by Nate Crowley
“And now look at you,” soothed Dust, her voice like warm honey in Mouana’s ear. “You have walked through death, conquered the unconquerable city, and snatched its prize even from my grasp. You make me proud.”
Mouana glowed at the words, and immediately hated herself for it.
“But I must have it,” said Dust, and although patient, her words were limned with ice. “And if you keep it from me, Mouana, understand that you must suffer after I defeat you. I must make an example of those who would steal from me. However, there is still a way this journey can end in triumph for you. Before my army comes, Mouana, I come to make you this offer.”
“Teuthis. You want me to give it to you,” said Mouana, her words emerging papery and fragile. Dust’s boat closed in until it was only ten yards away, and the general stood to her full height.
“No, commander; I wish to give it to you. I have never offered a traitor a second chance, but today this is what I bring. Because death has made something truly great of you. I see in you not the ambitious fool who went to Lipos-Tholos to die, but something more akin to a partner, a successor... a reflection.” Dust stopped for a moment and took a long look around her, her eyes flickering as they roved over the trees on the mist-shrouded bank.
“Did you know,” she said, studying the forest, “my people were once as soft as any in all the worlds? Our home, the most beautiful of all. Warm and calm of weather, a world of shallow azure seas and bright atolls, white sand and glowing tides. The most peaceful, the most complete, of all the gartenwelten. Our forebears bred synaesthesia into their children just for the pleasure of existing there.” Dust’s eyes closed for a moment, and she tilted back her head as if drinking the air. Then her head snapped back and she fixed Mouana with a glare.
“It died. A munition from the old wars, something even those who fired it had forgotten, so long had it been travelling. And all it left was an endless salt flat, and a scorching wind. Dust was the name of the wasteland, Dust the name of the world. Dust the name of the city that survived, and where we clung to life, bred for joy but with none to experience.” There was something like longing in the general’s voice, and Mouana found herself growing almost drowsy, intoxicated by the rhythm of her words.
“Children there were never children, commander. To feed our parents and thin our numbers, we were sent out to hunt the salt lakes, where the ichthydaimones lived. Pained, hastily-engineered things they were, but lethal quarry for starveling runts with arrows and spears. Those who survived the hunts went on to take the rites, and these you know of.” With this Dust gave her a strange look, and she nodded, her mouth hanging open.
“The cave,” said Mouana, in little more than a whisper.
“Two children, two months in the dark, and enough food for one to survive. And so it went; weeping at first, then bargaining, and then blood. Then more weeping, until all weeping became meaningless, and a certain... hardening of the soul. I came out of the cave harder, and later I took this company as my own. The first thing I did with it was to level that old city, and leave Dust empty at last. I took its name, and this much you know.”
Mouana remembered. Dust’s story had been what changed her mind about leaving—in her grief, she had seen her as a model of strength. To accept her brother’s death and let go of the past, she had volunteered to die, and come through hardened, like the general had done. But now Dust held up a finger, and challenged the memory.
“Of course,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper like the desert wind, “I never told you the whole story. Just as you have done since your death, Mouana, I did something they did not expect me to do when they put me in the cave. I did not kill my brother.”
“Then how did you survive?” asked Mouana, as she general’s eyes bored into her vision.
“I told him we would escape the world together. That rather than staying in the cave, we would travel on foot to the Petrichor Gate, hunting along the way. Together we unsealed the entrance and left, with all the food we could carry.” Dust looked down at the deck of the boat, and let out a scornful, rattling sigh.
“Of course, we had no hope of hunting without weapons, but my poor brother didn’t realise that until too late. He was not a bright boy. Nor was he strong. On the second night while he slept, I blinded him with a stone and bound him with cord. We walked for days on end like that, my brother following behind me, taking sips of water as I allowed it, but no food. When he collapsed, I carried him on my shoulders, and his body kept the worst of the sun from me.”
When Dust met Mouana’s eye again, there was a fervour in her gaze, an elation.
“When the food ran out,” she said, “I began to eat my brother. I do not know how long he sustained me on that walk, or where along the way he died, but when I saw the Gate shimmering in the distance, I dropped what was left of him and ran.
“I was crawling, by the time I reached its pillars. There was no shelter there, and the sun roasted me until I lost my wits, but I knew nothing living could pass a transit horizon unshielded, and so I waited. When vision began to fade, I dragged myself through with my hands, and I felt my heart stop as I crossed the horizon itself.
“I woke, much later, in the hospital of a Petrichor border krepost. And you know the rest of my story, save for one more thing. Much later, when I took command of the Blades and went to raze Dust to the ground, I did it not out of hatred or vengeance. I did it out of love.”
Then Dust smiled, and the sight of it made Mouana gasp, but the general was too lost in rapture to notice. Her boat was right off the stern now, and she stared up, not at Mouana but through her, at the memory of flame. Then her eyes focused, and seemed to pin her to the spot.
“I owed everything to that city,” hissed Dust, fierce as a serpent. “It had given me everything. It had made me who I was. A debt was owed. So I gave colour and feeling back to its people, after so long living in a world that starved their senses. The flames that night were the brightest, the most beautiful things that world had seen in centuries. And as the city burned, I knew it loved me back.”
