Probably their Emperor, then. "Understood. On my way." Setting the earbud back in place, the Surgeon said, "How fortunate your arrival is, Healer Dellen Crosby. We are needed in the Emperor's tower to treat an alien."
Khaska breathed something that sounded like a prayer. In Chatcaavan, she said, "That must be our contact. Let's go."
And if it was the Silence Between Stars... there was no time to waste. The Surgeon looked at their party, mostly composed of the groundbound, and grimaced. He couldn't send Kuuvel ahead-the male didn't know anything about the palace's architecture. For the same reason, he couldn't leave Kuuvel the task of leading the party.
But Khaska knew the way.
"Will you take them up the tower?" he asked her. "I would like to fly ahead and assess the severity of the problem."
The alien's ears flicked back, but she inclined her head in the Chatcaavan way. "Leave them with me."
"Don't pet them while I'm gone," the Surgeon said to Kuuvel.
"Even if they give permission?"
The Surgeon made an exasperated noise and left.
"Now where?" Na'er asked.
"This way," Laniis said.
"How did you know you should ask permission?" Andrea was asking the second Chatcaavan surgeon.
"Fortunate guess?"
Andrea laughed. "Oh really?"
"No." The male grinned. "Mostly it's because that tall alien looks like he'd like an excuse to kill one of us, and I have too many pranks left to pull to die young. Are you really a medical technician?"
"Are you really a surgeon?"
"Oh yes. I've nicked enough arteries to prove it."
"So you're a bad surgeon, is what you're saying."
The Chatcaavan burst out laughing. "No one ever told me aliens were funny!"
"Strange," Andrea said, grinning back. "No one ever told me Chatcaava could tell a joke."
"Ha!" the male said. "Ha ha. I love this. If we survive, I am buying you a drink. I'll even put a plastic body part in it, just for you."
"I can't believe this," Na'er muttered.
"Which part?" Laniis said as the two behind them kept bantering. "The part where Chatcaava are people, too? Or the part where they're cracking jokes in the middle of a coup?"
"The part where the jokes are actually funny."
Laniis blinked, then snickered.
"Yeah, yeah. Laugh, I've earned it."
The journey to the base of the Emperor's tower didn't take long. Laniis could hear occasional sounds of fighting from distant parts of the palace, but for the most part the bodies were already on the ground. Not as many as she'd expected, either, but enough to account for the quiet. Or at least, that's what she thought until she reached the tower door and saw the crimson pool standing on the marble in front of it. There was so much blood it extended at least six feet out, staining her boots.
And then she smelled the stench.
Na'er walked past her and looked up. He whistled through his teeth. "All right then."
Joining him, Laniis looked up into an abattoir that kept going and going until it vanished around the spiral core of the tower. She swallowed. "It's going to be a long climb."
The sound of a second pair of wingbeats moved his hand to the blood-slimed hilt of one of Imthereli's swords. He hunched over his cousin's body, holding the blade at ready.
/Friend,/ Jahir whispered.
"Ambassador," the Surgeon called, wary. "May I enter?"
Lisinthir let the sword dip. "Come in, Surgeon."
The male dropped onto the balcony, pulling the strap of his kit over his head and setting it out. He crouched alongside them and touched Jahir's face, turning the ruined side toward him. "At last I see your true face, Healer. Perhaps now we will be able to close these wounds."
"What happened to him?" Lisinthir asked.
"I cannot tell you for certain," the Surgeon replied. "But one of your kind is on his way. I hope to consult with him on the diagnosis. He posited it was the malfunctioning of the device powering his disguise that was the source of the problem."
"He the other healer?" Lisinthir asked, confused.
"He, this healer." The Surgeon pulled an earbud from the kit. "Surgeon. Triage, prepare one of the gel tanks. Use the specifications I left tagged with ‘silence'."
Lisinthir's arm tightened around Jahir's chest. "So bad as that?"
The Surgeon lifted his eyes to Lisinthir briefly, then resumed studying the readings from his instruments. "You were worse off. But he will need immediate care. And this time, I will have access to an alien physician's knowledge."
Lisinthir nodded and let his head fall back down against Jahir's. After a moment, he asked, "Silence?"
"His title while he was here, spreading fear and discord among the enemy," the Surgeon said. "Voice in the Silence. And then Silence Between the Stars when he began affecting those outside the palace. But I made him swear to devote himself to his recovery on his name."
"Wise Surgeon," Lisinthir murmured.
"Not so wise," was the surprising reply. "Or I would have seen sooner how action might have prevented the worst of this. But I have addressed myself to the extirpation of this particular disease." He glanced at the blood on the floor. "The Usurper's. Yes?"
"Yes," Lisinthir said. "The Emperor killed him and took his body."
