From Ruins

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  "Yes. Yes, I should." Deputy-East sighed and tucked the gem away. "It would be nice to serve a master who appreciated my efforts more often. Since, as you once said, we all end up with one."

  The Worldlord looked at the remaining gem, then up at Lisinthir. "A boon. From the Emperor's..."

  "Huntbrother," Lisinthir said. "What else?"

  The Worldlord hesitated, then chuffed a reluctant laugh. "Always with the clever words. It's not even your first language."

  "Nor my second, come to that," Lisinthir said. "Take it, Worldlord, for what it is: a gift between friends. Are we not friends?"

  The Worldlord brushed the gem off the edge of the table into his waiting palm. "I hoped when we parted that you would consider me so. I am glad to find it truth."

  "You really are the Sword," Deputy-East said in wonderment. "All that time." He guffawed suddenly. "No wonder you couldn't fly!"

  "Rather an awkward fiction that one," Lisinthir agreed, smiling. "But it served." He lifted a brow. "So, is there alcohol? I wouldn't mind hearing how you've spent the intervening time."

  "There isn't enough alcohol in the known worlds for how we've spent the intervening time," Deputy-East complained.

  "But enough to make a start," the Worldlord said. "I'll fetch it."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Tucked down into the darkest recesses of the Twelveworld Lord's flagship, Maia developed a sudden sympathy for Sediryl's tendency to leap off cliffs and trust that she would grow wings on the way down. Hiding here wasn't the worst of the ideas Maia had come up with, but it wasn't the best, either. She'd been hoping for lackadaisical security, given that the system lords fielded what was effectively personal guard detachments as militia. Unfortunately, the Lord of the Twelveworld took his responsibilities seriously. Maia had seen Fleet vessels with less rigorous discipline.

  Secreting herself here had at least accomplished her goal. She now had access to data that wasn't hitting the public nodes, because all the Twelveworld Lord's ships were reporting back continuously, in great detail, and it was the sort of operational data that no admiral in his right mind would want divulged at large. None of it was helping Maia locate Sediryl faster, but at least she was in a position to see how effective the pirates were. She didn't blame the Twelveworld Lord for his bad mood.

  Maia had learned a great deal about the Twelveworld Lord, sneaking through his ship. His warriors took pride in serving him, because he was in every way admirable except one, and that single exception made good gossip fodder: he had broad and perverse tastes. No one minded trading speculations about their lord's voracious appetites, and what adventures he might have had sating them. The Chatcaava liked their males passionate, Maia thought, finding the fondness with which the ratings discussed the Twelveworld Lord peculiar. She supposed homeworld Harat-Shar might have spoken similarly of one of their own, but most of the Pelted would have been less tolerant.

  She sorted incoming data-carefully, siphoning it off in the tiniest of threads-while keeping an eye on him. He was in his quarters now, less spartan than anyone else's, and reading reports. She'd watched him for most of two days without seeing any signs of his purported escapades; he didn't even have any females with him, though Maia assumed the extra room attached to his was intended to house them.

  As she watched, a male not in uniform approached his door and requested admittance.

  "Yes?"

  "It is your Attendant, sir."

  Maia frowned, carefully insinuated herself into the room.

  The Attendant entered, and when he did the Twelveworld Lord set aside his tablet and held out an arm. The male went to him and wrapped his own around the Twelveworld Lord's head. They made a pretty picture, a very pretty one: the Attendant was nearly hornless, with a delicate face and hide a glossy slate gray, and the Twelveworld Lord's relative brawn and brown skin were a distinct contrast.

  "You always know when I need you," the Twelveworld Lord said.

  The Attendant smiled. "It's why you keep me, sir."

  "I keep you for much more than that." The Twelveworld Lord leaned back, caressed the newcomer's brow ridge. The Attendant tilted his face into the touch, bright blue eyes closing. "Ah, but you have perfect timing. I need a break from this. Massage?"

  "Anything that pleases you, sir."

