by K. Eason
Rory weighed the wisdom of attempting to tease out the cause of the fairy’s discomfiture, or just making some educated assumptions and going from there. She folded her hands in her lap and pasted on her best politely impenitent smile.
“If you mean, do I regret my choices on Sissten, I do not. If you know anything about the Protectorate, then you know I couldn’t give Thorsdottir to them. Or Rose. Or what was left of Rose.” Rory had done some research about what was actually contained in the Writ, and what vakari considered abominations, and—by examining what was known of wichu clientage outside the Protectorate—what happened to those on whom fell that designation.
The green fairy, who was also aware of those things, said, “And so you put one woman’s life above the lives of millions.”
Rory was becoming accustomed to a sort of permanent queasiness. She was also accustomed to people demanding an account of her actions, and she was becoming rather tired of it. She decided to make her own demand, and see what happened.
“I did. And now you have come all this way to tell me I’m responsible for destroying the multiverse why, exactly?”
“I never said that you—ah. Right. Thirteen’s curse.”
“I think it’s a gift.”
“Think what you like.” The green fairy smiled with small, sharp teeth. She looked a little bit like an alw, Rory thought, now that she’d seen a representative population. They were also a sharp people, though their spikes were concealed on the inside, and emerged only in alchemy, politics, and conversation. “But no. I’m not here to chastise you. You didn’t fail. You survived. That was the point.”
Rory blinked. “I—Wait. That seems somewhat at odds with what you suggested to Messer Rupert. He thought he was supposed to recover Rose and prevent them from falling into the wrong hands.”
“He was supposed to recover you. You were supposed to recover the weapon. The vakari would have destroyed the nanomecha. The Tadeshi would have used them as they were. But you will use them as they are. And you will share them among human, alwar, and tenju.” The fairy ticked them off on her fingers.
That begged an obvious how. Rory rolled the word around in her mouth, and elected to leave it there. “But you believe I’ve destroyed the multiverse anyway? Because I thought that’s what all this was supposed to prevent.”
“Change always comes with a measure of destruction, and without guarantee of something better coming afterward. You were always going to break things.” The green fairy cocked her head. “I always wondered if I’d made a mistake, giving you harp-playing instead of physical prowess. Imagine what would’ve happened if you had learned to hit things as a first response.”
They stared at each other for a long moment. Rory was reluctant to look away—to even blink—lest the fairy disappear the same way she’d arrived. She supposed it must be some kind of personal tesser-hex, some arithmancy so advanced it looked like magic, or something inherent to whatever fairies were. It was on her lips to ask, even knowing the fairy would not just answer (fairies, it seemed, tended toward cryptic utterances, just as they did to coming and going without regard to physics).
But then she said simply, “Thank you. For making the choice, and for giving me the gift that you did.”
The fairy looked surprised, then pleased, then a little bit sad. “You’re welcome.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Jaed and Thorsdottir converged on the transparent platform at the top of the arboretum, in almost exactly the same place Rupert (now officially Vizier to the Office of Alliances and Treaties) had encountered the green fairy. It was neither a chance meeting, nor a prearranged tryst, but rather the half-hearted attempt by Thorsdottir to “be alone.”
Zhang had, when informed where Thorsdottir was going, rolled her eyes. “Shall I tell Jaed where you’ve gone, when he comes by?”
“You can, sure, but why would he?”
Zhang produced another eyeroll, this time accompanied by a faint, knowing smile. “You aren’t answering his messages.”
Thorsdottir had frowned, on the edge of protesting she’d had no time to answer messages. Since they had all returned from Samtalet, Thorsdottir’s days had been a confusion of tests, medical and alchemical and probably arithmantic (those, at least, did not employ needles), conducted by both tenju and alwar on their respective ships, in their respective medical bays, which had involved a lot of traipsing back and forth through aetherlocks. And then, after Dame Maggie finally made Rupert Vizier and Rory into whatever her new title was (not princess, but something that required a lot of meetings and no personal security), human chirurgeons from the Confederation conducted their own examinations as well in the station medical bay. Thorsdottir was very tired of needles and disrobing in front of strangers, and when granted freedom from those obligations, she had been seeking refuge in the quarters she shared with Zhang. If, after a day of bloodletting, she did not want to answer a small queue of message received: J. Moss then surely that was forgivable.
