“That’s… a very confident assessment?” Sediryl said, still trying to calm her racing heart.
“I am one of his Eyes,” Qora said. “But even Eyes need employment.” He grinned. “Ship’s maintenance.”
They rejoined Vasiht’h in the antechamber, who was standing with all his fur on end by the Queen’s couch. “They’ve found her. That’s what that means, isn’t it? Maia’s dead.”
“She’s a D-per,” Sediryl said automatically. “She can’t die. If I can get the Visionary back, it’s probable there’s a copy of her there still. Very certainly there will be one waiting when we can communicate again with the Alliance.”
“Should we be talking like this?” Vasiht’h’s toes were pressing into the carpet. “Maia was monitoring any internal surveillance, wasn’t she?”
Sediryl said a word her mother would probably have slapped her for uttering.
“Do not leap to conclusions,” Qora said. He’d settled himself on the ground with his hands on his knees, for all the worlds as if he were preparing to meditate. “This D-per was found by another D-per. Why would he assume she was associated with you? Could not this entity have entered in many ways? Through a comm buoy? Dropped by a stealthed vessel? Dormant in one of the captured ships? They may not know she had anything to do with you. That they haven’t already marched in here to make accusations is suggestive.”
“Or maybe they just haven’t thought to look at what Maia was doing, and once they do, they’ll show up,” Vasiht’h muttered.
“Hopefully your compatriot hid her tracks well.”
“Hopefully she did,” Sediryl said. “But in case she didn’t...” She held out her hand to the Glaseah. “Today will have to be the day, arii. That it works.”
Vasiht’h looked at her fingers skeptically, and she didn’t need functional esper abilities to read his expression: after days of failed attempts, she really thought it would work today because they needed it? But he sighed and took her hands. “Sit.”
She perched on the edge of the Queen’s couch, and he sat opposite her, and this time she prayed. She prayed with all she had in her that the Goddess would make it possible for her to be like every other Eldritch in existence. She had never wanted the inconvenience of managing a mental talent, but she would gladly embrace that burden to secure their safety now. Because if she couldn’t trust that their quarters weren’t being watched, then how could she communicate any changes in her plan….
“What’s wrong?” Vasiht’h asked. “Your aura just deflated like a pinned balloon.”
“Is it working?” Sediryl demanded.
“What? No. You’re still as walled up as ever.”
She nodded, rising. “It’s all right, arii. Can you and Qora watch over the Queen?”
“Of course?”
Sediryl paused, looking down at the face of the Chatcaavan. She trailed a hand over the other woman’s shoulder. Don’t die. Give me that one week, sister, and don’t die. Aloud, she said, “I’ll be showering.”
“Sediryl?”
“It’s all right,” she said again, and strode into the bedchamber, stripping her gloves. Without Maia to relay their messages, they couldn’t make use of their contact. But they’d gotten the one message they needed: their instructions. And Goddess willing, their message was already gone, and Jahir and Lisinthir would know when to expect her move.
She could no longer warn them if those plans changed. So she would just have to make sure they didn’t.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Lieutenant Baker did not send for him again. Absent the strain of enduring her memories the Emperor found himself with enough energy to chafe at their vessel’s deliberate pace, even knowing the reasons they were proceeding so carefully.
He was remembering how to long for the fight.
Perhaps his Perfection knew it, for Lisinthir began assuming the Emperor would join him in the gym for his morning ‘constitutional.’ Battling the computer gave him an outlet for his restlessness, but it was not the battle he wanted, and when they were done with each session the Emperor looked at his Eldritch and saw the frustrated empathy there.