  They repaired to the Twelveworld Lord's bunk, where that male stretched out on his stomach as the Attendant set out a selection of bottles and towels. Maia started to withdraw, feeling strange about invading the privacy even of one of the Alliance's enemies, when the Twelveworld Lord said, "This is a bad business, my Attendant."

  "I have heard, a little." The Attendant shivered, then applied himself to smoothing the oil into the hide between the Twelveworld Lord's wings. "So much destruction. And so many people stolen."

  "Yes," the Twelveworld Lord murmured. "Just as we do to them, they do now to us." He shifted a wing. "I hate it, my own. We should be the ones taking slaves, not them."

  The Attendant dipped his head. "It does not seem in character for the aliens. Does it?"

  Surprised, Maia focused more on him, wondering how someone's masseuse knew about Pelted attitudes.

  "No," the Twelvelord admitted, grudging. "That is the paradox of it. That they might fight us when we take them, or submit to us and break, but they don't think of stealing us for their own harems. They have fire, but they are not like us." He was silent beneath the Attendant's ministrations, eyes closing. Then: "And they have strange notions of Fittingness."

  "So you have said before," the Attendant said. "But... that would be in keeping, wouldn't it? They are aliens. If they were like us, they would be us."

  "And we would lose something," the Twelveworld Lord mused. "Just knowing they exist makes our own existence better, because we know ourselves when we compare. Better other sapients than animals." He stretched an arm before curling it under his head. "There, that spot. Ahhh... yes."

  The Attendant smiled, dipped down and licked it before continuing to rub it.

  "So good to me, my Attendant."

  "I love to serve you," the Attendant murmured, and continued kneading. He worked in silence for several minutes. "There is something on your mind, sir."

  "Many things." The Twelveworld Lord's mouth firmed. Then he sighed. "But yes, I was thinking. Because we are discussing the aliens."

  "And their strange notions of Fittingness?"

  "How well you listen," the Twelveworld Lord said, amused. "No one else pays quite so much attention to what I say."

  The Attendant nudged the other male with the tip of his nose. "So what strange notion of Fittingness is occupying you?"

  "I had told you the Usurper captured the Ambassador."

  "And that you saw him, yes."

  The Twelveworld Lord shuddered. "How good it would have been to secure him for my own. The former Emperor's personal slave." He fell silent for several moments. "The Ambassador warned me."

  This stopped the Attendant. It also seized Maia's full attention.

  "When I decided to return, it was because I wanted to withdraw my support from the Emperor."

  "So that he might fall, and you might take the throne," the Attendant whispered, as one might whisper an endearment. With love and hope and longing.

  The Twelveworld Lord turned onto his side, capturing his Attendant's hand and drawing him down to him until the more delicate male was tucked against his chest. "Yes. The Ambassador, though, told me that the pirates might have turned. Might be attacking my worlds. I seized this as the pretense I might use to pull back, and yet...."

  "It was true," the Attendant said, wide-eyed. "But why? Why would he help you?"

  "The minds of aliens," the Twelveworld Lord murmured, reaching past the Attendant for the oil. "Who can know them?"

  "It is strange to think you might owe him gratitude." The Attendant rested his hands on the Twelveworld Lord's chest. "Does it trouble you?"

  "Many things do." The Twelveworld Lord rolled the other male on
to his stomach and nipped the back of his neck. "Help me forget them, for a time."

  Maia frowned, watching them. From the stories the crew traded about their liegelord she'd expected cruelty, or at least high-handedness. But the Twelveworld Lord was tender with his affections, despite having chosen a menial for his partner. She would never have guessed the Chatcaava of significant rank to be capable of kindness to their subordinates, much less this... sweetness. And it was sweet.

  Then again, the crew had said the Twelveworld Lord was perverse. Perhaps this was what they meant.

  Maia kept an eye on the thread issuing from the Twelveworld Lord's quarters and resumed sorting through the incoming information. The flagship had been stitching a course between all the major systems, but with the pirates dispersing their forces, the Lord had decided against chasing them down himself. He'd ordered the ship to return to the central system, from which he planned to coordinate the remaining defense while seeing to the rescue and recovery efforts. The planet in that system was important, and the damage done it was being taken personally by every Chatcaavan Maia had eavesdropped on.

