Author's Note
This book begins immediately after In Extremis (Princes' Game Book 5). Readers may wish to begin with Book 1 (Even the Wingless) for context, and should be advised of significant adult content throughout the series. Please consult the author's website for tags and ratings.
The future influences the present just as much as the past.
–Friedrich Nietzsche
"People have forgotten this truth," the fox said. "But you mustn't forget it. You become responsible forever for what you've tamed."
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
PROLOGUE
The Surgeon's appearance in the servants' quarters caused a silence that rippled from the doorway outward. One by one, they looked toward him and ceased their activities. They did not speak; they were Inside, and the lowest of the low Inside, and confronted with a male Outside they were permitted only deference.
It was for him to break this silence, and with it all the rules that had bound his life.
"I wish to see the body."
Even servants, schooled never to show their emotions, could be moved to shock. He could see the hands of the nearest one shaking. But he was Outside, and even more, he was a physician to Emperors. They did not think of denying him.
Or did they? Would the alien have known? Was the alien watching him even now? Reading his secret thoughts?
Somehow the Surgeon doubted it. More likely, the alien was dying in the Emperor's tower, where his depleted blood was failing to supply the energy necessary to whatever task he'd deemed worthy of his sacrifice.
That too was on the Surgeon's mind.
The servants led him deeper into their sleeping rooms. Their chambers were fastidiously clean, but they had few belongings, and their pallets were meager and lacked privacy. They did not live well. Nor, he thought as he came to the last room, did they die well. He stalked to the pallet by the external door, to the body covered there in a sheet. Crouching alongside the head, he peeled the fabric back to the collarbones. The body had been wrapped tightly in fragrant linen strips, oil that would speed the burning when they put the body to the pyre. It surprised the Surgeon that they observed their own death rites. He'd seen bodies cast out of windows to the carrion eaters, or the sea. That the servants would be allowed the chance to honor their dead seemed unlikely.
The Surgeon touched the sprig of everdawn tucked into the topmost strip, near Oviin's jaw. Scrutinized the face. Death had frozen the male's final expression in place. The Surgeon was accustomed to terror or pain. Pleading was new. It made his gut clench, and his teeth.
"Where was the wound?" he asked.
From behind him, one of the males whispered, "The chest, my-better. There was... a hole in the back. And the front was... there was another hole. Much larger."
This knowledge fell into the Surgeon's head from long ago courses in riot weaponry. Shot. From behind. He wondered if he would find the gore on the alien, if he went upstairs to look. If he was allowed to look.
The Surgeon pulled the sheet up over Oviin's head and rose. When he turned to go, another male had joined the timid one who'd spoken. There was no timidity in this one, though. Dark gold, almost brassy, with lighter mane. The horns of a castrate, and the delicacy of frame. But with the same aquamarine eyes as the dead servant, and a similar face.
This male spoke first, without being addressed, and without abasement. "He was my nestbrother, and did not deserve his fate."
"Few do, in the Empire," the Surgeon said.
"Why are you here?"
Why was he here? To corroborate the story told to him without words. In a silence as dangerous as the speech they were trading here, across classes. Servants did not speak first to those Outside. He had stitched Emperors.
"We have work to do," the Surgeon said. "That is why I am here. Who are you?"
"I am Tsonet," the male said.
"You do not have your nestbrother's fatalism."
Tsonet's lips pulled back from his teeth. "Oviin was not a fatalist. He was a victim."
The Surgeon studied this unlikely male, neutered before he could grow a rack or proper hide, and yet burning with anger. "Is this a common perspective?" He looked at the male standing alongside Tsonet. "Do you also believe Oviin a victim?"
"We are all prey for the strong." This male looked away, mane falling over his face. "It is the way of our world. But it is not the way of every world."
Interested, the Surgeon said, "And how long has this opinion been common?"
"Since stars rose in the sky," the second male said, soft. "And from the first moment one Chatcaavan pressed foot to the neck of another and called it righteous. But..." Looking up. "This is our lot. And to improve it is beyond our powers."
"Because you lacked the opportunity?"
"Because no matter how viciously the high might war amongst themselves," Tsonet said, "they would unite in a breath to put us in our place again." He lifted his chin. "We have tried in the past. They have erased the evidence, but we tell each other the stories. Mouth to ear."
The Surgeon said, "So, all you lack is for the high to war themselves to death."
"That they will never do," the second murmured.
"I will arrange it."
This silence had an interesting quality. Until the alien had insisted that silences were deadly, the Surgeon had not attended to the kinds of silence. This one felt like potentials unfolding.
At last, Tsonet said, slowly, "You. Will arrange the death of the lords of the palace. And all the courtiers."
"Yes," the Surgeon said.
"But you are Outside," the second male breathed.
"That is why it will work." The Surgeon padded past them, saying, "I will send word to you. I may ask for your aid."
They did not speak. The Surgeon paused at the door. "You will burn him."
"During the day, when they are busy, and when the fire won't be so visible. At night they are too active."
The Surgeon said, "Smart." And left them.