"Good," the Surgeon said. "The throneworld needs to know its master has returned. Before the violence spreads." At Lisinthir's start, the Surgeon smiled without humor. "The servants have begun their revolt here. But they will not end it here unless they are assured their new master plans to treat them better than their old."
"God and Lady," Lisinthir whispered.
"You will be busy again soon enough," the Surgeon said.
The Emperor landed with a grunt, dropping the body onto the Field. The shuttles had flattened the grass and the smell of it was wrong for the season, burnt fiber, torn earth. How many suppers had he overseen on this greensward since seizing the Thorn Throne? How many duels? Perhaps this would be the last corpse he felled here.
Shading his eyes, he stared toward the sky. He hadn't had time to use the commbead he'd been given by the team lead since touchdown; the assault team had had its own orders, and he and the Ambassador a path of their own, which they could ask no one else to tread. But that was done. It was time now to involve the worlds. He activated the bead. "Emperor."
"Assault One. Exalted, how may we serve?"
"I need someone to record a stream here from the ground."
"On our way."
Strange, to be standing here without an enemy to kill. The sun felt good to him. The wind better. He'd once believed his victories inevitable; that there would be a poignancy to his success, now that he questioned whether he would succeed, was unexpected. There was Beauty in it, but he couldn't name the ideal that Beauty reflected. He only knew that somewhere in the hallowed Air, there was some ineffable and precious thing that this moment now evoked.
It was Fitting that the male who disembarked first from the shuttle was the Knife. Joining him, that male looked down at the body of the Usurper.
"Exalted..."
"You have a question, Knife."
"That is the male who created all of our problems?"
The Emperor set a foot on the body's hip, rolling it onto its back. "Look well and learn. No one is so small they cannot break an empire."
The Knife inhaled and squared his shoulders, nodding as the Pelted did. "Nor so small they cannot remake one."
The Emperor smiled, grim but satisfied. "Let us tell the worlds their master has returned."
Dellen pointed Lisinthir at an examination table when he tried to follow the rest of the group to the gel tank destined for Jahir. "You need a check."
"I'm fine," Lisinthir insisted.
"Sit. I want a look at you when I'm done helping them."
"If you're going to be busy, why could I not..."
"Lord Nase Galare," Dellen said, leaning into his space, "Sit. Whe
re you'll be out of the way. Do you understand? Your swords are gory. Why don't you wipe them down while you're waiting."
Was this how Jahir had felt, waiting for him to be done at the hands of the surgeons at Fleet Central? God and Lady spare him many more such vigils. He hadn't his cousin's patience. Lisinthir ignored the bed and sat on the stool alongside it. A supply cart alongside the bed had a container of disposable cloths. He would have preferred to enact this ritual when he was certain the killing was over... but perhaps it was mete, because the killing never would be. He didn't need his cousin's sense of the divine Pattern to know that.
Suppressing his agitation, Lisinthir began stripping the caked blood from Imthereli's blades.
Was the wait eternal? It certainly felt it. From the other room, Lisinthir heard the noises of the gel tank engaging-strange to hear it clearly, when the other time he'd done so he'd been floating in one, and convinced he was dreaming. The physicians were conferring, but too quietly to be heard. At first, the talk was sparse. Then more of it. He wondered what they were discussing.
A break in the conversation. A very long one. Had everyone left the clinic? No, he heard scuffling in the hall. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to pay attention to the task.
When Dellen finally returned, Lisinthir stood only to be waved at the table. "I'm serious about this, Ambassador."
"I'm uninjured."
"Humor me."
Lisinthir frowned at the odd note in the healer's voice. "Alet?"
"Just... sit."
He slid onto the examination table and allowed the Seersa to run his checks with the Alliance medical tools.
"Nothing out of place," Lisinthir observed. "As I said."
"Some bruises and scratches," Dellen said, loading an empty vial into an AAP. "That mind talent of yours seems handy. Does it feel injured? I assume it can be injured."
"I can overextend myself, yes. Nothing here pushed me that far." Lisinthir watched the Seersa press the pump against his arm. "You are taking blood?"
"I am, yes. Now's your chance to say ‘no, I don't consent to medical testing.'"
"Should I?"
Dellen eyed him. "I'd prefer you didn't. So would the rest of us."
Lisinthir started to rise. "It's not Jahir-"
"He'll be fine. But he's having the same anomalous reaction to the gel tank that you did while you were here."
"Which is? That it works poorly?"
"That it works too well," the Surgeon said from the door. "I have placed aliens in the gel tanks before. It has only superficial effects on them."
Lisinthir frowned. "I'm afraid I cannot begin to guess why that might be so."
"Neither can we, and we'd like to know," Dellen said. "So. Yes or no? We're in the Empire. There's nothing here to censor the records we're going to make."
