And the rest had come for her. Because she hadn’t been able to save them. Because they had died, consumed by what was coming, and she had turned away from them. Now they were enraged, drowned in the fire. That rage would destroy her.
Please, she gasped, all the strength draining out of her, as if through her feet into the roots of the place. Please, don’t.
The fire crashed down on her like a breaking wave, and at last she could scream.
She knew it was a dream, of course. She knew it before she burst into waking, shoving herself up with the covers tangled around her sweaty legs. She knew it before she saw Satya’s bare back, the lines and curves of it warmed by the dim light given off by the walls. She had known it was a dream the moment it came to her.
It made no difference. She knew a true dream when she felt it.
Letting out a huge, shuddering breath, she pulled her legs free, turned, and sat on the edge of the bed with her head in her hands. Her skin was hot, almost feverish, but her sweat was drying and slightly cooling her.
Sleep wasn’t going to come back to her. She had lost it completely. Slowly she rose and reached for her silk robe.
Perhaps because of what the dream had forced her to do, or perhaps because she wanted to assure herself that nothing was as she had seen it, she walked. She went barefoot, padding softly over the decks, the fingertips of one hand trailing over the bulkheads.
It was in the midst of what was, for Ashwina’s internal clock, the small hours. The sunlamps that lit the larger spaces and the smaller lights that illuminated the corridors were both dimmed, and while a few people moved here and there, attending to work or merely wandering sleepless the way Nkiruka was, there weren’t many of them. However, the place wasn’t empty and dead. She could see that for herself.
But of the sleepless, she saw more than she once had. She could always tell them apart from the others, and not just because she was one of them. It was their gait, either shuffling or a little too quick, and their expression, distant and preoccupied and often faintly worried. Some of them were pallid and hollow-eyed, suggesting more than one night with not enough rest.
We are the ghosts which sleep has left behind. Nkiruka fought back a shiver.
She was unsurprised to find her feet carrying her up toward the top of the ship, to the High Fields. This, too, she needed to see, to confirm to herself without a shadow of a doubt that it was still whole and living. And it was, the fields thrown into darkness broken only by starlight that glittered across the grass and trees and water and almost as bright as any moon. A soft breeze whispered. She stood there, wrapped in silk, and goose bumps prickled her bare skin.
In the distance, a shape sat under a tree. She made for it, the grass cool underfoot, already somehow sure who she would find.
Kae glanced up at her as she approached, his knees drawn up against his chest. Someone sat up beside him—Leila, her long hair pulled back into a simple ponytail. The two of them lifted their hands in greeting.
“You’re awake too,” Nkiruka said as she reached them, sinking down cross-legged. They were near one of the lakes, and the starlight glittering on its still face was a distraction in the corner of her vision.
“Often these nights.” Leila smiled a bit wanly. “It’s better to have company at these times. I take it Satya isn’t suffering the same as you?”
“Not as far as I can tell.” Nkiruka pulled at a loose cuticle. “When I do sleep, the dreams are bad. I don’t …” She sighed and raked a hand back through her thick cascade of braids. “Everything feels wrong right now. Worse than before.”
Her eyes met Kae’s as she spoke, and the expression that met her was grimly knowing. She wondered if he had told Leila about the results of the reading.
“War,” Leila murmured. Well, that answered that. “It’s not just in the pads, Nkiru. Not just in the lines and the orbits. Kae was privy to a council meeting yesterday. They wanted his input as wingleader. It wasn’t only our three ships—they had messages from other convoys as well.”
Something under Nkiruka’s skin ran cold. She already knew what this would mean. What it was about. In what direction the pressure would fall. Like everything, she had felt it coming, whispers from the stars. “And?”
“There’s a sense among some,” Kae said, leaning forward with his voice low, “that we should all withdraw from this part of space. Head toward less-traveled parts of the galaxy and remain there, out of the way. Find new species and new worlds to trade with and steer clear of the Protectorate entirely. And then there are others who seem like they’re spoiling for a fight. They actually want to go on the offensive. They want revenge.”