Andrea still welcomed his company, and he visited because she remained the most alien alien he’d ever met. She put him to work in the clinic, helping her sort supplies; she took him to the Silhouette’s tiny chapel and coached him through several of her unfathomable prayers. She even convinced her fellow prisoners to take tea with him, though he chose his human form for those engagements. Dominika was unperturbed by him, he believed, though she kept most of her thoughts hidden behind her considering eyes. Emlyn couldn’t decide whether to treat him like a victim or a villain, and seemed as surprised at his lapses into compassion as the Emperor. The others… most of them were wary, or assumed his shape made him safe or a different person, he was never sure which. Only one of the aliens refused to see him: the Tam-illee who’d belonged to Manufactory-East, named Claudia. He learned from Andrea that she’d been one of a small number of such Tam-illee assigned to the entourage? Vessel? Of an Eldritch who’d been stolen by the Empire.
“Bethsaida,” the Ambassador had said, surprised. “You’re certain?”
“She described her captor to Andrea,” the Emperor replied. “It was Third. Third has only ever brought me one Eldritch prisoner.”
“God and Lady,” the Ambassador had said. “One of the Queen’s Tams. No wonder she was distrait. Has anyone told her that Bethsaida was rescued?”
“Andrea has told her, yes. Dominika says she is consoled by the knowledge.”
“I imagine so.” The Ambassador shook his head. “Such a large galaxy to sometimes seem so small, Exalted.”
The Emperor smiled and said, “Only when it involves the Rare and Beautiful.”
He’d said it in the moment as a caress, as foreplay. It was only later that he wondered about the ability to perceive the rare and beautiful, and whether that had any effect on the size of the universe. When he asked Andrea, she said, “The rare and beautiful make the world larger, arii, not smaller.”
The Chatcaava on the ship reacted to him in as varied a manner as the aliens. The Admiral-Offense had accepted that the Emperor was still good for the fight, though his occasional unease betrayed his doubts at where the Emperor planned to take his Empire, particularly where the Change was concerned. The Chatcaava rescued with their Admiral remained fiercely loyal to him, and treated the Emperor accordingly: with deference and wariness. Uuvek remained unimpressed by authority or prowess; he preferred the company of his devices to that of people, though when he did surface it was to approve of the Emperor—as if he believed he had the right. Which was surprising, and… satisfying, because it indicated that not all Chatcaava had been beaten down by the system. And the Knife… the Knife was wholeheartedly his partisan, though he kept a respectful distance. Such a good subordinate, the Emperor thought. He wondered if the Knife would accept being propelled to the post of Second or Third after the Emperor restored what he could of the Empire, and found the idea less ridiculous than it should have been.
The Knife was also the only Chatcaavan who enthusiastically embraced both the Change and the aliens. It was a rare day the Emperor saw him out of company with their hosts, and he was often in some other shape, asking questions about its proper care and usage. He called Laniis his huntsister, and the two of them, amazingly, were friends.
This was on his mind after one of his more vigorous sessions in the gymnasium. The Ambassador was toweling off, having left the Emperor lying on the deck in the center of the room. “Towel, beloved?”
“Later,” the Emperor said. “I think I will remain a little longer.”
The Eldritch canted his head, studying him.
“You need not be concerned,” the Emperor assured him.
Lisinthir nodded. “No. I rarely worry about you anymore, Exalted.”
“Ah?”
“When I was first in the palace and drawing your violent attentions, I remember a moment…” The Eldrit
ch trailed off, staring. Such a striking picture, thus: the long, lean length of him, sweat-slicked, like a predator catching a promising scent, and yet his face was the complex face of a male who loved as well as killed, stern and gentle by turns. How had the Emperor failed to understand the unending power of these softer emotions? He’d thought them useless, believing they made their carriers weak, and sometimes they did. But they could also turn a person into a Lisinthir Nase Galare: harder than a spear-point, fiercer than storms on wings. Cruelty made people powerful but brittle; when love made someone strong, it was a strength that flexed, unbreakable.
Returning from reverie, the Ambassador said, “I knew I could allow nothing to stop me from achieving my purpose, once I’d fixed on it: not a death visited on me by others, nor one self-inflicted. I see that light in your eyes now. You still doubt, Exalted, but you will no longer swerve from your course.”