  They would be arriving to the Vault in twenty hours, after a layover to pick up new satellites to replace the ones that had been lost. Hopefully Maia would be able to jump off the ship then. Before anyone noticed the power she was using.

  Was it grasping at straws to make an attempt at finding the predators that frightened the forest into stillness? Sediryl didn't know. She was no hunter, not like the men who'd brought back game for her estate's kitchen. But she had ridden with the guards on their ceremonial rounds of the Nuera property, and while the basilisks that had made those rides customary had long since withdrawn, male Eldritch still trained to kill them. The guards had been glad to educate her on how one tracked and harried dangerous creatures when she'd asked.

  Of course, rank prevented them from asking her in return why she wanted to know when so many women hadn't. She'd told them anyway. She would one day be Nuera's caretaker, and Nuera's wealth sprang from its fields and forests, the bounty of the land and the livestock and wild creatures that lived on it. She wanted to know how to protect it, in abstract if nothing else. Her education offworld had added to that wildcraft. Agriculture attracted pests, and controlling predation was a necessary part of the curriculum.

  So she knew, a little, what she was looking for. Some of her Faulfenza did too. "Those of us born on Quafiirla," Iidainii told her, trailing her through the brush. "That is our preserve planet. We grow up in the wild. The Faulfenza born on Quapendai are the children of cities, and though they are required to foster on Quafiirla, just as we foster on Quapendai, they rarely learn the way we do. Imbibing it with the air we use for our first cries from the womb."

  "Two worlds," Sediryl murmured. She pressed a hand to her bandaged ribs and grimaced, then pressed on. "A true double world?"

  "Not like yours, no, Princess, where there are two habitable worlds in separate orbits. Qufiil is two planets orbiting one another."

  "I didn't think that could work."

  "It doesn't. We have made it possible, with science. But even so, one day it will die. But all worlds die, and all suns, and all people. That is the Firedancer's will."

  She was learning a great deal about the Faulfenza, keeping such close proximity with them. If there had only been one or two, she thought it would have been different. But these people were colleagues, and they created a portable community. They kept the watches, and worked on the Visionary and tended to their wounds, but they also told stories, laughed, spoke in their melodious language. And the second night, they danced.

  Sediryl understood now about the dance. She'd watched from the ship's hatch, sitting with her shoulder against the edge. How the Faulfenza had gathered in a circle and discussed in low voices, and then one of them had stepped to the center and posed, fur glittering silver under the alien moon. From that pose, to another, and another, so smooth, so confident, until it became prayer, story, continuity. Once or twice she thought she saw the word for ‘god' and ‘fire,' but the sinuous speed of it mazed her eyes.

  She was glad of them. Glad they were keeping that fire burning. Fire should also be a generative thing, not just an agent of destruction.

  "Do you see anything?" she asked. She'd chosen to investigate during the day-seeing any spoor would be easier, and from their cries the creatures were nocturnal hunters.

  "Nothing," Iidainii confessed. "It makes no sense. Unless they have not penetrated this far in our direction."

  "Possible," Sediryl murmured. "Or maybe we're looking in the wrong place."

  The Faulfenzair's eyes narrowed. "The noises we heard were coming from the ground."

  "But they wanted to be heard," Sediryl said. "What if..." Chatcaava were fliers. Could they prefer aerial prey? Hadn't the Vault been listed as a hunting preserve, among other things? She resumed walking, this time craning her head back.

  "You think the creatures are arboreal?"

  "We haven't found anything on the ground," Sediryl said.

  The Faulfenzair chuckled, a low huffing noise. "No one ever looks up."

  She grinned at him, tired.

  They searched for another hour before returning to the Visionary. Sediryl left Iidainii outside to relieve Jedan from watchstanding and checked on the Chatcaavan Queen. Vasiht'h was at her side, his arm propped up on the couch cushion and his head resting in its crook.

  "No change," he muttered without looking up.

  "Good," she said. When he lifted his head, she finished, "Change can be bad."