“Chere, that’s … It’s not what Adam wanted. He tried so hard to avoid it.” Nkiruka shook her head. Revenge. Slow dread twisted at her; it hadn’t been there in any intensity immediately after the Plain, but she had sensed a general inclination toward vengeance gathering, like low rumbles of distant thunder. “It’s not what Ixchel wanted. She wanted the healing of this rift, not the widening of it. Adam was supposed to be that connection. That was what we were hoping for. What he was hoping for. Now they might use him as an excuse for more conflict? That’s …”
“I know. Believe me, I know. So does Adisa. So does at least half of Ashwina’s council. But the rest of the convoys didn’t know Adam the way we do. All they know is that they lost hundreds on the Plain, and all for a Protectorate outcast they didn’t even meet. For a people who have been nothing short of enemies to us. Now the word is that the Protectorate isn’t planning to ease up. If anything they’re harassing us more. Everyone is scared, Nkiru. Either way, we’re not equipped to do any fighting.”
“But the Aalims were there. They accepted him, didn’t they? They—”
“Half of them are dead. The newly appointed ones never knew him either. They’re under a lot of pressure.” Kae sighed. “And khara, we have no Aalim at all. The whole convoy is out of balance. If we’re one of the few dissenting voices …” He shrugged. “We don’t have a lot of pull.”
“So. We go sleepless,” Leila said. She sounded beyond tired, more so than Nkiruka had ever heard her, even after the Battle of the Plain. “We know Adam is alive. We’re sure of that much.”
“If Adam is, so is Lochlan,” Kae added firmly. “I’m just as sure of that. I have no talent for star-reading, but I feel it.”
For a few moments there was silence except for the whisper of the grass and the leaves. It was an uncomfortable silence. At last Nkiruka shook herself. “Couldn’t we refuse to go? Even if the rest of them do?”
“We could.” Leila tilted her head back, the starlight glittering in her eyes. “It would put us in a bad position, though. Cut off from the rest. If we got into trouble, we’d be completely alone. And it would weaken our standing with pretty much everyone else.”
“We can’t abandon Adam and Lochlan,” Kae said. Now his tone was positively steely. “We can’t. We stood for him when no one else did. He’s still a brother. And Lochlan is … No.”
“It may not be up to us.” Nkiruka dug her toes into the grass, down into the soil beneath. “Things are moving. Big things.” Again she thought of fire and death, and couldn’t keep back her shudder.
“And,” Leila said quietly, “if the faction counseling a fight wins out, what then? Do we stand idle and let our brothers and sisters commit suicide?”
Kae laughed suddenly, arms curled around his knees. There was something awful about his laugh: dark amusement and sadness and anger all expressing themselves at once. “Sometimes I envy Lochlan. How he got so totally away from all of this. I understand why he used to spend so long out there in the black. We can be so … Khara. All of us, stubborn and sluggish as goatworms.”
“And selfish.” Nkiruka wanted to laugh too, but it wouldn’t come. “Whatever Ixchel said about exiles. Line and orbit, she would be so angry right now.”
Kae laughed again, this time joined by Leila, and it sounded less strained. “That would be a
thing to see, wouldn’t it? No one ever dared cross that old witch, not to her face. She’d see them snapped into line soon enough.”
Nkiruka nodded, but she said nothing. Her own words were haunting her. Selfish.
The universe itself wouldn’t leave her alone when it came to this.
“Was it hard?” she asked presently, not looking at either of them. “To watch Lochlan go?”
Kae let out a surprised breath. “Why, it was … Yes, it was hard. It was hard to see the backs of both of them. Adam was my friend in the end, Nkiru, almost as much as Lochlan was. My brother. I miss them both every day.”
“It’s strange,” Leila added, “how attached one can get to someone so quickly. But we went through hells together, all of us. I saw him when he was fresh and new, and so afraid. He was like a child. Something in me wanted to keep him safe.” She shifted, sliding around to Kae’s front and settling back between his legs, his fingers toying with a few loose strands of her hair. “You remember. Even if you didn’t yet know us that well.”