“Yes,” the Emperor said, because it was true.
Lisinthir nodded. “Then I will see you anon, beloved.” A slight smile, wry with shared hungers. “When you’re ready.”
Left to himself, the Emperor rested his hands on his stomach and closed his eyes. Lying on his back was uncomfortable as a Chatcaavan, straining the wing-arms and forcing him to twist his neck to make room for the longest of his horns. To melt into one of his shapes felt natural, and he did it this time without balling his mass first. He just sank into the fur of the Seersan shape… which is how he discovered that lying on his Pelted tail wasn’t comfortable either. He parted his thighs to give it room and just… abided. Three fingers and a thumb, but claws that retracted. Strange legs with their too high ankles and too long footbones. The ears with their unbelievable precision. For a long time he listened to the air currents moving.
Eventually he stood and practiced walking, pacing the perimeter of the room. His gait felt springier, more energetic somehow. He wondered suddenly what it would be like to fight as a Seersan.
So he tried it.
The computer had been set to their exercise’s final parameters, and the Ambassador had all but the most egregious injury governors off. The Emperor went down very, very quickly before he managed to terminate the simulation. His skin throbbed and he touched his sides, surprised at how much he hurt. “Computer. One enemy only. Begin.”
One enemy could still hurt him.
At first.
The legs really were more powerful than his Chatcaavan ones, though they fatigued more quickly. His lunges felt faster from a standing start and his body more compact: he could bowl an enemy over without the Chatcaavan need to spread wings to redistribute his weight. Fighting with claws that had to be forced from their beds confused him until enough solidigraphic foes trained him out of the assumption that there were permanent talons on the ends of his fingers. The claws also needed a different angle and pressure to penetrate, but they worked admirably… and being able to velvet them gave him the ability to punch with a fist, something he’d seen the Ambassador doing but never tried.
Punching was extremely enjoyable, but also, he realized with a wince, painful if done incorrectly.
The computer obligingly ran an instructional routine, which he banished after a few experiments. By the end of his session, he could handle three opponents, and was fascinated at how different the fighting style was. To be short but dense, rather than short and lean. He could take blows he thought his Chatcaavan self would have found more punishing. Even the fur seemed to serve a purpose. Like a thin cushion that soaked blood, improved clotting.
There was nothing but to try being Eldritch, to see what it was like to fight like his Perfection. Frustrating, he thought, because it had many of a Chatcaavan’s disadvantages. But he was also taller than his Chatcaavan self and just as quick, and the reach his longer arms and legs gave him fascinated him. The human shape lived somewhere between the Seersan and the Eldritch: thinner and quicker than the Pelted, but more capable of taking multiple blows. He assumed, anyway… he’d been in the gym hours and was covered in bruises. He studied his human hands, carefully stretching the fingers to check for fractures beneath skin that had split and bled. Seeing them, he remembered the sword in the Ambassador’s hand. This was a shape that could fight with weapons.
The breadth and depth of his own ignorance opened before him like the gulf beneath a high cliff, and as with any precipice he felt a sense of exultation. The learning would never end until he died. He took a step toward the door and grimaced. And apparently, the learning would also hurt.
“So it goes,” Andrea told him when he confessed it to her on the clinic bed, where he’d stopped to be rid of the most egregious of his bruises and cuts. “Life is joy and pain.”
“Good and evil?” he said.
“We would not know the one without the other,” she agreed, and patched him up with the Alliance’s tools. They made the healing far more comfortable than the Chatcaavan versions. The Emperor wondered what the Surgeon would have thought of them, if he would have said that such tools encouraged weakness. What had the Ambassador told him when they were still dueling one another? That the Chatcaava had made their world cruel by being cruel?
When he arrived at his cabin, the Ambassador was shrugging on a coat. “I was about to find you. Uuvek’s received a new message from the palace.”
“So soon,” the Emperor murmured.
They were the first to arrive and found Uuvek alone with his tablet. The male looked up at them both without having to be addressed, and this was so unwonted that both of them paused. “This one is it,” Uuvek said.