  He seemed to consider that, despite his fatigue. Then he offered her a faint smile. "That's true. But at least it's decisive."

  Sediryl said, "I can live with ambiguity a little longer if it means she's still alive."

  "Goddess hear you, then," Vasiht'h answered. "Because we could all use Her attention."

  The sounds of so many other beings made sleeping difficult, particularly the wounded Faulfenzair who tossed and whimpered. Her own injuries, despite the suppression of the pain medication, put paid to whatever remaining hope she had of resting. Sediryl rose before dawn and let herself out of the ship, nodding to the guard before picking up the empty water containers and heading for the stream. She could at least fill them and leave them for someone else to drag back. It was pretend work, but she needed to move.

  The diffuse purple of the sky had a soft quality that suggested rain later. She'd become accustomed to the sounds of this forest, and the chirring of the dawn insects accompanied her to the stream. The water was cool to the touch, and dark.

  How good the quiet was. She'd missed this kind of solitude. She used the mud to slide the filled jugs onto the bank, and even that was too much strain. Her head swam, and she sat abruptly, pressing a hand to her brow until it stopped pounding.

  And then all the will to keep going drained from her. She let her hands drop into her lap, her knees and spine sag. The sky drew her eyes, and she let it pour into her as the sun burnished the puzzle pieces visible through the silhouettes of the trees. From gray to purple, and purple to pink, and that was when the first sob broke past her throat, surprising her. Her hand flew to her mouth in time to catch the next, and then the events of the past weeks crowded in on her and she gave up and cried. Not the proper, maidenly weeping her mother had insisted she learn, a dignified leak from the corners of the eyes. No, she sobbed, ugly, messy sobs, snotty ones, until her nose hurt and her eyes burned and her chest ached from the convulsions.

  So many people hurt. So many people dead. So many people suffering, still in cages on the pirate base. Sediryl cried for them, and for the mess she'd made of an intolerable situation; she cried because there were no tidy solutions, because she couldn't see a universe where anyone could have avoided the mess of it. She cried because she felt she should have done better, and because there was no ‘better' possible. All of her choices had been bad, and though her best had been enough she would never stop blaming herself for it still being aw
ful.

  The tears stopped coming, as abruptly as they'd come. Sediryl shivered, wiping her nose and succeeding only in smearing her face. Bending to the stream, she cupped her hands in water gone shimmery with the lightening sky, splashed herself until she felt clean. That she felt cleaner on the inside surprised her, but she did.

  Glancing up again, Sediryl found herself thanking whatever powers might be listening. Then she rose, straightening her clothing, and tried one of the container's handles to see if she could lift it. Maybe if she was careful? She looked toward the ship, estimating the distance, and found a face less than an arm's length away, hanging from one of the trees over the stream. A feral face, with cunning but no sapience in its enormous, staring eyes. Its teeth were bared in a meaningless smile.

  Sediryl's heart seized. Then she screamed and threw one of the jugs at its face.

  The beast recoiled, then snarled, spreading wings. Its muscles bunched beneath its skin.

  She should have died. She would have had something not plummeted from the sky behind her and torn the beast from the tree, breaking the branch and smashing into the stream with a tremendous splash. As the combatants rolled onto the other bank, a chorus of screeches erupted from neighboring trees. Sediryl whirled away from the creatures leaping from the branches, saw the sky cloud with the silhouettes of diving Chatcaava... and ran, her injuries be damned. She couldn't tell if the creatures were following her; she didn't turn to look either. She broke into their clearing, calling, "They're here, the Chatcaava are here, into the ship!"

  The Faulfenza standing outside looked past her, then formed a semicircle between the ship and whatever was coming. She wanted to yell at them not to commit suicide, but she wasn't the only one they were protecting. She stopped in the hatch, sweating and trying not to faint, and turned to face the danger. If she squinted, she could just see lurching, hear cries and growls. Then... nothing.

  "What's going on?" Vasiht'h asked behind her.

  Sediryl didn't answer, waiting.

  From that ominous silence, then, scuffling noises. Voices, too quiet to be distinguished.