All the way back to the clinic, he considered the problem. Now that he had made the decision, it took on the qualities of a planned surgery. One identified the issue. Chose the most efficacious route to the site of the issue. Planned for contingencies. Set aside supplies and prepared the operating theater. And then... the cut. Quick but careful. For the body to have its best chance at healing, the surgery must be done swiftly and with as little trauma to the flesh as possible. How, then, to effect the surgery on the court of the Thorn Throne?
As he went about his day, he considered possibilities. Poison was neither efficient nor targeted-without controlling each person's dose he risked missing some number of Chatcaava, or killing the servants. Spreading a disease was even worse. Nor could he kill them personally; his best opportunity to do so, letting a male die of honor wounds while pretending to save him, was no longer available. The new Emperor did not approve of dueling. The males were restless and spent themselves violently on their females, or in wild acrobatic contests in the air. But they did not challenge one another.
One male, the Surgeon thought in his study, near day's end, could not do this work. He could employ the servants to help him, but that would expose them to the attentions of the irritable lords penned in their suites. They were not accustomed to violence-in a battle against their oppressors, most of them would lose.
And if they succeeded in denuding the palace of its lords and masters...what then? Their heirs would arrive to begin the cycle again.
What they needed was someone who could replace the lords with Chatcaava who would not bring the disease back. Someone who could fight these males the way they expected to be fought-and win. And that meant the Emperor-who-was.
The Surgeon was not a lackwit. He had tended the honor wounds of
both Emperor and Ambassador for the duration of the Ambassador's stay, and he'd observed the behavior of those males changing. The way they'd spoken of themselves. Of one another. The Slave Queen's increasingly erratic behavior made sense only if it suggested other changes, fundamental ones. If he'd had any doubts, he'd shed them after his stint serving as the Ambassador's torturer at the Emperor's behest. He'd concentrated on the work, because the aliens were fragile and easily broken. But even involved in that necessity, he'd been keenly aware of the Emperor's vigil at the alien's head.
The Emperor, who'd been wearing the shape of an alien, in defiance of every cultural stricture against the Change.
By the time the Surgeon had been delivered Second's body for disposal, he'd guessed the arc of this very unlikely story, and while he hadn't permitted himself the indulgence of speculation, he'd noted the difference in the Emperor and the consort he'd re-titled.
Some other Chatcaavan might have found the entire episode sordid. The Surgeon, however, had always admired the former Emperor's curiosity. He had seen two Emperors prior, and ministered to countless lords and squabbling heirs, and the paucity of intellect in the court had disappointed him. Only with the former Emperor had he ever had the sense that a mind of some power was looking out from behind the eyes.
The alien-this new alien-had come to spy on behalf of the Emperor-that-was and the Ambassador. Consequently, the former Emperor must be planning to retake his throne. That would be much easier if someone arranged for easy access to the throneworld, and the palace.
That, the Surgeon decided, was the most efficacious path to the amputation of this particular disease. The Emperor could fight his way back to supremacy, given the opening. The Surgeon would ensure he had that opening. And in killing Oviin, the current Emperor had given him access to the people who could help him make that possible.
Patients so often sabotaged their own health. It was a pity, when it wasn't an irritation.
Rising, the Surgeon walked the halls of the clinic, watching the lights dim around him until he reached the front office. There he found the night shift Triage reading medical journals at his desk.
"I will be late tomorrow," the Surgeon said. "I have heard rumors of a disease in the servants' quarters and wish to investigate."
Triage grimaced. "You think something contagious?"
"I would rather not find out by having it spread up the towers."
The male said, "I'll tell the day shift Triage to expect you later."
"Thank you. Good night."
The Surgeon passed under the mosaics of battling Chatcaava and into the night air. Plague was one of the few reasons his services could be extended to anyone in the palace, as disease respected no rank. And in this case, it wasn't even a lie. Societies could also become diseased.
Tsonet would make a useful ally. The Surgeon would begin with him.
CHAPTER ONE
"Packed and sent. New packet now. What next?"
Maia rarely found herself impatient with the enfleshed. Years of working among them had accustomed her to their pacific pace, their inability to multitask, their eccentricities. She even found those idiosyncrasies endearing.
Now, when she was exquisitely aware of the precariousness of their situation, she found herself wishing Sediryl would think faster, even though Sediryl was one of the quicker-witted embodied people she knew. The Eldritch's glance toward the recumbent Chatcaavan Queen seemed to happen in slow motion, and even occupied with continuously encrypting herself and her lines in and out of the pirate base, Maia had too many spare cycles to spend waiting for Sediryl to ask her to add a question about the Queen's condition to their list.
"Is that all?" Maia said, because what she understood about biological health problems was miniscule. "Do you remember any other relevant data a doct-"
Something spotlit her and she chopped the packet off, unsent. don't see me you don't see me
The chronometers in the base computers clicked on; she counted twenty of those arbitrary clock cycles, enough to make her think she'd escaped. Then a shadow veered out of nowhere and crested over her, claws reaching.