“Then you can repeat it when everyone else arrives,” the Ambassador said. “But tell us now.”
“Our contact in the palace has received a message from Maia’s Eldritch among the pirates. The pirates have been lying to the Usurper about their fleet size, and it’s large enough to raze the Twelveworld Lord’s holdings… so that’s what they’re going to do, in the hopes of drawing off the Twelveworld Lord’s forces from Apex-East.”
A heartbeat in which neither he nor the Ambassador spoke and it mattered not at all, because they were sharing the same thoughts.
“Timing,” the Ambassador breathed. “When? How much time do we have?”
“Our contact in the pirate force says they’ll be moving within a week.”
“How long?” The Eldritch turned to him. “The Twelveworld Lord will need to hear about it. Then pull his fleet from Apex-East… how long?”
“Could be a few days,” the Emperor said. “Could be a few weeks. Was there anything else, Uuvek?”
“The palace contact is planning to report when they know the Twelveworld Lord has left, but they don’t say anything about when he’s likely to hear about the diversion.” Uuvek glanced at the numbers floating alongside him. “And a diversion is all it will be. Three hundred ships… the Twelveworld Lord will swat them down unless they separate.”
“Hopefully they will,” the Ambassador said. “Make sure you communicate that in the next message. That they must scatter, but also pose enough of a threat to keep his attention.” He folded his arms. “So we can’t know when to move.”
“Or if we’ll have enough ships.” The Emperor slid his fingers up and down the talons of the opposite hand, the ritual centering his thoughts. “But if we do, we’ll leave immediately and find a place to wait near the system for the signal.”
“What signal?” Uuvek asked.
The Emperor looked at the Ambassador, whose chuckle was soft. “Of course. Deputy-East.”
“He did offer to spy on their movements for us. It seems reasonable to ask him to contact us when he sees the Twelveworld Lord departing.”
“And if we’re close enough to receive those reports and act on them forthwith—” Lisinthir paused. “God and Lady. I think we have a plan.”
“If we have the tonnage.”
Uuvek made a noise, and both of them looked toward him. The Emperor said, “Yes?”
“Ask the aliens.”
“The aliens,�
�� the Emperor repeated.
“Tell the aliens you need reinforcement to win this engagement,” Uuvek said. “They’ll come, won’t they?”
“I don’t know,” the Emperor said. “But I will ask.”
Meryl Osgood could have frustrated a court of Eldritch nobles with her masklike face, Lisinthir thought. Only the strictness of her control offered any clue as to her state, which he judged to be unsettled. He and the Emperor watched her as she studied the maps Uuvek had put together for her perusal, the red light cast by the icons of the enemy fleets glowing on the bridge of her nose and the arches of her cheeks, her brow bones.
“So if Lady Sediryl comes through for us,” Meryl said, “then Apex-East won’t be reinforced by this major system lord, and the entire Chatcaavan force in-system will be reduced almost in half.”
“More like a little over a third,” Na’er muttered, for this fresh intelligence had occasioned a full meeting.
“And you still don’t know how many ships you have to bring to this party,” Meryl said, glancing at the Emperor.
“No. We’ll have to assess the viability of the strategy once we arrive at the Source. Having said that,” the Emperor glanced at the Admiral-Offense, “I suggest you tell your superiors to consider moving on the opportunity themselves.”
“What?” the Admiral-Offense exclaimed.
Lisinthir was close enough to see the quiver that ran the length of the Emperor’s tail, but he thought no one else was… and it was the only sign of the Chatcaavan’s ambivalence. The Emperor remained calm, his motions deliberate—downplaying his predatory quickness in favor of a body language the Pelted would find less threatening. Lisinthir marveled at the nuance, the self-control, and the understanding it betrayed. Where had he learned it? Had it been the Change that had taught it? Or was it merely an outgrowth of his decision to treat the Pelted as kin rather than slaves?
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