by P. K. Lentz
Standing, Blaik lowered the fracker. Under the fallen balcony, only one arm and the lower legs of the Maelstrom were visible, and these were still. The head and upper torso had been flattened. Blood pooled underneath the huge body, proving this had been no pure machine, but some mixture less agreeable than Qilliara.
She lay on the ground, twitching, and it was to her that Blaik ran. By the time he reached her, she had risen. Her face was blackened and the lower part of it smeared with blood from her nose. Her hair on one side was noticeably shorter and smoldering, her armor scorched and dented. Still, her bright violet eyes betrayed no discomfort, and she otherwise seemed unharmed.
“You all right?” Blaik asked anyway.
“Let's finish it.” She brushed past him on a course for the tower's main entrance.
Blaik fell in alongside. “How have you lived this long thinking you're invincible? Clearly—”
“It's under control,” she insisted.
“I only mean that without me—”
“Don't.”
Ahead, at the edge of the garden, stood a mass of Warpy Priests and a few black-clad human officials. Their mini-cannons and pole-axes were leveled, but for the moment they held fire, silent and wary. As she strode in their direction, Qilliara pointed her razers at them.
Blaik set his hand on the nearest muzzle. “Would you mind not shooting just yet?”
“Does it look like I'm shooting? You act like I'm unreasonably violent.”
“Well, you can be... never mind.”
Before they reached the amassed servants of Her Majestrix, Blaik mounted one of the overturned vehicle wrecks, and while Qilliara stood below with razers leveled, he addressed them.
“Does anyone here dispute that we now own this tower?” Blaik asked the crowd.
Silence.
“Which one of you holds the highest rank?”
A pale human male in black stepped forward. It was Trynnt, the aide who asked Jaxitza's permission to execute Blaik.
“No,” Blaik said. “I don't trust you. Qil, would—”
Before he could complete the request, a razer cracked and flashed, and Trynnt slumped to the ground with a new hole where his face had been.
“Who's next?” Blaik asked.
The ranks stirred. Priests looked at one another and at the few black-clad officials among them.
“I mean next in command,” Blaik assured. “You won't be killed. That was just him. One time, I promise.”
First one, then another Priest aimed a finger at a short-haired woman in black official's garb. She subsequently came forward with defiance in her dark eyes.
Leaping down from the wreck, Blaik instructed her, “Take us to Jaxitza.”
* * *
Eleven
At the center of the blasted ascension chamber, the circular space of which remained littered with the dead, Blaik and Qilliara stood quietly. Between them, a razer to her temple, stood the short-haired official of Her Majestrix's deposed tyranny.
With a hum and mild sensation of movement, the chamber rose.
Blaik did not consider it entirely necessary for Qilliara to hold a weapon to their hostage, or whatever she was. However, he deemed mentioning it not to be worth the twin costs of giving the impression in front of enemies that there might be division between him and his partner, and of potentially irritating Qilliara.
“I'm learning,” he inadvertently whispered aloud.
“What?” Qilliara asked.
Blaik realized his error. “Nothing. Just, I love how perfectly our styles... mesh.”
Qilliara raised a lightly charred brow. “What is wrong with you?” She shook her head. “Don't answer that.”
They stood in a silence filled only by a low hum and the long, slow breaths of the captured official.
Looking sidewise at the prisoner, or guide, or hostage, Blaik noticed that down inside her stiff collar, her skin took on a less lifeless complexion.
The pallor of Jaxitza's officials was created by chalky make-up, it seemed, that they might more closely resemble their Majestrix.
“I saved her life,” Blaik remarked at length to the woman. “Twice—no, three times.”
“So transparent,” Qilliara remarked. “It's not happening. It can't.”
“I wasn't even talking to you.”
He had been, really.
The hum stopped, the floor ceased its gentle movement, and the curved double doors in front of the trio parted and slid aside to reveal the crescent-shaped room Blaik had earlier visited in rather different circumstances, and had exited in rather violent ones. Its expansive, polished floor was strewn with broken statuary and broken Priests.
