Only the Open

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  In the box was a Pelted woman, seashell-curled, and like the wind over the ocean her breath whistled softly. Not sleeping, Lisinthir thought, with a creeping sorrow at the sight, but in that twilight state that was neither sleep nor unconsciousness that belonged only to the seriously ill. As he drew closer he found patches on her body where the fur had fallen out. She had been beautiful once, black and white and merry orange. She was now a portrait of endurance.

  “I speak a little of her language,” the Worldlord said, and there was nothing in his voice to give him away save its tonelessness. “And she has learned a little of ours. But we never speak of what ails her. She refuses. The Surgeon doesn’t know. And wouldn’t. What do we know of alien biology?” The Worldlord reached over, hand arrested above the woman’s head, where it trembled. Then, slowly, he set it on her mane and stroked it, so lightly the touch barely disturbed the strands. “She will not tell me, and if I don’t know, how can I fix it? But maybe she will tell a stranger.”

  The Chatcaavan stepped back. “I call her Gentle.” And then, brusque. “I will leave the two of you to talk.”

  And then he was gone, leaving Lisinthir with the shock of it.

  If it was a trap, it was a perfect one. But what Chatcaavan would think to trap another male this way? When it revealed too much that could be used against him? Even if it was all an elaborate falsehood, the rumor would cling to the Worldlord… that he had coddled an alien, that he had kept a pet and heaped her with treasures and cared that she might be ill.

  And she was ill. Dying, he thought, and wished briefly and sincerely that Jahir had left more of his memories in him during their touches. Lisinthir had given his cousin so much, and all of it violent. What had he received beyond the fact that he was loved? That and music… and it was the music, the memory of songs sung in his mind to block pain and ward off death on the courier, that made him think that there would be no healing this Karaka’An.

  Jahir would have known what was wrong with her. Lisinthir would have to ask.

  He crouched alongside the box and said in hushed Universal, “Alet. Alet, will you wake for me?”

  Nothing. But he was patient. He had hunted warier game than this. Crueler… perhaps not, given her fate, and what it would do to him to know he could not save her.

  He did not want to touch her when the skin revealed by her furless patches was so raw. To insinuate himself into her mind… he could do it, but he was not adept at it the way his cousin was. And he had not asked permission, the way he had of Laniis and the Knife, when permission made so much difference between kindness and horror. His was the gift of physical force from a distance, and the other talents, they were harder. How had he wound up here where his new abilities would avail him so little?

  “Alet,” he said again, soft. “Alet, will you wake for a man in a domino?”

  Nothing, for a long time. Then her shoulder rose as she drew a deeper breath. He tasted it with her, the way the air smelled brightly of spring, but softly of evening. Slowly she turned her head to look over her shoulder, and he grew still. She would have had beautiful eyes once; he could just see a hint of their color, one orange, the other brown. But they were going milky, as if scored with blurred scars. Could she even see him? Perhaps that was why she was so slow to respond to him. Her brow furrowed: confusion, yes, but not alarm. She was exhausted, long past alarm. The next world was more real to her than this one.

  “Don’t… know you,” she murmured. If her voice had been dulcet once, and he thought it might have been, it had long since lost its music, more whisper than melody.

  “No,” he said. “Alet, if we brought you home… could the Alliance’s medicine heal you?”

  The frown grew more pronounced. Perplexity, still.

  “I know you are dying,” Lisinthir said softly, wishing desperately he could drop the roquelaure’s seeming. “Could that process be arrested, did you go home again?”

  “I… can never go home… again,” she murmured.

  “I could take you.” Ridiculous promise, but he made it anyway. “I will take you, if you say the words.”

  A sweet, sad smile curved her mouth. “Strange… dragon.”

  “You have no idea,” he answered.

  “He… sent for you?” Best to nod in response to that. Her eyes cleared, just a little. “He is kind that way. But… too late. You wouldn’t know. Diseases… in our design…” She sighed out, closed her eyes. “Almost over, now.” Softer, “Miss… the sun at home….”