“We all remember.” Nkiruka dug her fingers harder into the dirt, as if she might be able to push her way down to the roots of the Arched Halls themselves. It was said that those roots grew far beyond the land occupied by the forest itself, spreading out beneath the fields and meadows. That the entire top of the ship lay cradled in a great, tangled, wooden hand. “So … You don’t think that what he did was selfish? Or Lochlan? Leaving the way they did?”
“Do I— No, I don’t think anything of the kind.” Confusion mingled with the surprise in Kae’s tone. “If anything … They almost certainly went into greater danger than they would ever have faced here. Who knows, maybe doing what they did gave us a bit more space to breathe while the Protectorate focused its efforts on them alone. Anyway, they’re cut off from us. Their family. Lochlan might have spent every minute he could spare away from us, but this was always his home. More than anywhere else in the universe.”
Leila cocked her head to one side, and though Nkiruka couldn’t see her face clearly in the dimness, she could feel the woman’s penetrating gaze. Maybe no one would have crossed Ixchel to her face, but Leila too, was also formidable in ways that belied her years. “Why are you asking us these things, little glowbug?”
It was the pet name that threw Nkiruka off, and in the end probably what knocked the truth out of her. Or it was that in part. But that name … No one had called her by it in years, not since she had shed the last physical traces of her childhood.
Leila seemed to remember.
Maybe it should be you instead of me, Nkiruka thought, and was immediately ashamed.
“They’re going to make me choose,” she said slowly, miserably. “Adisa told me. They’re going to … lay it out in front of me like a poisoned meal and call me traitor if I don’t eat.”
Leila and Kae were silent. Nkiruka sat there with her head down and her hands loose in her lap. Once again the tears were a hot pressure behind her eyes. She hated even saying it like that. She hated saying it at all. She was so tired of feeling young and foolish and not good enough, when it came to this. Like there was no good choice to be made. Like every turn she took would take something away from her.
There was a touch on her hand and she lifted her head to see Leila kneeling in front of her, her face gentle and open. “Nkiru,” she murmured, and Nkiruka let herself fall forward into Leila’s arms, shaking as everything tight in her released.
She was vaguely ashamed that it was Leila, and not Satya. It should be. It should.
Finally Nkiruka lifted her face from Leila’s shoulder, wiping her eyes and letting out an embarrassed laugh when she saw the damp spot on Leila’s shirt. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Leila took her hand, glancing back at Kae, who gave her a nod. “Walk with me, Nkiru. There’s something I want to tell you.”
Puzzled, Nkiruka nevertheless allowed Leila to pull her gently to her feet and lead her across the grass toward the small lake. The water caught the starlight, amplifying it somehow, and the entire thing seemed to glow faintly in the night, casting rippling illumination over Leila’s face and dark hair as they walked together along its edge. Nkiruka didn’t try to break the stillness. Leila would speak when the time was right.
Presently she did.
“You know the story of Adisa and Ixchel?” She went on before Nkiruka could answer. “Many of us don’t. It’s not considered polite to be too free with it. It was in another life, and it’s a story that holds much pain for him. Once for her as well, though she would never have let it show.”
“I … think so. A little of it.” Nkiruka frowned. There was really only one thing this could be referring to: What Adisa had told her when he had spoken to her last. Watching Ixchel dance. Thinking about the future. “He loved her, didn’t he?”
“He did. With a passion that few on Ashwina had ever seen. The moment they first saw each other—it was said—all they wanted was to be together. When they were, they lit the world around them. Some people whispered that they would destroy whatever came between them. But of course that wasn’t true.”
Now it was clear. Why Adisa had told her in the first place. What he was trying to make her see.
“They chose … She chose to go to the fire. Didn’t she? She chose to become the Aalim.”
