In Extremis

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  /Even if you do, the Twelveworld Lord can easily rout the forces these pirates will be fielding. Three hundred ships… he will crush them, particularly if he finds them all in one place. He will not be gone long./

  /Then I will tell the Emperor and his Alliance allies to begin massing for their attack,/ Jahir said. /But this opportunity… this is the one, Oviin-alet. If not this… then I don’t know where we will find our chance./

  Oviin frowned, pushing Jahir’s hair out of the way. /There are so many things that could go wrong. What if the pirates continue to lie about their whereabouts? How will the Twelveworld Lord find out about the attack?/

  /We will have to make sure some report gets back to him./

  Oviin’s hand paused. He resumed scrubbing with less energy. /And if your cousin cannot make this pirate do as she wishes?/

  /She is a persuasive woman. I will gamble on her./ Jahir closed his eyes. /We need to send two messages. One to the Emperor. One to my cousin amid the pirates./

  The Chatcaavan exhaled, his determination filtering through Jahir’s skin. /I can do so tonight./

  /Then here is what I would have you say./

  Alone later in his empty chamber, Jahir closed his eyes and rested against the corner with the blanket curled around his shoulders. He could feel the forces gathering around this pivot like a pressure on his skin. That he couldn’t predict the repercussions of enabling it didn’t matter—the inexorability of the pattern was crushing. To resist it would have been unthinkable, and having sent Oviin on his errand he could not doubt its necessity. He had hoped to fight this war at Lisinthir’s side, with a sword and their twined powers at work on the foe; barring that, he had feared his work would involve using his training as a therapist to destroy the mind of the Usurper.

  But this, he thought, was it. This was the deciding moment of the war. All it lacked was their commitment to making it work. Sediryl would have to deliver her pirates. The Emperor would have to bring his legion. And Jahir… would have to ensure that the Twelveworld Lord turned his back on the Usurper’s plans.

  “God and Lady,” he whispered. “Be with us now.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Sediryl should have been grateful to be hosting so many people in her quarters; no matter how delusional the belief, she couldn’t help feeling their proximity gave her a better chance of protecting them. But their presence also made her feel trapped, because exposing her doubts and fears to them was unthinkable. Qora seemed imperturbable, but for all she knew that was a façade. Vasiht’h was acting erratically—one moment thoughtful and helpful, and the next withdrawn, with a look in his eye she found unnerving. And the Queen… Sediryl didn’t know what was wrong with the Queen, but she feared for her. The thought of returning to the Alliance and presenting Lisinthir and the Chatcaavan Emperor with a catatonic lover was ghastly.

  Kamaney’s return from her flagship sent Maia into hiding, and brought with it a summons. Tellingly, it required Sediryl to bring the Queen, and she wasn’t sure whether to find that promising or ominous. If Kamaney had decided Sediryl was the Queen’s mistress, that might work out. Somehow. Grimacing, Sediryl dressed in a new black outfit, strapped on her gun, and helped the Queen don her gossamers.

  The pirate was waiting for them outside her door in obvious high spirits. “Come in! Come, come. I’ve got a wonderful thing planned for us today.”

  “What’s that?” Sediryl asked.

  “We have to leave soon, if we’re going to leave at all… so we won’t have the luxury of playtime with the stock. But I do want to finish granting the Queen her gift.” Kamaney beamed at the Chatcaavan as she stepped into the suite. “So I’ve had all the remaining species brought!”

  There, kneeling in chains, so many bowed heads. Sediryl halted so abruptly her boot stabilizers engaged, sending a tremor up her spine.

  “Isn’t it lovely?” Kamaney asked the Queen, who hadn’t moved since she’d spied the tableau. “And it’s all for you.”

  “But,” Sediryl said, “If we do them all at once, then we lose the delicious anticipation of waiting between them!”

  “That is true,” Kamaney agreed. “Unfortunately, we’ll be loading up within the week, and I’ll have plenty to do between now and then. I wouldn’t want this to get lost in the shuffle!” She turned her toothy grin on the Queen. “And who knows if we’ll survive the next fight, right?”

