by K. Eason
In the ensuing gap in the conversation, Rory imagined those methods, as Koto-rek no doubt intended, and she weighed the merits of resistance. It was an option. She would not entirely reject it. But there was no need to employ it quite yet. There were other ways to control the speed of this interrogation, and Koto-rek was not at her best, probably less well than she had permitted the acting-captain to know. It was a weakness Rory would have traded in favor of goodwill and compassion—thus her attempt to secure medical aid—but since that option was unavailable, she would have to manage some other way.
Begin by pretending to yield. She did not entirely have to feign the tremor in her voice, or the speed with which she blurted out, “Then let me assure you that I don’t even know what an alwar is. The acting-captain said they had been asking for me. For how long? Because you didn’t look surprised at all by anything he said. Your face,” she added, when the vakar shot her a hard look. “It changes color to reflect emotional states. Like an aura. We have ferns on Kreshti that do that, too. His doesn’t. Is that a hex?”
“No. He’s just got a better complexion for negotiation.” Koto-rek’s pigments, reminded of themselves, flared a yellowy-orange before banking back to charcoal. “You’re observant.”
“I am. And I think that you knew that Imperial ship was out there before we ever got to this auxiliary bridge. I think that when it asked for me, you went to find me, and when you found out I wasn’t where you left me, and that my friends had escaped, you went looking for all of us, imagining we’d somehow escaped together.”
“Yes. And it is equally clear to me that you did not, and that you had no idea the alwar were here. Both of which are fortunate for you.”
“How would I possibly know what ships are floating around the void?”
“If they had sent you. If you were, in fact, allied with them.”
“You mean, if I had been lying somehow, despite all your arithmancy.”
Koto-rek inclined her head. “It seems possible. You managed to conceal a pilot from me on your ship, as Acting-Captain Zaraer has been at great pains to observe. Repeatedly.” Her plates vented, ever so slightly. “But you really do not know who the Empire is, and that baffles me. Is that the goal of renouncing your title? Appalling political ignorance?”
“It is a result, anyway. The conflict with the Tadeshi, for instance. I know why the Confederation is at war with them, but why are you?”
Koto-rek’s eyes remained focused on the central display, their absolute black reflecting the light, until it looked as if she had whole constellations trapped in each orb. “It is a matter of
sanctity
territory.”
“Their trespass onto your territory?” Rory pressed. “Not you into theirs?”
“Yes.” Koto-rek shifted her weight, the first fidget Rory had seen from her. Her pigments gleamed like an oilslick in the dim glow of the bridge, lit as it was by bleed-off from screens and the central console. “Why the interest, Princess Rory Thorne?”
“I think, when this is over, I will have to rediscover an interest in politics, and I am woefully short of information.”
“You assume you will survive.”
“No. I hope that I will. That we all will. And to that end, will you tell me about the Empire? I can’t guess what they want from the Confederation if I don’t know anything.”
Koto-rek’s long nostrils pinched nearly shut. Then she conducted a quick lesson in intergalactic xeno policies. The alwar, she said—no, the Empire—was a collection of planets and stations. There were alwar not part of the Empire, independent colonies on various seedworlds, but the Empire was the primary collection of the species, and was both a great economic and military power. The Empire alwar were also—and here Rory struggled a little with comprehension, because she did not dare probe for more detail in what was so clearly a sensitive matter—particularly inclined to alchemy, rather than arithmancy, and careless of contamination (Koto-rek’s word, the sense of which Rory interpreted as somehow moral and not physical).
Also informative was Koto-rek’s revelation of where the Empire sat, in relation to all the borders with which Rory was familiar. The vakar commandeered one of the stations and produced a three-dimensional map. Here, the k’bal, here, the mirri, here, the Harek Empire. The Merchants League made it onto Koto-rek’s map (she called it the Fleet), as did the Consortium; the Confederation did not, nor Kreshti. The tenju, about whom Koto-rek could not speak without flared plates and pinched nostrils, occupied a series of seedworlds on the hinterlands, and had barely found their way into the void except as pirate fleets, and were as a species barely capable of speech or operating machinery—
“Do they also pursue alchemy?” Rory asked, having ascertained the tenju were not popular with the vakari.