Instead, she’d said, “What do you mean, when he comes by? Has he been coming over here?”
“Oh honestly,” Zhang had said, and made little shoving motions with her hands. “Go. Go. Just don’t leave the arboretum until he finds you.”
The platform on which Thorsdottir was perched had been intended to facilitate stellar observations. It also worked well as a vantage for observing incoming visitors. She saw at once when Jaed passed through the doors. He looked up immediately—which most visitors did not—and seeing her, stuttered to a pause. There was a moment of eyelock, strained by distance, during which neither of them made any extraneous gestures, neither waves nor smiles nor other modes of acknowledgement. Then, visibly setting his shoulders, Jaed dropped his gaze, minding where his feet were, and set a brisk pace for the stairs.
He was moving a bit less briskly when he finally achieved the platform (having discovered, as Rupert had, that there were a great many steps). Thorsdottir, who had found herself not half as tired as she should’ve been at the end of her own climb (she credited Rose’s remnants for that, based on things overheard from various medical professionals), watched him come, and pretended that her own heart was not thumping and flopping about in her chest in a manner that had nothing to do with exertion.
“Do you know what she’s doing?” Jaed blurted, when he was still half out of breath and two steps from the top of the platform. He meant Rory. There was no other possible referent for that tone of she.
Thorsdottir felt her face knitting into a frown she had not pre-approved. “Hello, Thorsdottir. How are you? Oh, fine, Jaed, how are you?”
He hauled himself the rest of the way onto the platform and teetered toward her, a little shaky in the knees. He stopped in that strange no-man’s land of personal space that was a little too close for stationer politeness, and a little too far for the close-quarter intimacy of crew on a ship Vagabond’s size. It was as if he was not quite sure where he belonged, which, Thorsdottir supposed, was her fault. She had not been very welcoming since the Rose Incident, even before the excused absences of all her medical testing.
Now, from this undecided, uncomfortable distance, he offered her a headshake-and-glare combination. “I asked how you were in the first, oh, dozen messages I sent. Which you ignored. I thought—never mind what I thought. I just started asking Zhang how you were. Did you even read them?”
“No,” said Thorsdottir, who of course had. “I just saw them in the queue. I’ve been busy, Jaed. Everyone wants a piece, or a few drops of blood, or, or whatever of me.”
That diverted him for a squint-eyed, searching moment. “And? What are they saying?”
She nipped back a snarky Oh, Zhang didn’t tell you that, I see and said, perfectly civil: “The consensus is that I’m harboring nanomecha of xenobiological origins, formerly sentient, that appear to be maintaining me at optimal health. Maybe even a little better than optimal. Nothing
we didn’t already know.” And then, because Jaed had flinched a little, because they had been over and over this and Thorsdottir was bored with her own resentment, she added, “I’m fine. I’m good.”
Jaed’s eyes gentled, and he looked on the verge of saying something Thorsdottir decided she did not yet have the courage to hear. She trampled over his indrawn breath and said in a rush, “To answer your original query: I have not heard what Rory is doing exactly, but I imagine it’s her job. Another title starting with p.”
“President of the Allied Confederation Council. Except, typical Rory, she’s put out a resolution to expand the Confederation to include the xenos, the Merchants League, basically anyone who wants to join, and drafted a proposal to make the Council into the ruling body, doing away with prime ministers. Dame Maggie’s not happy, but the idea’s pretty popular with the public and some of the other Confederation members.”
“So?”