  “I-I am honored,” the Queen stammered, and Sediryl didn’t like the shocky look in her eyes.

  “I know you are,” was the complacent reply. “And, if it makes you feel better, Sediryl, I cleared my entire day. We can wait an hour or two between each, if we really want to.”

  “No,” the Queen said immediately, because the thought of spending an entire day in the company of this insane female was intolerable. “I wish to know them all. As soon as possible.”

  “Are you sure?” the Eldritch asked, but the pirate interrupted her, waving a hand and advancing on the Queen.

  “You want it, don’t you.”

  “Yes,” the Queen said. She didn’t know if more patterns would make the burn beneath her skin cease… she knew only that there was something past the knowledge that was drawing her as inexorably as the light of a distant star. Who had ever known this much about the Touch? What would she discover, as the first? If she was to die, let her die gloriously, fearlessly, embracing wonder amid peril and cruelty. She would thread her way through the dark shoals of this sea and come into the sunrise. “Yes, I want it.”

  “By all means,” the pirate said, gesturing grandly. “Go ahead.”

  The Queen padded silently into the hollow created by the semicircle of kneeling aliens. Their regard reminded her of the slaves Third had abused and left in her rooms, the ones the Emperor had freed. She did not think anyone would come for these slaves, and she grieved for them. But holding back now would not save them from the pirate, and might even make their short lives worse. So she steeled herself and chose her first: another centauroid, this one tall and lithe rather than short and heavy. She brushed her hand over his shoulder, wishing she could apologize, and gasped in his pattern. And then the next, watching her with solemn eyes. And then the next. Halfway through the arc she had to stop, panting, trying not to claw at her arms, her sides.

  “What is it?” her sister asked, hovering.

  “These people,” the Queen said, all her skin on fire now. She felt she would burn to ash and blow away into a Perfect everyshape that existed only in the numinous beginning from which all Chatcaavan abstracts proceeded. “These people are very similar. They are like slightly different copies of the same mold.”

  “You can tell that?” the pirate breathed, ears trembling.

  “That one,” the Queen said, pointing. “And that one. And that one as well… they are almost like the same species.”

  “You can sense that we were engineered!” The pirate shuddered. “Unbelievable. Do the Faulfenzair. That one over there.”

  The Queen crouched before that alien, in form like the one who’d carried her to the couch. This one offered a hand rather than mutely awaiting his fate. Clasping it, she drank and the knowing rushed over her like cooling waters. “So different,” she whispered.

  “Keep going,” the pirate urged and so she did, until she’d made her way around the circle to the last alien and consumed that final pattern. She halted, trembling, waiting for all of it to settle. So many shapes. Some so similar, others so utterly alien. All of them on fire in her.

  “Are we done?” the Eldritch asked, low. “It looks like we’re done.”

  The pirate’s stare, her tremor… as if she was consumed by some rapture, watching the Queen. For a moment she couldn’t reply, and then she exclaimed. “Almost. Almost! Come on! I forgot one! This way!”

  The Queen stumbled, following, found the Eldritch catching her elbow. “Are you all right to walk?” Sediryl whispered.

  “I think,” the Queen replied, but her head was so heavy and her skin throbbe
d in time to her racing heart like a bleeding wound. She leaned on the Eldritch, grateful for the aid.

  “This is making you worse,” the Eldritch whispered. “Can’t you… fake it? Just put your hand on them and not do whatever is you have to do. Or is it like us, and you can’t help it when you touch someone?”

  “No,” the Queen murmured. “I can control it.” She thought. She could feel the Eldritch’s pattern pulsing between them, but the Queen already had an Eldritch shape. She shouldn’t be able to take another. Could she? “But I am not.”

  “Why??”

  “Because,” the Queen said, “there is something I need to know on the other side of this.” She recalled the Ambassador, and the alien things that drove him… thought of the Emperor, and his insatiable curiosity. At last, she thought to them, wishing they were here. At last I understand.

