Flotsam

by R J Theodore

  Talis shifted to face Illiya and leaned back into the pillows behind her. “I got myself mixed up with an Imperial captain who set me up with a bad contract, tried—though thankfully failed—to shoot me out of the skies, and left me no course but to make a deal with aliens.”

  Illiya took a long sip of her tea, making it look like a meditation.

  “Would this Imperial captain be Hankirk, the old flame, by any chance?”

  Talis would have rebutted the romantic implication, but she was too surprised. Of course, Illiya being one step ahead of the game was hardly shocking. “And, I assume, the power of all his Cutter-crazed friends behind him.”

  Illiya nodded. “And you sold the aliens the ring.”

  “You know about that, huh?”

  “Wouldn’t be much of an intelligence agent if I didn’t.”

  Talis tilted her cup back until the ice hit her teeth.

  “What would you have done?”

  “Refused the salvage job.”

  Talis coughed a laugh around the last sip of her drink. Welcomed the light feeling it sent up her shoulders to the sides of her head. “Advice I’d happily go back and give to myself as well, believe me.”

  Illiya pulled one long leg up and tucked it under the other. “Onaya Bone wants to speak to you next.”

  Now she really coughed, sitting up to place the emptied glass on the table between them and the hearth. “Helsim’s cavernous colon, are you kidding me?”

  “Blasphemer. Though I like that one. Not certain what it means, but I like it.”

  “‘Blasphemer’ is exactly my point. You gonna send me in there so I can get myself zapped out of existence?”

  “I’d like to be present.”

  “Like to see it, yeah, I bet you would.” She chewed her lip. “Don’t suppose I can decline?”

  “You could. But could you really live not ever knowing what she wants to say?”

  Of course she couldn’t. Of course she’d go.

  Talis squeezed her eyes shut, wishing she hadn’t invited Illiya to spike her tea. Talk to the goddess, why not?

  The door was made from petrified wood, Talis saw as she stepped past the aliens on their way out of the communing chamber. More stone than what it once had been. And the striations, up close, played into the temple’s name. Cellulose grain, cut at a diagonal, so the lines swept back from their cores like the individual strands of a feather.

  Her nostrils filled with the warm air beyond the doorway as she stepped through, Illiya’s hand on the small of her back. It smelled of heavy spices, of sand, and of feathers. She glanced back toward the fire where the Yu’Nyun were being freed of the ceremonial garb by acolytes who carefully lifted the robes over the aliens’ arching head crests. They appeared agitated, and she wondered if Onaya Bone had denied them the answers they came for. Or if the answers were no help to them. Or too cryptic to decipher. With Onaya Bone, the aliens would have faced their equal in enigmatic indirect conversation.

  The cone-shaped room was lined with an obscene amount of copper. Engraved and studded in swirling patterns, and burnished between, it reflected the warm lighting but no distinct images. Small candles flickered from tiny alcoves up and down the length of the wall. The flames and their velvet-soft reflections in the metal walls pulsed with life.

  Neatly folded bits of cloth were suspended from the high ceiling, delicate chains formed from generations of the prayers and wishes of Bone supplicants.

  On the polished turquoise of the stone floor, neatly centered in a circle of age-worn cushions, sat a bronze censer. Its surface was perforated with the shapes of flying ravens and etched with designs of blowing, swirling sands. Heavy purple smoke poured from it and collected along the floor like morning fog. The space was meant for meditation, for those who entered the room but were granted no audience. As with those worshippers whose cloths dangled above her head, prayer would have to serve when Onaya Bone did not deign to communicate directly.

  Reassuming her role of high priestess, Illiya crossed the meditation circle to a curtained booth. Small tables on either side held more candles and incense. There was a common wooden-handled broom displayed on a stand, a strange companion to the rest of the room’s objects. It was meant for use on her way out, to remove any dust that entered with her. The sand that was a part of daily Bone temple life was a threat to the room’s central feature, which awaited her behind the curtain.