There was a long pause, and then Dust held out her hand across the water, reaching for her own.
“You understand now, Mouana, what I see in you. When you captured the Teuthis device, you weren’t so docile as to bring it back to me like a dog. You ran with it, to your own ends, as I did with my brother—and you’ve used it to keep going, just as I did with that fool boy. You’ve seen off my army this far, and even now you may see it off for another few days. But you can’t run forever, and this story can only end in defeat for you.
“Give me the device now, and we will use it to build a new world. With the power in that terrible brain, we can raise an army the worlds have not seen since the old wars. And you, Mouana, my pride, will command it for me. Teuthis is simply the mind of animal. With you piloting it, it will be something fearsome—a union of life and death, a creature of pure will.”
Dust shook her arm, and her voice rang with passion. “Do this with me, Mouana, and let us become history together.”
Mouana extended her hand towards Dust’s, staring into the depths of those yellow eyes. The general was mad beyond measure, but there was no way to look at the situation, no way to make sense of it, other than to accept. She could not refuse. She was just opening her mouth to say ‘yes,’ when she thought of Wrack.
For all that Dust knew, and all she had planned, there was one card still hidden from her. She had called Teuthis the mind of an animal, and hinted at the power it might take on under human governance. She had no idea that awful union had already been made by her friend, or of the suffering it had put him through. Dust had no idea about Wrack.
Wrack who, without her knowing, had become the brother she had missed, and loved, and hated for so many years. And who she was about to surrender to a woman who had blinded and eaten her own. The Bruiser’s accusation rang in her head, and she stood with her mouth open, gaping in disgust that she had even considered the offer.
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br /> No, thought Mouana. No matter how slim their chances, and no matter the consequences of refusing Dust, there was no way she was going to abandon Wrack now. She would carry her brother, and feed him, until they had no strength left to walk.
The Bruiser’s words echoed in her head again, as she primed the cannon built into her arm. This is for you, mate, she thought.
“Fuck off,” said Mouana, and shot Dust into the river.
The general disappeared into the water with barely a splash, and her boat drifted back into the mist like a fading nightmare. The shot startled birds from the forest canopy, and their cries brought life back into the world. Back came the hum of cicadas, the churning of the water, the hoots of waking apes; a swell of sound, as if the world had been holding its breath.
Moments later, Fingal came rushing onto the deck with a rifle, calling for backup as he scanned the mist. Mouana put her hand on his shoulder, and motioned for him to lower the weapon.
“Don’t worry,” she said, and the man looked puzzled. She was about to tell him it had been nothing, that she had simply been testing her gun, but immediately thought better of it. There was no point in secrets anymore. She had no doubt Dust had survived the shot, and once she caught up with them, there would be no second chances. If they were going to make it, they were going to do it together—she and Wrack and everyone, like it had been on Tavuto. And if that wasn’t enough to get them to High Sarawak, then she would be proud to fail in the attempt.
“Gather the crew,” said Mouana. “There’s some things I need to tell them.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY
THREE
WRACK WAS DREAMING the river when the voice began speaking to him. He was a turtle, bitten in two and tumbling along the bottom in a cloud of pink, and fishes were nibbling at him.
“I need your help with the directions again, mate. We’re about to run out of map.”
It sounded like that man who was always in his father’s study. Fingal, was it?
“You’re probably best off asking my Dad,” said Wrack, and went on being the turtle.
“Your father’s gone, Schneider. You’re on the boat, in Grand Amazon. You remember?”
“I’m dead, aren’t I?” said Wrack, the vision collapsing, and Fingal nodded. He was smoking his pipe, the bowl’s glow illuminating his bite-pocked face in the dimness of the hold. Wrack was disappointed, but not surprised anymore. The remembrance that he was dead was fairly frequent now, coming many times in a day. Still, though, it was so easy to forget, when he let his mind wander to the water and the trees.
Even here below the waterline where his mind was stored, it was sweltering. Fingal was in a dreadful shape, his body dried and wiry like spoiled jerky. Wrack was worse. Almost all the ship’s beasts had fallen apart by now; his crab form nested in the centre of those that could still move, shrouded in a pungent knot of fins, slime and sloughing scales.
To the left of them was the casket containing his mind. The dead were queued by a tap in its side, waiting wearily to draw cups of preservative from his own reservoir.
“They allowed to do that?” said Wrack, feeling a little invaded. Fingal nodded, then shrugged in apology as he puffed at the pipe.
“’Fraid so mate. We won’t let you run out, but we need a bit of what’s spare now we’ve used the whiskey from Rummage.”
“Fair enough. How long has it been since Rummage, anyway?”
“Six days, mate,” said Fingal, faint concern etched on his face. Wrack suspected he had already asked this question today. Nonetheless, he was amazed. With his mind in such a fluid state, the time had vanished like blood in the current. For the first two days, he had been barely cogent; thinking he had been back on Tavuto, he had grown terrified of the crew, and had cowered in the bilges of the ship, wondering where his friend was.