  He chanced a touch then, just the softest glide of a finger over her cheek. “You will see it soon,” he whispered.

  Her sigh was acquiescence as she slid back into the twilight sleep and the dream that was better than waking. For how long he crouched there, watching her ribs rise and fall, he didn’t know. Only that when he finally stood his knees hurt, and not more than his chest and his throat. To die like this, far from home, from family, amid enemies, as a pampered pet who had once been free….

  He left the room.

  In the antechamber, the Worldlord was drinking by the balcony, and at his arrival took a step toward him. Halted abruptly. He was Chatcaavan, and yet he let it be seen in his face, his heart falling.

  “There is no fixing it,” Lisinthir said abruptly. “The Pelted—most of the furred aliens—were created long ago by humans and that creation was imperfect, leaving them subject to genetic flaws. She has one of them.”

  “There’s nothing I can do?”

  “You could send her home so she could die among her own people,” Lisinthir said, baring his teeth. If the Knife were here, he would counsel against this comment, but Lisinthir didn’t care. The casual callousness of it, of the isolation of the vulnerable in their last hours from any hope of comfort… “Had she gone back sooner, she may have received treatment to extend her life, or maybe even been cured.”

  The Worldlord stared at him. Slowly, he said, “Send her home? You suggest this?”

  Lisinthir challenged him with his eyes. “Yes?”

  “They are slaves,” the Worldlord murmured. “But you speak as if they are people.”

  Lisinthir said, enunciating each word separately, “I fight them and win. If they are not people, my victories mean nothing.”

  The Worldlord inhaled sharply. Letting his breath out carefully, he said, “Some already say that such victories are meaningless.”

  “Then they are about to receive a very painful education when they bring their war to the Alliance. And perhaps it is for the best that I not join the Navy to watch them learn it.” Lisinthir inclined his head, but kept his eyes trained on the Worldlord’s so he could see the ferocity in them. “If that is all, Worldlord. I find I am tired.”

  The other male hesitated. “Yes. Of course.”

  Lisinthir headed for the door. Had in fact reached it when the Worldlord added, quietly, “Thank you. For trying.”

  To that, Lisinthir said nothing. He went down the steps, as he had gone down so many Chatcaavan steps before, and stopped a guard at its base. “My slaves. Have them sent to me.” And then he climbed the steps again in yet another tower to reach his guest room, and there he stared out the window, aware that he was clenching his jaw only because his teeth began to ache.

  When his slaves were ushered in—on leashes, to his infuriation—he closed the door on the manor and the look in his eyes must have betrayed him because Laniis rose instantly from her knees and said, “You can’t kill them all.”

  He wanted, very badly, to ask why not. Instead, he managed to grate, “I know.” The admission loosened something in him, enough that he was able to sigh, to release the grinding helplessness. “I know. But it doesn’t change that I would in a heartbeat if I could do so without consequences we could not shape to our advantage.”

  The Knife had been hanging back, staring at them with hands lightly clasped in front of him. His eyes were wide, and something in the body language reminded of Chatcaavan stares, their enormity, their clarity. Perhaps becau
se in Seersan form the Knife’s eyes were lighter and more saturated, strangely, than in his real shape?

  “Truly,” the Knife said, “You are like us.”

  “No.” Lisinthir prowled past him to take the chair nearest the balcony. “If I have learned anything from this brief excursion, it’s that I am nothing like any of you. We might share a directness of approach, and I may ape your manners well, but that is not enough to form a kinship. One must hold the same virtues dear. Means do not make bedfellows amongst those who do not share ends.”

  Laniis followed him and sat at his feet, and shocked him out of his mood by reaching up and wrapping her arms around his waist. Startled, he looped an arm around her shoulders, and this brought his head down so far it was convenient to set his cheek on her hair. The smell of her, the steadiness of her aura, the strength of her small body... it centered him. He breathed in, exhaled, watched her ear twitch as the plume of air rushed past it.