  Illiya motioned for her to approach, and Talis found her feet reluctant to move. Once she had seen Silus Cutter and Lindent Vein together at a parade for the rare occasion when their worship holidays fell on the same day, but it had been at a distance. She had been part of a crowd, lost in a sea of faces, not summoned into their presence or singled out.

  She fidgeted with the hem of her shirt. Illiya hadn’t made her wear the drapings the Yu’Nyun had. That had been purely meant to make them uncomfortable, a fact which she’d confessed to Talis with a pleased grin.

  The curtain pulled back to reveal a hulking mass of Pre-Cataclysm ’tronics lurking in the darkness. A display screen mounted several hands above eye level glowed green, tilted down at the empty space in front of it. Behind, snaking machinery connected it to a cabinet on the floor. The metal enclosing it was dark and, in the glow of the screen, seemed just a shadow. It would have been impressive, if Talis hadn’t seen the crisp alien display screens that fooled her into thinking they were windows, or the portable tablets that ran off unseen power packs and weighed less than a dinner plate.

  Illiya monitored something on the back of the cabinet, then looked to Talis. “The connection has been established. Come closer, hurry.”

  Prompted by the tone of Illiya’s voice, Talis took an automatic step forward, standing in the indicated spot—a purple mandala painted on the floor two paces in front of the display screen. She had to tilt her head back to look up at it. It was likely no coincidence that the posture made her immediately uncomfortable. Discomfort was an art that the order of Bone Priestesses had perfected over seventy-five generations.

  A flicker of light and a strange thump sounded once, then the goddess’s image appeared on the glossy screen. Her form was rendered in shades of green. She leaned forward, moving her head in a thoughtful scanning arc, as though peering into a tank of shellfish to pick one for her supper.

  “Illiya, my child, is this the one?”

  The goddess wore an apron over a form-fitting sleeveless tunic. She adjusted a pair of welding goggles on her forehead and Talis saw that she wore heavy gloves as well. Her dark plumage was bound back at the nape of her neck, and feathers framed her shoulders. Behind her, out of focus and blurred, were the contours of arcane mechanisms, books, equipment, and ingredients, spread out across a flat surface.

  “It is, Holy Mother. I present Talis, of Wind Sabre.”

  Talis swallowed.

  “Child,” the goddess said, leaning forward and peering at her. “You are neck-deep in a bog of sacrilege and treachery.”

  Talis looked to Illiya for help, but the priestess was watching the screen and offered no cues.

  “Please, Bone Mother, guide me,” said Talis. No point in denying the accusation. She’d been sensing it all closing in around her, and Onaya Bone almost certainly knew the wider landscape of it.

  “The invaders have a ring that once belonged to my cohort, Lindent Vein.”

  “Rotten hells.”

  Talis froze, mortified at the slip, however inevitable.

  “Indeed,” was all the goddess said in recognition of the vulgarity. “Illiya tells me they promised to leave our planet after speaking with me.”

  “Yes, Bone Mother,” she said, quickly following with: “It was the only reason I agreed to it.”

  “Were you not given one million other reasons?”

  Caught. Hand in the till.

  “I was, Bone Mother, which
seemed a personal benefit that was far dwarfed by the idea of the aliens’ departure.”

  Onaya Bone scratched an itch on her face, unimpressed. The gloves left a streak of something dark across her divine nose. Talis was reminded of Sophie and her ever-present grease and coal smudges.

  “In their audience with me,” she said, looking as though she had stepped in something, “they demanded that we gods present ourselves before their ship and surrender.”

  Talis heard the scrape of Illiya’s sandaled feet against the floor but her eyes were riveted to the image of Onaya Bone’s face, watching her. The already dim room around her went black, and the lurid green moving image of the goddess filled her vision. Her eyes burned and started to water. The ludicrous and horrifying statement overloaded her mind, and she winced at the small unintelligible sound that escaped her lips in place of a proper response.