“So . . .” Jaed paused for another lungful of air. “So, as part of this newly expanded Confederation—assuming the Harek Empire goes along with it, which they will, because at least three tenju battlechiefs just signed on—she wants to form some kind of multi-species group? Specifically to gather intelligence about the wichu situation inside the Protectorate. I don’t think it has a real name yet. All those messages were me trying to ask you if you’d heard about it, and if you were going to sign up.”
He paused. Thorsdottir peeled her attention away from his face and threw it into the void, where it landed between the curve of Lanscot below and the scattered stars and let the expectant silence hang, unfilled.
Jaed said a very Grytt sort of word. “I had to ask Zhang—”
—who had not, Thorsdottir was sure, yielded up any confidences—
“—and she said that not only did you know that, you’d already signed up. Both of you. That your acceptance was just waiting for medical clearance. Which, she said, you’d just gotten.”
She heard Jaed move closer, a squeak of boot on the clear polyalloy. She was glad that the porthole’s mysterious alchemical composition didn’t permit reflections. Bad enough she could feel his stare on the side of her face.
“I did some checking around. Seems like Battlechief Crow is one of the commander-types Rory’s asked to lead this joint task force. And there’s an alw, though I don’t remember her name. Did you hear she tapped Grytt, too?”
“Grytt turned her down.”
“Oh, you can speak.”
“We’ve been talking, Jaed.”
“Good. That’s great. Because I thought you’d just lied to me about knowing what Rory’s up to, when clearly you do know, so maybe you can tell me why.”
“I didn’t lie. I wasn’t sure what you meant. I do know about the task force. Obviously.”
“All right. Then maybe, since we’re have an attack of sudden honesty, you’ll also tell me why you’ve been avoiding me.”
“I haven’t been—you’re here now, aren’t you? I know Zhang told you where I’d be.”
“Yes. Yes, she did. She said, Thorsdottir’s run off to the arboretum and she’s hoping you’ll look for her there.”
“She did not.”
“She actually did.” Jaed huffed, halfway between amusement and exasperation. “Anyway. Point is, I signed up, too, and I think we need to settle whatever this is between us before we all ship out.”
Thorsdottir’s head snapped around. Jaed was right there, a handspan from her shoulder, staring out the same porthole with the same unfocused determination. “You did what.”
A faint flush dusted his cheekbones, there and gone in a breath. “Signed up. I’m coming with you and Zhang. Joining this whatever it is Rory’s thought up, whatever she’s calling it. We need to know what’s going on out there. Who these wichu are that made Rose. Whether they’re another enemy, or maybe an ally.”
“We’re probably going to get into fights, Jaed. With the Protectorate. With vakari.”
“That’s possible, yeah.”
“And blood makes you sick.”
“After what we saw on G. Stein and Sissten? I honestly don’t know if I can get sick again.”
“I’ll take that bet.”
Jaed lifted his chin and jabbed his gaze at her like a spear. “Why are you arguing with me? After Sissten and every other damned thing.”
“Maybe because of all that.”
There was a time he would have flinched, hearing that. Assumed fault, assumed guilt. Now his eyes narrowed. “Are you still mad about Rose? Because if you are, we need to talk about that.”
“It’s not about Rose.”
“Is it me?” His face did not change, but there was something so raw in his voice that Thorsdottir’s chest ached.
“Yes. But not the way you think, Jaed. Listen.” Thorsdottir found it very hard to keep looking at him. She made herself do it anyway. “What happened, what we did—that wasn’t intercepting smugglers trying to sneak contraband apples past station customs. That was dangerous. That was, that was war.”
“Says the woman who showed us all what whitefire can do to a body.”
“That’s exactly the point.” She made a fist of her right hand, which didn’t hurt and which, if she looked at it, would show no scarring. “What happened to me? I don’t want that to happen to you.”
“Oh for.” Jaed rocked back on his heels. His brows crashed together. “You’re worried about me, but not Zhang?”