“They are pirates and merchants,” spat Koto-rek, as if the terms were equivalent. “They create nothing of value.”
“But they are allied with the Empire—-?”
Koto-rek clamped all her facial orifices tight, and said nothing, and so Rory’s gift could not help her.
“And between the Protectorate and the Empire? Is there formal war between your people?”
“No—”
not yet
“—but they have no reason to help us,” said Koto-rek. “If they are willing to do so, it must be for something greater than you, Rory Thorne. They must be getting something from this Confederation of yours.”
The Confederation had only just gained official recognition from the Merchants League and the Thorne Consortium, as well as from Kreshti and a handful of unaffiliated systems, and only then because the royalists were steadily losing planets, stations, and territory to the hemorrhage of rebellion. It was likely that at least some of those parties also knew the Tadeshi had run afoul of the Protectorate as well, and thus could not hope to sustain a war on two fronts. The Confederation’s acknowledgement was less a matter of merit than a wager that it, and not the Tadeshi, would be around to honor trade agreements in a year.
But, but: the royalists had commissioned Rose’s creation from someone, and taken steps to acquire it in stealth, and on the very border of the Verge. Rory had assumed they meant to deploy Rose on Confederation worlds; perhaps they had also meant to use it on the Protectorate. The vakari certainly had believed so, from their actions; and the Tadeshi attack now, on Sissten, suggested Rose’s (re)acquisition was of paramount importance.
A weapon like Rose might just inspire an unaffiliated xeno power’s involvement, although how the Confederation would know about Rose—Rory’s breath caught in the back of her throat. At least Zhang had survived, then. She was a little embarrassed by how long it’d taken her to work that out.
Rory looked at Koto-rek, who was gazing back at her more inscrutably than usual, patient as a cat. “My ship survived its escape.”
“Yes. We believe it did.”
“Were my friends were on board? Thorsdottir and Jaed.”
“We have been unable to locate either them or the tenju with whom they were sharing the cellblock, so yes.”
“You might have said.”
“I might have, except that they ran straight to an imperial alwar vessel, which suggests collusion.”
“Which you know is not the case.”
“Which we know,” and here Koto-rek aimed a significant, two-beat stare at the acting-captain, “that you do not believe is the case. But truth can be divided into subjective and objective categories, Rory Thorne. And objectively, the Empire requires a motive for both being in this system now, at this time, and for its altruism.”
Rory understood that the principal of successful diplomacies rested on compromise. Not honesty, exactly, but a willingness to give something up.
“I think,” she said carefully, the verbal equivalent of stepping onto a frozen lake and hoping the ice would bear her weight, “that the alwar mu
st be here for the same reason that you are, and the same reason the royalists attacked this vessel: possession of the weapon on G. Stein.”
“That is no revelation. But how did they know? You never did answer my question, Rory Thorne. Did you find that weapon?”
“I did not.”
Perhaps it was the absence of her hex. Perhaps Koto-rek had grown sufficiently accustomed to the use of specific pronouns, or of human expressions.
“Did someone else on your vessel find it?”
Rory lifted her chin. “Yes.” Truth. And then half truth: “We acquired information, anyway. The weapon—and we didn’t know what it was, at first—couldn’t fit on our little ship.”
Koto-rek’s eyes widened. “You lied to me, just now.”
“No,” said Rory. “I told you the truth. I was just very selective in the objective facts I related. But here is a full truth: we did not board G. Stein expecting to find that weapon. We work for the local station, and sometimes we board smugglers’ ships and confiscate their contraband. That is what we expected to find on G. Stein. Banned substances. Foodstuffs trying to dodge customs charges.”
Koto-rek leaned close and wrapped Rory’s forearm in her gloved, taloned fingers. Her breath on Rory’s un-visored face was warm and somewhat acrid, a match for her tone.