  “You have to stay strong,” Laniis said. “Because we can’t leave, arii. He’s here. That human? That’s him.”

  “Not possible,” Lisinthir said. “That slave was a broken thing, and the Emperor is not capable of that level of reduction. Is there some other slave he might be masquerading as?”

  Laniis leaned back, face sober. “There are only five slaves here, arii. A Hinichi. A Harat-Shar and a Karaka’An. And two humans. And of those five, only two are male. The Hinichi and the human. It has to be him, Ambassador. Andrea and Emlyn said he fell over the estate’s wall bleeding, ran to her, and asked her—asked her—for her pattern.”

  His heart stumbled. That sounded like his Emperor. But... “Is it an act?”

  “The other slaves,” the Knife offered tentatively. “They say he has been tortured.”

  “Chatcaavan males torture one another constantly,” Lisinthir said.

  “No.” The Knife did not advance into the light where the two of them were sitting. He shifted from foot to foot, his discomfort manifest. “We hurt one another. We kill one another. But torture... that was reserved to the most high. Where humiliation was a substitute for death, because the males had become too powerful to be sacrificed casually without disrupting whatever they held power over. Most of the time we... torture... the disenfranchised, Ambassador. Those whose deaths change nothing.”

  It was as if he was falling toward a wall. He had faced his own demise more than once. Had thrown himself over and over again at peril until he’d thought himself inured to fear. Had he believed himself courageous? How wrong he’d been. The idea that the extinguished spirit he’d witnessed in that human’s eyes might belong to the male he’d nearly given his life to bring over to the side of light—the male he’d fallen in love with—he could only respond to the idea by turning away from it.

  “One moment at a time,” Laniis breathed.

  He rested a hand on her head. Composed himself and said, “So. We must bring him away from here. I may have set some groundwork for that already by mentioning that I bought slaves as well as sold them.”

  “So you buy him and then we go?” the Knife asked, hopeful.

  “That only solves the problem of the... target... we are here to liberate,” Lisinthir said. “The other slaves, we will have to steal. But that may not be as difficult as I thought for several reasons.”

  “You can’t—” the Knife began and stopped abruptly at the look Lisinthir leveled at him.

  “Don’t,” Lisinthir said, low. “Don’t presume.”

  But the Knife bared his teeth. “I must, if it endangers the mission.”

  “It won’t,” Lisinthir said. “Because if needs must I can kill anyone who attempts to stop us without so much as touching them. And if that creates problems, then so be it.”

  “Let’s not get wound up in this right now,” Laniis said, holding up a hand. “We can’t move until the ship comes back anyway, and we’re not even sure when that’ll be. How likely is it that you’ll be allowed to stay for a while, arii?”

  “I am confident I can convince the Worldlord to extend my invitation.”

  “All right. So our plan is to wait for the signal, then leave with everyone we’re taking with us,” Laniis said firmly. “Just as it’s always been. That means you, Ambassador, have to lay the groundwork for your offer for the human slave. Maybe both of them, as a mated pair, since you’ve already established yourself as a breeder... that’ll give you fewer targets to liberate the hard way. Show interest, that sort of thing. The Knife and I will see what we can overhear.” She sat up to meet his eyes. “You have to stay focused, arii. Promise me. I know you’re angry. I’m angry too. But we can’t do anything precipitous when we have no idea when our pick-up’s coming.”

  “I know.” He rested a hand on her face, slid it to cup her cheek. “But... you’re wrong, Laniis. I am not angry.” He let his brow fall until it rested against her furred one. “I am afraid.”

  And she... she snorted, surprising him into looking at her. “As if that’s ever stopped you before,” she said fondly. “Just keep going. One step at a time. That’s how any of us ever got through this.”

  His laugh was perfunctory, but it surprised him by relieving some tension in him that had been building again. “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “And now,” Laniis said, “Watches. Which one do you want, Ambassador? Knife?”

  “I’ll take the first,” Lisinthir said. “I won’t be able to sleep anyway, not yet.”