  “Quite. The aliens you consort with travel in a scout ship, sent across the emptiness between stars to find planets with resources such as ours. Resources like Nexus. There is an armada—an invasion force—waiting for their signal.”

  Onaya Bone pulled off her gloves, dropping them somewhere out of the screen’s view area. She then itched at the same scratch with one of her long, taloned fingers, before untying the apron and pulling it away. Talis heard a smack as the heavy material hit some surface on the other side of the transmission. The goddess sighed.

  “Can you just…” Talis searched for a word, “Can’t you deal with them? Um, Bone Mother.”

  As soon as the words came out of Talis’s mouth, sounding even worse than they had in her head, she braced herself to be destroyed on the spot. Instead the goddess looked at her quietly for a moment. Her lip twitched. She took a deep breath and finally replied.

  “There is a reason, I will confess to you, that we have not dealt with the alien invaders ourselves. We first saw their vessel when it was well beyond the reach of the planet’s atmosphere, as they orbited Peridot and watched our peoples. Watched us. We approached them and made an attempt at contact. Whatever they hoped to learn about Peridot, they already had learned it, at that point so long ago.”

  “But then why… ?” Talis couldn’t think straight. Whatever Illiya had spiked her drink with was stronger than she expected. What was the point of the million blasted presscoins if the aliens had already spoken to the gods, and already knew whatever they needed to about the planet?

  Onaya Bone leaned on one elbow and rubbed some stiffness at the back of her neck. She sighed.

  “They demanded our surrender then, as well. The threat was less immediate at that time. Now they have Lindent’s ring.”

  “If you knew what they wanted, Bone Mother,” Talis said, feeling a tightness across her chest and a sour burning in her stomach. “Why were the aliens allowed to stay so long?”

  Onaya Bone briefly flicked her eyes to the side, to where Illiya stood behind Talis.

  “It is not common knowledge, but I suppose those who can use it against us already are aware: The alien ship’s weapons are able to disrupt our alchemical abilities.”

  Talis felt a coldness grip her. It crept, sharp-legged, up her spine, and clamped down on the back of her skull. She felt woozy. The room shifted as though the stone mesa were no more substantial than the blowing sands.

  “What does that mean, Bone Mother?” Talis asked. Refusing to accept that she knew what it meant.

  “The aliens have the power to kill the gods,” Illiya said, “and steal their power.” Her voice was calm, still strong.

  “You knew this?” Talis turned to her old friend.

  Illiya flinched.

  “All of our highest-ranking disciples were told,” Onaya Bone said. Her voice was airy, low. Tired. “They have maintained the spirits of our children while we have been unable to directly walk among them.”

  The coldness found its way to her mind, and hit behind her forehead like a spark.

  “Wait.”

  “Yes,” said Onaya Bone. An invitation to continue, but an admission of what Talis had yet to ask.

  “How do we know they can kill…”

  But it was clear. The terrible truth hung in the room, made the air impossible to breathe.

  Talis swallowed again. “… Who?”

  Onaya Bone and Illiya exchanged a look. Onaya Bone put a hand over her heart, and Talis saw her shoulders rise with a deep breath.

  “Silus Cutter.”

  Chapter 26

  It was as though the floor fell away. Just gone. She was falling. Everything tilted, lurching angles that rushed past her vision.

  Pain registered somewhere far away as her knees hit the hard floor. The palms of her hands followed. She felt sand, felt her fingernails scrape into the soft turquoise inlay. Her stomach heaved, and her throat burned with bile and the mix of tea and alcohol that revisited her throat. She croaked, high-pitched, in anguish.

  “Talis,” Illiya said, her voice as thick as cream and far away.

  Firm hands clasped her shoulders. Talis shouted, terrified, and scrambled backward on her hands and the balls of her feet.

  “Calm her, my child,” Onaya Bone’s voice said. “We may lose her.”

  Talis’s chest burned. The room would not stop moving. She couldn’t breathe.

  There was a sharp prick at the base of her neck, and Talis shrank away from it, to the side. Illiya crouched beside her, a hypodermic needle held in her hand, its brass plunger pushed to empty.