Of course I am, she nearly said, because that was what he expected to hear. Then she recalled the relative smallness of their society, and how very good Jaed was at reading people, with or without arithmancy. She grimaced instead. “That’s different.”
“You’re not worried about her.” Jaed nodded like he’d won a bet with himself. “Because you trust her more.”
“It’s not that. Not trust.” Thorsdottir examined the sliver of glass lodged under her chest, which only hurt whenever she thought about it. Like now. “It could’ve been you, in that brig, getting hit by that guard. Could’ve easily been you, and if it had? I don’t know, Jaed. I don’t know.”
“Don’t know . . . what?”
“If you’d still be alive.”
“Because . . . ? What, you wouldn’t have sacrificed Rose for me, and you would have for Zhang?”
“No!”
“Then . . . what?” He raised his eyebrows, his shoulders, and his open, empty hands. “I’m not following.”
“I couldn’t have done what you did with Rose. Arithmancy. Turning off their code. I would have just had to sit there and watch you die. I couldn’t take that.”
“For the love of—how do you think I felt? Or, or Zhang? Because that’s what we thought we were doing.”
Thorsdottir did in fact know how Zhang felt, having had this conversation. Zhang was not a demonstrative woman; she had given Thorsdottir a hard hug and admonished her never to do that again.
And still, “That’s different. No, it is, you listen to me. Zhang and I, we signed up to be Royal Guards. That means being ready to die, or get hurt, or hurt people, for someone else—for Rory, obviously, but it was King Philip when we joined. Anyway. That’s what we chose. To make our lives this thing that we’d risk, if we had to. And maybe we didn’t have to do much risking that, before now, before Sissten, but that’s always been out there as a possibility. Jaed, listen. If Rory’d told us to fight back on Urse, when your father came to arrest her, we would have, and we’d probably have ended up dead or hurt, but that’s just, you know. What we do.”
She braced for a retort, for indignation, for Jaed to turn around and walk back down that very long series of steps, having decided he’d rather be somewhere else than with her, planetside with Grytt, maybe, and Ivar.
Instead Jaed laughed, a bitter, sharp-edged thing, cousin to Thorsdottir’s sliver of glass, though for once, it was not turned i
nward. Then he snapped it off and leaned forward, until she could count every pale lash ringing the plasma blue of his eyes. His tone was silk stretched over barbs.
“You’re not a, a battle-rig, Thorsdottir. It’s never been just about protecting Rory for you. It’s everyone. When are you going to get it through your head that you aren’t the only one who has to take risks?”
“What? I just said Zhang and I signed up to die if we had to. That’s a we.”
“Sure. You said. But you’d throw yourself between her and trouble, too, and she knows that. She and I talk about you, too, you know.”
Thorsdottir had not known that. She had assumed that she and Zhang were a unit, and Rory was a law unto herself, and Jaed was—well. Jaed was Jaed, extra even after two years of close living. Before G. Stein, before Sissten, she would have defended that thought. But now . . . to Zhang, clearly, he was part of the we. To her, too, if she thought about it.
Now Jaed was not only staring at her from an uncomfortably close distance, he was also making uncomfortably accurate observations, and seemed disinclined to retreat without some sort of response.
The truth backed up in her throat. She swallowed, took a breath, and made room for it to escape. “I don’t want to be the last one left alive.”
“Well that at least makes sense.”
“It does?” The admission had sounded like a subgenre of fear, to Thorsdottir, and she had never found fear to be especially practical.
“Yeah.” Jaed smiled, faint and sure as an approaching dawn. “It’s how I felt, sitting back there with you in Vagabond. I’ve never felt more helpless, or more awful, or more useless. Definitely not recommended.”
The laugh burst from her chest like a startled rabbit. “But then why volunteer? Go planetside. Go, oh, raise sheep or something.”
“Planets scare me worse than vakari. All that sky. And sheep? Brr. Sheep.” His smile faded. “Truth? Because I would rather be there, whenever there is, if something happens.” He took a deep breath. “With you.”