Leila squeezed her hand and nodded, facing Nkiruka. She took Nkiruka’s other hand in hers. “It was agony for her. She never spoke of it, but everyone could tell. It must have been a choice that tore her in two. And Adisa …” She shook her head. “I think he would have stopped her if he could have. But of course no one could ever change Ixchel’s mind when she made it up.”
She paused a moment, then stepped closer, reaching up to briefly lay a hand against Nkiruka’s cheek. Her palm was cool and smooth. “You must understand: She didn’t make the choice out of fear. Her people needed her. She answered them.”
Nkiruka nodded. When she closed her eyes, she was distantly irritated to feel more tears spilling over, trickling down her cheeks. But naturally Leila wouldn’t care.
“I’m not telling you this to sway you one way or the other, little glowbug. It was all a long time ago, before you or Kae or I were born, and we only know the story from others. I can’t tell you what to do, and I can’t tell you what’s right. You have to decide that for yourself, and live with the decision. I’m telling you simply so you know that you’re not alone—that if you’re suffering, others have suffered as you have. I think … I think there’s always suffering in this choice. I think, to be an Aalim and to guide our people, one has to have suffered terribly. To know loss as great as any her children might suffer.”
“I’d never have children,” Nkiruka whispered.
“No.” When Nkiruka opened her eyes Leila was smiling at her, sweet and sad, tears shining in her own eyes. “No, you wouldn’t.”
Nkiruka simply let that hang in the air. Somehow that was all of it, that future absence. That blocking-off of a pathway by virtue of a single decision, a choice that precluded so many other choices and implied so many more things placed forever out of reach.
She hadn’t even been sure she wanted children.
But all the ship would be your children, she could almost imagine the council saying.
Her heart instantly replied, That’s not even close to the same thing.
Leila was no longer looking at her. She was gazing off toward another one of the lakes, shining like a small pocket of liquid light. “One of the early days Adam was here,” she said quietly, “we took him swimming.” She laughed softly. “God, he was so afraid. Of everything. But that night, when he pushed himself through the awkwardness, the fear, stripped naked and jumped into the water, I saw a little of the other side of him. That part that would act despite the fear. The part that could even use it as an excuse to push ahead.”
She looked back at Nkiruka again. “You have that same stubbornness, I think. Kae has it as well. It may make you doubt yourself, intensify your
fear … but you should be grateful for it. If you trust it, what it pushes you toward and pulls you away from, it won’t lead you wrong.” She reached out then and cupped Nkiruka’s face in both hands, leaning in and pressing a kiss to her forehead. “You’re strong, Nkiru. You’re stronger than you know.”
Nkiruka wanted to answer her. The words seemed to demand an answer. But once again no answer came. So instead she merely nodded, closed her eyes against the darkness and the starlight, and felt herself slowly calming.
It’s going to be all right.
Even if she sensed, so deeply, that it was a lie. Maybe some lies were necessary, at least for a while. Maybe they held you up when nothing else would.
Unless they let you fall when they disappear.
“Come on back.” Leila stepped away, taking Nkiruka’s hand once again. “Sit with us awhile longer, until you feel sleepy. You shouldn’t be alone at a time like this.” She smiled. “We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.”
Nkiruka nodded. Part of her still wanted to be alone, completely so—wanted it very much. But she thought of the empty ship, all that death, and she knew that Leila was right. It wouldn’t do. Not now.
She let Leila lead her back to the tree, sat down, and listened to Kae and Leila’s sleepy chatter until at last, quite without meaning to and without really noticing that it was happening, she drifted off to sleep in the shadows, and did not dream.
“You’re certain?”
Sinder nodded. “Quite certain. There’s nowhere else he could have gone. We’ve found tracks that lead away from the crash site.” A lie, but not entirely. There had been no tracks around the crash site itself, but miles distant they had found the tracks of a groundcar, one that had come from the east, stopped, then turned around and headed back again. That in itself wasn’t conclusive, obviously—but he knew what it meant. He simply knew it.
“And you know that you can apprehend him?”
“If he’s there, he’s trapped. They’ve done that much for us. All we need is the clearance to go in and get him.”
Fall and Rising Page 18