  “I will take second, then,” Knife said. “It is early for me, as well.”

  “Fine by me.” Laniis yawned. “I’m for bed.”

  “And if I join you, would that be permissible?” Lisinthir asked, casually.

  She glanced over her shoulder, nodded. “I think it would look better if someone flew past and saw you with one of us there.”

  Neither of them said that he wanted her there just to hold her. Not only because he needed the opportunity to protect someone, but because despite her determination he knew she was feeling the strain of being in a Chatcaavan harem again, naked and vulnerable.

  “I promise I’ll do nothing to excite Na’er’s opprobrium,” Lisinthir said solemnly.

  She huffed. “I know you won’t.” And disappeared into the sleeping chamber.

  Leaving the Knife to stare after her with a frown. And then he exclaimed, “Wait, does this mean that I must sleep in your bed when she’s on watch?”

  Lisinthir grinned. “I promise I’ll do nothing to excite your opprobrium either. Knife.”

  “Ughn!”

  That day they did not drag the Emperor back to Manufactory-East’s chambers. They didn’t kennel him, either, which confused him. Instead, he was instated once more in the round room in the annex, except this time there were pallets as well as blankets and pillows. Had something happened in the kennel room that required cleaning or maintenance? Was that why they were being given this brief reprieve? He touched the edge of the pallet, unnerved by its appearance. He distrusted good fortune. He didn’t want to hope for better treatment because having it snatched away hurt so much worse when he’d eased into it.

  But he was exhausted, and the arrival of a new Chatcaavan into the equation only exacerbated his anxiety. Would this one be better or worse than Manufactory-East? Deputy-East? When would he be sent to serve this male’s needs, and how hard would it be?

  He didn’t want to think about it, so he fell onto the pallet and hid under the blankets. The naked arch of his back had begun to hurt him. He sometimes felt his wings shifting, but when he looked behind his shoulder, he saw nothing... and every time it happened, his memory of what he was supposed to be grew dimmer.

  Best to sleep, and hope not to wake from sleep again.

  Except, of course, that he did. But not this time to the clawed grasp of his captors. Andrea, again. And behind her, Emlyn. He blinked bleary eyes, squinted up at her. “A-andrea?”

  “I can’t believe anyone would come for him,” Emlyn said, puzzled. “He’s too soft to be a criminal and wh
at Chatcaavan would rescue another out of loyalty?”

  “Don’t get me started again,” Andrea said. She rested a hand on the Emperor’s shoulder. “Do you know if anyone might be looking for you? To help you?”

  Help him? No. To hope was beyond him. And if he was rescued, what good what it do him? They would slay him the moment they understood his handicap. How righteous that execution would be: the symbol of the grand Change coming to the Chatcaava, prevented forever from completing that Change. Trapped, in fact, by the Change itself.

  He would die. The only question was whether they would kill him before he could beg them to do it.

  “They have to be wrong,” Emlyn said, and fell silent instantly when the guards arrived with Dominika. They released her to the room, and after they’d left the Harat-Shar stood and brushed off her fur. She had an unlikely pelt, beautiful, mottled in tan and black clouds, and her nakedness left the pattern uninterrupted. He thought she didn’t mind nudity, didn’t know why he had that impression. Only that her body language was less cramped than Andrea’s, or Emlyn’s.

  “Who has to be wrong?” the Harat-Shar asked, yawning. She had sharper fangs than either of the other two.

  “The slaves who came with the new Chatcaavan,” Andrea said. “They say they’re here to find the Survivor.”

  Dominika glanced at him, interested. “Is that so?”

  “They weren’t cowed, those slaves,” Andrea said. “And their master—he insisted we sleep on proper beds. That’s why we’re out here tonight.”

  “You see?” Emlyn said to Dominika. “That’s exactly why he can’t be here to rescue anyone. Insisting on better treatment for slaves isn’t a way to earn the respect of other Chatcaava. It’s a way to make them suspicious of you. And how could he afford to make anyone suspicious if he’s here for some daring mission of mercy?”