Ten or more living Priests stood scattered about, too. On seeing the ascension chamber open they ceased their activities, which seemed likely to consist of cleanup, and stared.
The captive official walked out first, with Qilliara's razer still (needlessly, in her partner's view) on her head. As the doorway was plenty wide, Blaik walked up beside them into the crescent room.
“Your attention, please!” Blaik called to the assemblage. “For those who weren't watching, we just smashed the Maelstrom. Her Majestrix is no longer Majestrix. Just Her. We're in charge now. Don't get in our way, and no one else has to die. Probably.” To the hostage official: “Tell them.”
The woman hesitated until Qilliara nudged her head with the razer, demonstrating to Blaik's satisfaction why she'd kept it there.
“Do as they say,” the official instructed.
“Jaxitza!” Blaik yelled at the closed triangular hatch in the high ceiling, which bore the marks of his earlier razer barrage. “Your forces are defeated! Come down! Let's talk!”
The eyes of all present went to the hatch. No reply came.
“Come out or we'll kill everyone down here!”
Immediately after saying this, Blaik gave a reassuring head shake to the short-haired official, though the message was also intended for Qilliara. “We won't,” he whispered. “Something tells me she wouldn't care.”
“There's another way up,” Qilliara said brusquely to the official. “Take us.”
At razer-point, the woman led them to a golden door set at one curving point of the room's crescent. She produced a silver key, which she inserted into a slot at one side. A chime sounded, and the door slid open. Behind was an empty, tubular room with walls of polished brass and a domed ceiling. After Qilliara inspected it, they all stepped inside, forced to stand elbow to elbow in the cramped space.
The official drew a shuddering breath and slowly reached a pale hand toward one of two identical round, black buttons set side-by-side in a rectangular panel. Neither was labeled in any way.
Qilliara stopped the hand with the muzzle of the razer which was not against the official's head. Using the weapon, Qilliara pushed the other button. A hum sounded, and what was evidently a much smaller ascension chamber began to rise.
“Look at me,” Qilliara said to the official.
The latter obeyed with a sudden, nervous movement. Fresh sweat sheened her near-colorless brow.
Qilliara regarded her intensely with fierce, violet eyes. “That button would have killed us all. Correct?”
Jerkily, the official nodded.
“Now, I'm sure—” Blaik began, reasonably.
He was cut off by the crack-flash of a razer and the heavy thud of the official's body on the floor with a new, black-edged hole in its head.
“Or... that,” Blaik finished, looking down at the sightless eyes. He had been about to argue for leniency. “I kinda liked that one.”
Another chime sounded, and the door in front of Blaik and Qilliara opened. They pointed their three weapons and one invisible shield into a room that was full of ornate splendor, from its woven, colorful carpets to overstuffed, gilt-edged couches to the flowering vines which entangled tall, fluted columns supporting a high, arched ceiling. Detecting no obvious danger, Qilliara and Blaik stepped out of the ascension chamber.
At the very center of the splendor stood an object which did not at all belong: a great sphere of iron studded all over with rivets and formed of two hemispheres, top and bottom, which met in a tight, banded seal. Four round, rose-colored windows were evenly spaced around the upper hemisphere.
“She's in there,” Qilliara reported, though Blaik could see nothing as yet through the small window that faced them.
He followed Qilliara to the iron sphere and put his face to rose-tinted glass.
Qilliara was right: the Witch-Queen sat huddled within the sphere, expansive gown flowing around her on the concave lower surface. In her arms, under waves of silvery hair made pink by the glass, she hugged to her broad, flat chest an item which Blaik had seen projected in an image floating over Qilliara's palm outside Scratch.
It was the bulky, ring-shaped Piece of the Mind Collapser, the weapon which Qilliara's people hoped could save the universe from an enemy bent on taking it back from humanity.