Then he had remembered his ‘friend’ had tortured a man to death, massacred a boatful of refugees, and attempted to sell half Tavuto’s survivors to a pub, and had been less keen to seek her out. As his mind had pieced itself together, he had wandered the boat, intermittently letting himself seep into other places for relief. He remembered there being a gunfight on one of the nights—no, two actually—but he had stayed well out of it. It had become more and more tempting just to let himself dream than to watch the struggles of the ship.
He wasn’t sure when the dreaming—that weird inhabitation of Grand Amazon’s dead things—had become possible, but he remembered the first time he experienced it. He had been watching a living sailor gut a fish he had caught and, for a bit of a laugh, had slipped into the fish’s mind, had made it thrash and gurn on the sailor’s lap.
And the further they went into the wilderness, the nearer they drew to that invisible glow in the deep jungle, the easier it became. He could just... lose himself, into the head of anything dead that drifted by. It had mystified him at first—the part of him that remained resolutely a librarian was baffled, as previously he’d only been able to see and operate through things created by the Lipos-Tholon factories or on Tavuto, by the application of miasma. Then the explanation had dawned on him—there must be miasma in the air out here. Not much, but enough for him to make connections, and connections that became stronger the further they went into the forest.
Even now, as he considered it, he was a salamander, being chewed by a centipede somewhere under a rotten log. The centipede coughed patiently, and sounded like Fingal.
“Sorry,” said Wrack, coming back to the hold, and there was an awkward pause. “Why are you here again?” he asked sheepishly, as he had momentarily forgotten. Fingal sighed, and tapped his pipe against the barrel he sat on.
“Directions, Wrack. We’re nearly out of map, and only you know where to go from here. I’ve left you alone for the last few days, figured you needed to rest, more than anything else. We’d pushed you a bit too hard. But now I need you.”
Wrack felt a surge of bitterness, as he remembered the trireme fight, and the last time Fingal had ‘needed’ him.
“When you say ‘I,’ I presume you mean you’re running an errand for Mouana since she won’t speak to me, right?”
Fingal looked awkward, and his eye flicked to the far end of the hold.
“He means what he said, Wrack,” said Mouana, stooped low under the beams of the hold. “He’s the captain now, not me. And he needs you. But I’d like to talk with you, too, if you’ll accept it.”
“I’ll leave you folks to it,” said Fingal, getting up in a hurry. “I’ve still got those... repairs to finish up on the port turrets. Come on, you rotten lot,” he added, gesturing at the sailors queuing for preservative, and they shuffled from the hold with an air of disappointment.
“Are you alright?” asked Mouana quietly, when they had left.
“Yeah, amazing,” muttered Wrack, and she winced.
“I mean, are you alright to talk? You’ve had a rough time, and I didn’t want to bother you until you were ready.”
“I’m talking, aren’t I? Anyway, I didn’t think you were in the habit of caring.”
“A lot’s changed,” said Mouana, looking down at her hands.
“Yeah, I heard. I’m not surprised they binned you as captain, but I have to say I’m shocked you didn’t gun them all down for trying.”
Mouana’s face fell as he spoke, and her mouth contorted as if testing the shape of words.
“I stepped down, after Rummage.”
“What? I suppose the Bruiser ratted you out, did he?” said Wrack with an insincere laugh.
“He tried,” said Mouana, in a voice next to a whisper. “I destroyed him before he could speak. And that’s why I stepped down.”
“Oh,” said Wrack. That was a hard one to take in, and he wasn’t sure how to react. “You said you needed something from me again?”
“No, I told you already. It’s you I need, Wrack, not what you can do.”
Wrack dipped his eyestalks in consternation. “Maybe it’s because they’re draining my
preservative, but I really don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
“Listen... can you... can you read minds, Wrack?”
“This isn’t making things less confusing, you know. But... yes, I suppose. I can tell you what it’s like to be any number of dead bees right now, as it happens.”
“I mean, could you read my mind?”
“What, go in your head?” said Wrack, incredulous. “I wouldn’t want to, frankly!”
“Please,” begged Mouana. “I’m not a great talker. In fact, I’m dreadful. But I need you to understand. I spoke with Dust, Wrack. I realised... look, please. Will you go in my head? This is the best way I can find to say sorry.”
“Alright,” said Wrack. “Sit down.”
Mouana sank to the filthy deck, steel legs folded, and closed her eye. There was a long, sombre pause, after which Wrack made a noise through his speakers like he was straining to have a shit.
Mouana looked perplexed, and opened her eye again. “I don’t think it worked.”
“That’s because I didn’t do anything. I just wanted to irritate you while I had the upper hand. I’m going to do it now.”
Wrack let himself fall sideways into Mouana’s head, and the hold vanished. Before vision returned, a rush of feelings smashed into the back of his eyes; shame, rage, and far, far more fear than he would ever have expected. Then an image began to resolve itself. Wrack was in a tent, its sides flapping in the wind, trying to write a letter. He ground his teeth as the nib trembled on the empty page. He strained for words, but they wouldn’t come past the shrieking of the ’drick...
“OH, DEAR, MOUANA,” said Wrack, a long time later, touching a claw to her knee. “I’m so sorry. She... she really messed you up. I’m very glad you shot her.”