“Tell me now what you, and your crew, know about that weapon.”
They were attracting attention: sidelong glances from crew, and a stiff, deliberately turned back from Zaraer that told Rory he was absolutely aware of their conversation. “It is an abomination,” she said, having gleaned that the term bore some significance to her audience. “It’s genocidal arithmancy. Where did it come from? The Tadeshi did not make it, or they would not be trying to get it now. Did you make it? Did the Tadeshi somehow steal it from you?”
Rory had been hoping to hear about rogue factions among the Protectorate, some frailty which the Confederation and anyone else not Protectorate might use to resist Expansion. (Rory was not, as we said, gifted with prescience, and so could not foresee the Schism, when the Five Tribes broke away from the Protectorate, though it should be clear to a reader familiar with history that, by asking the question of Koto-rek ia’vakat’ia Tarsik in these circumstances, she planted that rebellion’s seed.)
Koto-rek’s jaw-plates flattened. “The makers are wichu. They are Protectorate clients.”
“Clients.” Rory sifted through the possible meanings. “Another political state, or another species?”
“Yes to both, though all wichu political entities are part of the Protectorate now.” Koto-rek was watching Rory with that disconcerting, predatory head-tilt. “That upsets you.”
“The Confederation is fighting a war against the Tadeshi right now because they no longer wish to be Tadeshi clients. Did the wichu also resist?”
Koto-rek performed the vakari equivalent of a shrug: a flick of her fingers, a ripple of unconcerned blue-ish teal across her cheeks. “Yes. Not for long. They are not especially gifted soldiers. They are gifted alchemists and arithmancers, though they had to be dissuaded from some of their less savory pursuits. Nonetheless: they are the architects of that weapon, which is by law Protectorate property.”
Rory thought she would like to meet a wichu someday, perhaps the very ones responsible for Rose, and ask if they’d intended Rose’s sentience, or if that had been an accident. If they’d known, or cared, where Rose would have been deployed. If they hated the Protectorate so much they just didn’t care. But, lacking an available representative of the species, Rory circled back to something Koto-rek had said. “What do you mean, less savory pursuits?”
“You have so many questions, Rory Thorne.”
“We are a curious species.”
“So are the wichu. If they had possessed your species’ capacity for violence, perhaps our Expansion would have proceeded differently.”
A curious observation. And ominous. And interesting. The wichu, or at least some of them, must be in rebellion. Potential allies, Rory thought, and then, remembering Grytt’s favorite saying, added or new enemies. Anyone capable and willing to make something like Rose might not be the best choice of friends.
“Let me talk to the Empire ship directly,” Rory said. “I have no way of knowing what the state of my crew or the weapon is unless I ask. If the alwar have gotten the weapon from my crew, then I will see that it is returned to you.”
“Why should I now believe you? Not that you are lying to me—I can see that you are not—but that you can deliver this promise?”
Because I can give part of Rose to the Empire before I hand the rest back to you, Rory thought. It was clear to her that either everyone must have Rose, or no one could. But out loud, to Koto-rek, she said,
“Because I am the Princess Rory Thorne of the Confederation of Liberated Worlds, and because you don’t have a choice.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Rupert thought the negotiations had been going rather well, if slowly, with the vakari, until the Confederation corsair appeared.
By well, of course, he meant no one is shooting yet. Adept Kesk seemed underwhelmed by the encounter with Sissten’s bridge: her back very stiff, her chin level, her voice as cold as an aetherlock. Rupert did not require an aura to recognize dislike, distrust, a general loathing of the Protectorate. He supposed the vakar negotiator felt the same. So far, although he assumed both sides were capable of it, and close enough that the subsequent time-lag would not be distracting, there was no visible projection.
At least the conversation was being conducted in GalSpek, so he could understand it.
“But you had the princess in custody?” Adept Kesk repeated. It was not the first time she had asked, nor the second. This, fortuitous third, was sharp and impatient and made Rupert wonder if the adept was overmuch experienced with diplomacy. Perhaps that was the expected attitude with vakari.