Blood stained the bodice of Jaxitza's dress in at least one dark circle, evidence that Blaik had managed to wound her during her escape through the hatch.
While Qilliara walked a circle around the sphere, inspecting it and the room, Blaik tapped on the window.
“Jaxitza,” he said.
She looked up, brows drawn in anger over blank, iris-less eyes. She made anything but a fearsome sight.
“It's over,” Blaik said. “Come out. Give us the crown.”
“Never!” The scream issued from a small grate mounted on the sphere. “You nasty, horrible man! And woman! To think of all I have done for this awful world...” She hung her head and sobbed.
“What are you anyway? I mean... inside.”
“I was ripped from my world,” she said weepily, “a place of beauty and understanding. I had a host that I loved and who loved me. She... I found myself here, in her cold body... alone. I managed to live... just. Managed to want to. The fragile hosts here did not last long, many just a few heartbeats, and every one fell silent within when I entered them.
“Then I found my crown. As long as I was connected to it, my hosts could live longer. When I found the right ones, they could live and live, for ages. The legs, though... always trouble with these ill-conceived legs...” She stopped, sobbing.
“That's all... interesting.” Blaik looked over at Qilliara, who had pulled a panel off a wall to study some intricate metallic structures underneath. “My partner there is going to find a way to open this shell. Count on it. If not, she has this pouch, and who knows what's in it. Something useful to get you out of there. She will have that crown. That's what she's here for. It's part of a weapon that her people need. If they don't get it, all of us will die. I think. Honestly, I don't understand a lot of what she says. But I know it's important.
“So... come out before she gets in, and maybe you and I can convince her not to slaughter you. I don't think it matters to her whether you live or die. She feels the same about me, even though—” He pointedly raised the volume of his voice. “—she would have failed without me.”
“Just keep talking, drifter,” Qilliara answered while fiddling with the contents of the wall-panel. “It's what you do best.”
“I have skills...” Blaik muttered before resuming addressing fallen Queen. “If you come out and hand over the crown, we can get you a nice chair with wheels and let you live in exile. Take five servants with you, if any are willing. There's a town near the wall called Scratch. Nice and flat and far from everything. It wouldn't be so bad.” He nodded at Qilliara. “It's a better offer than you'll get from her. She doesn't really make offers.”
“Let me live?” the Witch-Queen scoffed. “I made this world! Before me, it had not the faintest glimmer of civilization. It remains a vile place, but no one else could have achieved more. Long ago, I gave up any hope of making it pleasant. Ignorance and brutality flow in this world's blood. So no... I will not come out. I will die first!”
Blaik sighed. “If that's your choice. It's probably for the best. I would have killed you anyway. Can't have you leaving behind big piles of discarded hosts. Goodbye, Jaxitza. Qil, any progress? I'm done talking. She talked most, though, not that it matters.”
“Be ready,” Qilliara said, with hands in the panel.
Although Jaxitza hardly seemed a threat, Blaik readied the fracker.
“It should open... now.”
Nothing happened.
Qilliara made another adjustment inside the panel. “...now.”
Nothing.
More adjustments, then, “Now!”
The sphere was still.
“You don't have to keep saying it,” Blaik advised. “I'm ready.”
In truth, he wasn't sure whether he was ready to fire a weapon into the face of a wounded and legless enemy.
Well, he would, but he wouldn't like it.
“People need air to live, right?” Blaik asked Qilliara. “Apart from you.”
“You're asking that seriously?”
“Things I thought I knew before meeting you, I don't know anymore. Does she need air?”
“Yes.”
“Can you cut her air off in there before you open it?” Blaik asked cheerlessly. “It's safer. She might have some surprises left.”
“Hmm,” Qilliara intoned. “I can do better than that.”
She reached into her neg-pouch, then went to work on a different section of tubes and cables inside the open wall panel.
While she worked, Blaik walked the lushly decorated chamber, touching everything, as the reality of events sunk in. Here he stood in the Witch-Queen's tower, with the Majestrix herself at his mercy. About a turn ago, he had set out from Scratch with the absurd goal of overthrowing her. And he had done it.