  “This has to be the last one,” the Eldritch said, low. “She’s inflicted every other species on you. I can’t even think of what she’s forgotten…”

  What the pirate had forgotten was a water alien. She brought them to an improbable tank where aquatic slaves were held in enclosures formed of some translucent material, obscuring them from one another. The pirate’s approach alerted several guards standing beside this unlikely prison, and at her command one of them climbed a set of stairs, aimed into the tank, and shot a dart into the nearest creature.

  The Queen stared as the light in the enormous eye of this prisoner dimmed. Somehow it struck her harder than the treatment the other slaves had received. Was it because the cost and effort of enslaving something that couldn’t even breathe the same environment stressed the atrocity more clearly? Or was it because these aliens had eyes larger than a Chatcaavan’s, in a more naked face? Before the sluggishness had overcome the alien, she’d read its frustration and despair as if written in words.

  “We don’t usually tranquilize them,” the pirate said. “It’s not like they can escape. But I wouldn’t want one of them knocking you into the water. You wouldn’t survive that.” She grinned. “Go on up. Once you touch this Naysha, your education will be complete.”

  “And your gift,” the Queen murmured.

  “And my gift.”

  The Eldritch squeezed her shoulder, as if begging her to reconsider. The Queen ignored her and started up the metal stairs, each step shivering with a hollow, metallic rattle as she put her weight on it. Reaching the top of the tank, she rested her palms on its rim and leaned over to look inside. Her final alien—the Naysha—was now floating on top of the water, face slack and enormous eyes closed.

  One more Touch, and she would know them all. How could she not do it?

  One more Touch, and she might forget herself. But wasn’t that also worth discovering? If there was danger for Chatcaava willing to embrace the universe? If the Living Air was kind, she thought, it would not punish that desire. She stretched out her hand and set it on the Naysha’s fingers, stroking the translucent web that linked them. The Touch, when it came, was not orderly and reverent, but eager, uncontrollable. It lunged for the pattern and fused it to hers and she screamed. And again, grabbing her body, and then howling in terror. She was asphyxiating…the colors of the world hurt… everything was wrong, too raw, too bright…

  Hands on her shoulders. “Sister! Change back! Please! Queen of the Chatcaava, be Chatcaavan!”

  But I am! She cried. She was ultimately so. She was every Change, and they were all her, and this was surely what it meant to be Chatcaavan.

  Frustration. Terror. Her body was weakening. The arms holding her tightened. “Be you, sister! Be the first you!”

  The first her could not fly. The first her was impotent and meat for the strongest male who could claim her.

  She was fading now. Unconsciousness might finally assuage the pain under her skin, and she welcomed it.

  A whisper in her…ear? She still had an ear, didn’t she? “Sister… be the you who loves the Ambassador and the Emperor. Be the you who made love to them. Be the you they’ll recognize when they gather you into their arms.” A snarled sound, half rage, half panic. “Be Lisinthir’s beloved…!”

  Her body convulsed, shed skin for scales, and suddenly she was gasping in air and being fed by it. She scrabbled for purchase on wet stairs, was caught in the Eldritch’s arms. Not her Eldritch, but the female, who pressed her close and whispered, “Thank the Goddess.”

  The Queen hid her face in that shelter, willing to admit to the weakness of needing it. On the floor beneath them, she heard the pirate whistle. “Thought she was done for, there.”

  The Eldritch’s reply made her chest hum under the Queen’s cheek. “You and me both, Admiral. Perhaps I should… would you mind if I…?”

  “Kept an eye on her? I was going to suggest we deliver her to the medics, but it’s not like they’re going to know anything about what’s going on. We don’t get Chatcaavan slaves through here.” The pirate’s voice became bored. “I certainly don’t want to nurse her back to health. I have a fleet to prepare for conquest.”

  “By all means, then. Leave this small detail to me so you can remain focused.”

  “I’ll call for a stretcher. When I have time, I’ll send for you.”

  The Queen did not like leaving the Eldritch’s arms, but when the stretcher arrived she surprised herself by finding the opportunity to lie down alone comforting. Her mind felt painfully crowded, the pressure particularly acute in her head, behind her cheekbones, her eyes, under the crown of her skull. It surprised her that she hadn’t died. This much bodily discomfort was surely unsustainable.