The voice coming through the speaker matched Kesk’s tone. “As I have said repeatedly, Adept. She is at large on this vessel, which as you can see, is a contested space.” There was a pause, and a clatter of vakari syllables.
Battlechief Crow, who had somehow gotten himself onto the bridge—the title revealing rank superior to Special Attaché Hworgesh, who was not present—leaned over to Rupert. “Something about a prison break and the murder of a guard.” He was smiling, a long flat gash full of tusks and malice. “It’s not true. There was no princess in that jail. Thorsdottir and Jaed came in alone.”
“I had guessed as much.” Rupert could not quite bring himself to thank Battlechief Crow for the commentary. He did not share Grytt’s affinity for the tenju as a people, or Zhang’s rather more personal regard for this tenju. There was a roughness to them, both of manner and attitude, that somewhat repelled him (at least, he amended, the tenju he had encountered, thus far, a sample of two; there might be very nice, gentle, refined tenju elsewhere who did not braid metal hooks into their hair).
Still one made do with the allies one had and his only ally on this bridge at the moment was Crow. The alwar had invited (by which we mean directed, commanded, or otherwise given no alternative) Grytt, Zhang, Thorsdottir, and Jaed to observe from more comfortable accommodations, the conference room in which they had completed the first stage of these negotiations. Hworgesh was wherever Favored Daughter stored extraneous tenju.
Rupert guessed (correctly) that, given the opportunity, Crow would expound at length about vakari tendency to mendacity, and (also correctly) that Crow was waiting for an opportunity to do so. Rupert was about to make such an inquiry—for purely diplomatic reasons, to better forge a rapport—when two of the bridge crew turned from their stations simultaneously and called for Kahess.
“Another ship just showed up,” said Crow, who appeared to understand alwar speech. (Ask what the language is called, Rupert reminded himself, as he revised his opinion of Crow as an ally. There were so many new th
ings to learn.) Crow thrust out a finger and pointed. “Ah. There. See it?”
A blip, having arrived on the very edge of the hologram through what looked like Samtalet’s actual gate. “Can you tell who it is?”
“Not yet. Takes time, as far out as they are, to get telemetry. Guessing they’re one of yours, though.” Crow slid Rupert a look. “No one else uses gates.”
Rupert resolved that, if he was permitted to keep his appointment as Vizier, he would make acquiring voidship technology that was unreliant on gates a priority. He squinted at the blue blip, considering relative spatial distances and velocities and how long an electromagnetic signal from the gate might require to reach Favored Daughter, and how long a ship leaving Lanscot might have taken to arrive here, bound by the conventional and less alacritous limits of gates. If, in fact, it might not be chasing them. Him. Oh dear.
Rupert folded his hands together, elbows bent, and attempted to look unconcerned. The other ships present—Bane, Sissten, the Tadeshi dreadnought (which Rupert had privately dubbed The Monster, and so shall we name it here, reader, for its real name is lost to history)—would be realizing the corsair’s presence by now as well. He need merely wait, and in the next few moments, the ship’s identification broadcast would arrive from the gate, and then he would know better how to react.
Captain Kahess had answered her summons, and had been hovering over the shoulders of her navigation and communications officers. Now she straightened and aimed herself at Rupert with a look he would have interpreted as standard Kahess-grim, except for the speed of her approach, which seemed much more urgent. The suspicion was confirmed when Adept Kesk hurried to intercept in a flutter of robes and more naked alarm.
Crow, too, had noticed the captain’s approach. He turned subtly to face her and seemed to settle in place. It was the sort of thing Grytt would do when facing a potential threat. At least Imperial security remained at their posts on the bridge’s perimeter.
“That’s a Confederation ship,” Kahess flung at him, when she was still a meter away from polite conversation distance. Her accent seemed thicker, more pronounced. “Never Take Our Freedom. Do you know it?”