  “There now,” she cooed. “You’re all right.”

  Sounds went in and out of focus. The points of light in the room flared until it seemed Talis was inside one of the glowing pumpkins instead of a dark chamber. But Illiya was right. She was breathing. Her throat still burned, but it was with the pressure of a restrained battle cry.

  Talis held a hand out and looked at it. Small, but capable of anything.

  “What did you give me?” Her voice was bold. Tempered steel.

  “Courage,” said Onaya Bone. “To face what comes next.”

  “What comes next?” Talis asked.

  “An armada of aliens waits in the darkness beyond Peridot’s atmosphere. They are armed with the power they stole from Silus Cutter. We must be ready.”

  Talis was ready. Ready for anything. She itched to run. But not away, not anymore. She climbed to her feet, which were steady again.

  The room felt cool, but she was warm. Somewhere a memory tickled her, of Illiya’s carefully arranged case of pharmaceutical interrogation aids. The brightly colored vials nestled in silk-lined trays. The thirsty needles, waiting to be filled. A part of her brain that was keeping carefully out of the way told her she was drugged. That it would wear off, and she would again be overwhelmed by the devastation. But the rest of her mind stifled the thought, to hear what she would be commanded to do.

  “Give me purpose, Onaya Bone.”

  “There is a power on this planet beyond alchemy,” said the goddess. It seemed her fatigue was gone. She had let her hair down, and it lifted in some unseen wind and whipped about her head and shoulders. “Nexus is made of such power. The ring you retrieved also contained it. It is this energy the aliens wish to harvest.”

  “I knew it wasn’t just some ugly ancient artifact.” Talis spoke with confidence. Dropped the formalities of addressing the goddess. There was no need to be humble any longer. Her blood thrummed in her ears. A call to battle, beat on the drum of her warrior’s heart.

  “Certainly not,” Onaya Bone said. Leather armor began to coalesce on her shoulders, neck, and collarbone, as if called out of thin air. “Lindent Vein’s ring is one of five, each filled at the very instant the Cataclysm released all the energies of the planet. We alchemists crafted Nexus with the remainder of this power to make Peridot habitable again. Its power shields us from direct attack, but we cannot wield it against the Yu’Nyun without riskin
g the planet’s integrity.

  “The rings’ power, however, is mobile. Stronger, and it can be unleashed. By combining the strength of all five rings, we will create a weapon that can turn away the alien invasion and ensure Peridot’s safety against any other threats that find their way to our world.”

  Illiya took hold of Talis’s right hand, and Talis watched eagerly as the high priestess produced a small tool with an intricate metal design welded to one end. She depressed the flat end of it with her thumb, and in moments the branding plate glowed red hot.

  Purpose and righteousness flowed through Talis’s veins as Illiya pushed the brand against the inside of her forearm. Talis smelled the flesh sear. Felt the thrill run up her arm, all electric.

  “All who see this mark will know you serve my purpose,” Onaya Bone said, sitting up straight, shoulders back, her eyes burning with fire. Somehow, despite the green tint to the screen, Talis saw the magenta of the goddess’s eyes as plainly as if she was in the room. “Get the ring back from the aliens and bring it to me at Nexus.”

  Talis bowed to the flame-silhouetted figure on the screen, then turned and marched herself, unescorted, from the room.

  In the high priestess’s chamber, the acolytes stood over the crumpled bodies of the four aliens. Slain. Wretched piles of pale limbs. Vicious tri-bladed daggers dripped blue blood. Scrimshaw lay atop the Yu’Nyun captain, arms outstretched, as though xist last act had been in defense of xist commanding officer.

  Talis inhaled their dusty smell and the acrid tinge in the air that must have been their blood. It sent cascading prickles down the length of her arms. Her fingers twitched for the weapons in her holsters.

  “Load their bodies into the litter,” she said, confident in her right to command the acolytes. “I will return them to their ship before I blow it out of the skies.”