  The Eldritch paced alongside the stretcher all the way back to their cabin, her boots clicking on the floor in a way that reminded the Queen of the Ambassador’s… in kind, if not detail. The Ambassador’s boots had made a lower-pitched noise less frequently, as if he had longer strides, while Sediryl’s clicked along at a quicker pace, swift and high-pitched. But it was a sound she associated with safety, and it was the last thing that faded when the world did.

  “Help,” Sediryl said, the moment the door shut on her guards. Vasiht’h scrambled to her side with Qora behind him; it was the latter who scooped the Queen off the stretcher and brought her to the sofa.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Vasiht’h asked, moving to allow her to sit and take the Queen’s limp hand.

  “I don’t know,” Sediryl answered. “She took a lot of patterns at once. She didn’t think that would be a problem, but it looks like she was wrong.”

  “Is it me or is she hot?” Vasiht’h rested a hand on the Queen’s ankle, her foot. “Like she has a fever. Do Chatcaava get fevers?”

  “I don’t know!” Too many things she didn’t. “Maybe Maia will know....”

  “Maia doesn’t,” Maia said from the earring pinned to the inside of her sleeve at her wrist, where she’d been effecting a new and asymmetric style. “But I have a message from the Chatcaavan insider.”

  “Already?” Sediryl leaned back.

  “These people are allies,” Maia said. “Purportedly, anyway. They’re not worried about securing their comm lines. They can do realtime if they want. I’m not, of course. I split up your comments into discrete packets and send them separately so if one gets caught, the others have a chance of getting through. But they made it fine, and we have a reply already.”

  “Then… what is it?”

  “First, both your cousins are well. One of them has a message for you, Vasiht’h, and tells you not to fear for him.”

  Vasiht’h choked on a laugh. “He should know better than to ask.”

  “Apparently he does because it finishes, ‘as impossible as our circumstances might make that request.’ Also, he says that someone is feeding him, so you don’t have to worry on that count.”

  Vasiht’h pressed a hand to his mouth, looking down.

  “What else?” Sediryl said.

  “They want us to commit the pirates to attacking the Twelveworld Lord’s holdings on the border. Apparently the forces
the Twelveworld Lord commands are of sufficient size that if we can draw them off, the Emperor will be able—maybe—to take Apex-East.”

  “Maybe?” Sediryl repeated.

  “They say it’s their best shot. And honestly, it doesn’t matter if it works or not… we can’t let Kamaney send the pirates to the front where they can divert the Alliance from the Chatcaavan push.”

  “Right,” Sediryl said. This was it, then. She had a week to find out where Kamaney intended to go first, and if necessary, convince her the Chatcaavan option was better. One week, and she would be done here. She could live through one week. She might even get through it on the strength of her promises, and never have to bed the woman. “Tell them I’ll do it, and that we’ll be on the move within a week.”

  “Packed and sent. New packet now. What next?”

  Sediryl glanced at the unconscious Chatcaavan. “The Queen's condition. Tell them she started getting weak after three or four of those Touches, and now she’s… well. She’s not conscious.”

  “And she seems to be feverish,” Vasiht’h added.

  “Is that all? Do you remember any other relevant data a doct—” Maia’s voice cut off mid-syllable. Vasiht’h touched the earring he’d been using to hear it with, and Sediryl looked at her wrist. “Maia?”

  Qora appeared at her side as if summoned, plucking the earring off her before moving on to Vasiht’h. On acquiring both, he strode toward the bathroom.

  Sediryl followed. “Qora-alet—”

  Qora stopped, holding the earrings above the toilet. “Which is worse? To be caught with them, or to be caught having disposed of them?”

  Sediryl froze at the door, her heart beating so hard she thought she was shaking. “Ev… evidence is always worse,” she managed.

  The Faulfenzair nodded and dropped them. They fell with two thick plunks into the water and vanished as the Faulfenzair pushed the disposal button. “Hard to tell how good the plumbing is,” he said, almost conversationally. “Modern space stations would be able to isolate foreign objects easily. This place was built into a rock, covertly, presumably with spares. They may have made compromises in order to get it done quickly, and then spent any upgrade time on security and defense.”