What would life be like after this?
He knew what he hoped for. But that was only a hope, and a faint one. More likely, he would have to find some new life for himself. Make one.
He began to search around for a sack of some sort with which to begin looting Jaxitza's sanctum of some of its more portable treasures. Meanwhile, he filled his coat pockets.
“Go stand on the balcony,” Qilliara advised.
“Why?”
“That sphere is filling with poison gas. The seal might not be perfect. Want to keep talking?”
Blaik sped to the glass doors and shoved them open to stand outside breathing fresh air among a myriad of flowering plants. He looked out over Witch City from high above, the shops and houses like tiny boxes lining miniature, snaking streets. Beyond them stood the colorful forests, and beyond them the dry plains and leafless trunks which covered most of the world.
He had toppled the Queen. Perhaps he could now be King?
The thought held no appeal.
A sharp sound made him turn to look back inside through the glass doors. The top half of the iron sphere was rising, the lower half descending into a depression in the floor.
Sitting inside, slumped to one side in her bloodstained, flowing gown, clutching the 'crown' which had given her immortality, no sight in her white eyes, sat Her Pale, Mad, Legless Majestrix, the Witch Queen Jaxitza.
Qilliara ducked into the sphere through the growing gap, squatted by the body and pulled from its lifeless arms the wide metallic ring which was engraved all around with intricate markings. In taking possession of it, she achieved the mission which had brought her to this world. To her, the ending of Jaxitza's eternal reign was merely a byproduct.
“Should be safe now,” Qilliara advised.
“Should be...?”
Slowly, with hand over nose and mouth, Blaik returned to the edge of the sphere where Qilliara knelt detaching the Piece from some cables which ran into the lower shell of the sphere and presumably ended, eventually, in the back of Jaxitza's host body. Half-body.
As Qilliara stood with the freed Piece under one arm, Blaik spied slow movement near her foot. When he saw what it was, he gasped in disgust. Qilliara looked down and saw it too: a fat, flame-red slug about the
length of a human finger.
Here was the true Jaxitza, the one which had lost her... its... beloved host upon being flung into this world from her own.
Stepping out of the iron hemisphere, Qilliara drew a razer and aimed it at the thing.
“Wait—” Blaik began.
She fired, and in a flash the slug became charred, reddish lumps smeared on iron.
Qilliara holstered her weapon. “You didn't want to let it live, did you?”
“No...” Blaik agreed. “No. Had to be done. Sad, is all.”
“It didn't belong here.”
Blaik scoffed, without humor. “Do any of us?”
Qilliara headed for the balcony. “I'm leaving the quick way. You?”
Taking one last look at the richly furnished chamber that he not had a proper chance to loot, Blaik answered, “I'm coming.”
He knew Qilliara was not about to wait for him to find a container and fill it, much less let him use her neg-pouch. And anyway, if he could not have what he most wanted, a few valuables would be slim consolation.
Once more, they descended the side of the tower in long arcs on Qilliara's line. At the bottom, Qilliara took a working, unarmed vehicle, asking one of the Witch-Queen's former servants if it had enough fuel to reach the Wall, to which he replied in the positive.
“Sure you don't want to do some more damage while we're here?” Qilliara asked of Blaik. “Wouldn't take long. I'll help.”
“No,” Blaik answered sullenly. “No... but thank you for asking.”
He asked if he could drive, and Qilliara, with some hesitation, agreed. The Piece was too large to pass the entrance of her void-pouch, and so it remained in her lap as they drove away from Witch City—first in slow, jarring bursts of movement as Blaik learned the controls, then faster and faster across open plains.
They stopped in a village for food and water. Blaik ate his meal; Qilliara spit out her first bite and went without.
He slept for some time, but was awake when they reached the Wall outside of Scratch. The death-slide was still there. The Warpy corpses were not, but evidence of the three-turn-old slaughter was.
