and ranks, and numbers of ships and the news of their constant comings and goings, if she couldn’t get out?

  Even her attempts to learn to communicate mind-to-mind with Vasiht’h failed, though she dutifully tried every night. His frustration with her felt hot, as if beneath his passivity and agitation something was burning.

  She had never felt so powerless in her life, and so in need of power.

  Resigned, Sediryl dressed for another dinner. She’d taken over the design of her wardrobe to give herself something to do, working off her memories of Eldritch court dress and Hyera’s costumes. She’d clothed herself in blood red and burnt caramel, in orange and pearl pinks, even the gray of bruises. But she’d avoided black as a cliché, and because the extreme contrast between it and her white skin made her look gaunt.

  She no longer cared that it was cliché. Her newest effort looked like someone had poured metal onto her torso and then swirled it up her arms and down her legs in a tangle of thorned vines. She accessorized it with something shaped like a coat but made of floating black lace patterned with enormous roses dripping thorns. The gun holster, strapped over the coat, looked like the most real thing on her.

  The sight of her made Kamaney visibly stop and lick her lips. Sediryl pretended she hadn’t seen it and murmured, “So, dinner.”

  “Alone this time,” Kamaney said. “I thought the Queen could use some time to recover from this afternoon’s session. Shall we eat?”

  “Let us.”

  This time Kamaney served Sediryl from the plates herself, cutting meat for her into bite-sized morsels. “Since you eat so little.”

  “It has its rewards, self-denial.”

  “Does it?” Kamaney glanced up at her.

  “It makes the moment you give in to temptation all the more delicious.”

  “Ahhh.” The pirate’s ears colored and she laughed, low. “You do all this really well, you know.”

  “Do I?” Sediryl took the latest tidbit off Kamaney’s proffered fork. “I’m so glad I haven’t bored you. Being bored is so poisonous, isn’t it?”

  “Fortunately for us, we don’t need to put up with boring people.”

  “No,” Sediryl said. “That’s what slave pens are for. Or swords.”

  “Or guns?” Kamaney added, smirking.

  “I prefer my kills more personal. Don’t you?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. There’s a lot of satisfaction in a big enough missile.” The pirate grinned, all teeth. “Have you ever shot off a shipboard missile, arii?”

  “I have not had the privilege. It sounds…” Sediryl paused to stress her voice’s drop in pitch. “Exciting.”

  “You’ll come with me, of course. When we go.”

  “Are we going soon, then?”

  “We are.” Kamaney pushed her plate away. “The Chatcaava are deploying, so the war’s going to move into its next phase soon. That leaves me to pick my first target, and the possibilities are…” Kamaney spread her arms. “Endless.”

  “But are they?” Sediryl asked. “Surely you have only two choices.” She lifted her hands as if weighing, holding up one hand first. “The dragon…” Then the other. “Or the baby chick.”

  The pirate blurted a laugh. “That’s one way of putting it. But the Alliance Fleet isn’t a complete pushover, you know. You�
��d be surprised.”

  “I probably would,” Sediryl said. “Given that I expect their fine moral sensibilities to hamstring any effort they make to defend themselves. Truly, arii, the only question you need to ask yourself is who is offering you the most delectable prize.”

  “At the lowest cost?” Kamaney said, appreciative.

  “Naturally. We are businesswomen, are we not?”

  “Among other things,” Kamaney murmured. “Clever woman. And such delicious company.” Lifting her chin, she said more decisively, “Come on. You should look.”

  Sediryl rose languidly, her posture impeccable enough to have pleased her tutors. She could sense the pirate’s eyes tracing the light as it glided over the curves accentuated by the outfit. If the key to Kamaney’s confidences all along had been black leather, she would put a fist through a wall. Bad enough to be forced to seduce a murderous crimelord, but to accept the utter banality of doing it in a costume so trite as to reinforce the most ridiculous of stereotypes?

  Kamaney led her from the dining chamber and to the study, standing at the door and gesturing. “Go on.” As Sediryl stepped in, the pirate added, “Display on.”

  Before her rose a shining map, very like the one Maia had projected for her on the Visionary in safer times. The pirate haven was blazoned in red, and it was haloed in ships, each one labeled. More of those red ships dotted the bottom corner of the map, where the Alliance Border had been drawn as a bright blue line, jagging at sharp angles as it followed the contours of each rectangular sector. The Chatcaavan border had been similarly noted in orange, but its line was more organic, without the Alliance’s rigid corners: more an imperfect curve, as if the Empire was bulging outward from a central point.

  “There,” Kamaney breathed behind her. Her hands lit on Sediryl’s hips and traced the line of her sides toward her breasts, stopping under them with fingers splayed upward. “The universe, ours for the taking.”