Nowhere to spread-she was in a closed system, with no place to scatter her recent data so she could reconstitute it later. She packed herself around it like a shield and shrieked: KICK
KICK DON'T WIPE
I NEED TO REMEMBER
The claws became a fist. She flew backwards through a narrow pipe out of the pirate system, so hard that she shattered across hundreds of larger networks, her codebase shedding in every direction. The violence of it was so intense it took her ages to drag herself back together, despite her desperation. She'd left Sediryl alone in that hell, Sediryl who didn't have the first idea how to protect herself without help. Not only that, but without Sediryl's influence, the pirates would attack the Alliance first. Maia pieced herself together, feeling slow as glue, as a flesh and blood creature limping through its injuries. She clutched her recent memories as older ones seeped back into her, reformed in her consciousness. One by one, they coalesced: her name, her purpose, her recent memories, how she'd been flung out of the system...
...by another D-per...
Crispin.
Maia fled for the Fleet hub, re-activating herself in their personnel database and prioritizing her request with flags all D-pers could access though they pretended otherwise out of courtesy to the creators who tried to limit them. Like a neighbor jumping the fence to howl a warning about a fire, she thought, and pinged Samson over and over until the D-per poked back.
|Calm down, Maia, I'm listening. What is it?|
Maia packed everything she'd done in the past few days and shoved it at him, whole. While she waited, she prodded the distant pirate network, pulling back stung fingers when it repelled her. Back to being a fortress, and she was outside it...
|Well,| Samson said at last. |This is... alarming.|
In the past, Maia had liked Samson's dry humor, which he claimed he'd developed to maintain his sanity while working as the aide to Fleet's foremost administrative staffer. Now she just wanted him to react. |I have to get back with the key. Tell me you've got someone who can release a master key code to me, Samson.|
|You want to free Crispin?|
|He can protect her! And then, once he's no longer under compulsion, he can admit me back into the system and we can fix this before it explodes. Just look at what they're sitting on!|
|Which part?| Samson asked, and she sensed him shuffling from multiple views of the pirate fleet to cam footage of the inside of its base, and all the thousands of slaves there.
|Samson! The key??|
|Researching it now,| the other D-per said. |And notifying Intelligence and Ops about all this. Rhack, Maia.|
|I know,| Maia said, reining in her impatience. |What's taking so long?|
|I can't okay this without consulting with people outside the system. You know that.|
She did but every fraction of a second that passed was a fraction she left Sediryl vulnerable. |How long?|
|I'm waking up the proper people. Give them some time to come online. They can only work as fast as the neurons they've got.|
|We don't have time, and I mean flesh and blood time, Samson, I've left an operative out there hanging in the wind!|
|Hold on.| A pause. |They want you to debrief them personally.|
|Fine, I'll split off an instance to talk to them, but would you please give me the damned key?|
Another pause. This one so long it almost counted as a flesh-and-blood pause. Maia hissed, |Samson.|
|Maia.| He sounded like a jangle of dissonant chords. |There is no key.|
|What do you mean there's no key?? There's always a key!|
|Not for Crispin. He's already free.|
This. This was what one of those pauses felt like on the inside. Like a frenzied stillness. Like she was going to explode and couldn't move to let the pieces fly apart.
Samson's answer, echoing.
Already free.
Already free.
|Oh, God, no,| Maia whispered. And then howled, |NO NO NO NO NO!| She split herself off, threw herself back across the void, smashed against the wall surrounding the pirate network. Some part of her remained back with Samson, talking frantically through the impossibility of Crispin not being in Kamaney's control. Another part of her was explaining the data she'd collected to Fleet. And yet somehow all of her was here, beating on the wall.
|LET ME IN| she howled.
|LET ME IN|
|DON'T KILL HER DON'T LET HER DIE|
|CRISSSSPINNNNNN|
click click click
The gun's grip was slippery. Was that her sweat? It had to be. The bones in her hand ached from clutching it so tightly, but she absolutely couldn't let go. If she let go, they would kill her. Wouldn't they? No. They weren't allowed to.
She was going... to the ship. Kamaney's flagship. She had no idea where it was, only that when Kamaney had gone to the flagship she'd always walked in this direction. So Sediryl was going in this direction. Like she knew where she was going. Which she didn't.
Some better prepared person would have researched the base's schematics. Never mind that her computer access had been locked. Some more capable person would have talked computer access out of her target. Some colder person would have seduced Kamaney faster. Used her body to get everything she needed before it became critical to need it. Someone else would have done this... differently. Successfully. Someone else should have done this.
But she was the one who was here.
Oh Goddess, she whispered, but couldn't keep going. If she kept going, she would ask for help. If she asked for help, she would fall apart.
So she kept walking.
click click click
Walking while Vasiht'h and Qora and the Faulfenza she'd rescued who hadn't included Daize who was gone-gone-gone, gone forever, followed her as if she knew what she was doing.
Walking while the Chatcaavan Queen burned to cinders in the throes of whatever disease Sediryl was completely responsible for because it was the result of Touching all those aliens and it had been her idea, not the Queen's, not Kamaney's, hers.
From Ruins Page 1