The Veil had not saved them from war, enslavement, the depredations of dragons. Let the universe learn what they were and what they could do, and fear them instead. "Take it."
The pump hissed as the vial filled with a liquid, so dark it looked crimson only where it frothed with bubbles near the top of the glass. As Dellen pulled the pump away, Lisinthir pressed a hand to the spot and said, "Now may I see my cousin?"
"Now you can sit in front of his tank for as long as you want," Dellen said.
"Though you would perhaps prefer to see the Emperor's broadcast," the Surgeon added, diffident, as Lisinthir passed him. When Lisinthir paused, the Chatcaavan met his eyes. There was challenge there, and evaluation, and something new, Lisinthir thought. The Surgeon was no longer the dispassionate Outsider who'd warned a wingless freak not to bother him with honorless wounds.
"Yes," Lisinthir said after a moment. "I would."
That was how he came to watch the Emperor announce his return: on a remote broadcast while sitting in the palace clinic by the gel tank where his cousin floated, insensate. Lisinthir would have liked to attend the Emperor on the Field, but it felt fitting that he hadn't. The Eldritch had missed the last declaration the Emperor had made there while fighting Second, arriving at the conclusion of the duel after most of the words had been exchanged already. That the Emperor spoke this time over the corpse of the Usurper was also appropriate. The Usurper had presided over the death of the old Empire, had been an agent of petty ugliness, of deconstruction. Such a male was dead before his mortal shell ceased to function. An honorless male did not deserve an honorable end.
Lisinthir set the data tablet aside and looked up at his cousin. The physicians had promised Jahir would live. Lisinthir hoped he would see that for himself before he had to leave. Because he would have to. The data tablet also had a newsfeed, and the skein was reporting riots all over the planet, and the two fleets fighting overhead had not yet ceased hostilities.
How long he waited there, he didn't know. He might have nodded off. But a hand on his knee woke him with a start.
"Andrea," he said, voice rough with sleep. Clearing his throat, he finished, "What will you?"
"The Emperor called down," she said. "He'd like to see you in his study." When Lisinthir glanced at the tank, she said, softer, "We'll tell you if anything changes. Good or bad."
"Thank you."
On the way up to the tower, Lisinthir wondered who would clean the stairwell, and how. He did not envy those unknown Chatcaava, save that they had some technological device that would vaporize the remains and all the detritus. As it was, he was glad the Usurper had stripped the fine carpets from the Emperor's suite, because his boots left gruesome prints most of the way into the central chambers.
The Emperor was sitting at his console, as he had been lo so long ago the morning after he'd killed Second... the morning he'd told Lisinthir to pack. The memory remained so powerful Lisinthir paused at the threshold, unwilling to advance. When the Chatcaavan looked in his direction....
"Not again," Lisinthir said.
The Emperor's smile was slight. "I can at least say that this time I mean you to return?"
The tactical map hovering over the Emperor's desk was partially overlaid by the scrolling news from the throneworld. Lisinthir didn't need to be any closer to see the complete victories of an epic battle were not in the offing. "They're still fighting."
"They don't feel they have a choice," the Emperor replied, leaning back with a hand resting on the desk. "Mutineers are executed."
"Would you?" Lisinthir glanced at him. "Have them all put to death?"
The Emperor shook his head, Pelted gesture, draconic face. "No. But it's a matter of trust. The last Emperor who took this throne betrayed the Navy to do it. Why should they believe my offer of amnesty? Why would it not be a trap?"
"Because," Lisinthir said, voice brusque, "you are not the Usurper."
"No, I am not. But frightened people don't think clearly, Perfection." He looked up. "Which brings me to the reason I must send you away."
"Temporarily."
A smile. "Very temporarily, I hope. I need you to go to the Alliance and convince them I am not their enemy before they decide their best hope of winning this war is a preemptive strike on the throneworld."
"They wouldn't-"
"Bomb the planet?" the Emperor asked. "Are you sure?"
Lisinthir hesitated.
"Will you speak for me?"
"Need you ask?" Lisinthir said.
The Emperor dipped his head. "I ask because consent matters. Even when you know the answer."
Lisinthir walked to the desk and went to a knee before it.
"This again," the Emperor murmured, threading a hand through Lisinthir's hair and drawing it out until it spilled free... as much of it could, with the sweat and blood matting it.
"Last time you didn't allow me to say it," Lisinthir said quietly. "Will you now?"
Leaning toward him, the Emperor became Eldritch, touched lips to Lisinthir's forehead. "My Perfection. I love you too."
Lisinthir sighed out, seeking and finding the Emperor's hand. "Too far we strayed to return here."
<
br /> "But return we did. And will again." The Emperor twisted, brought from the desk a medallion. "I have no diplomatic packets prepared, so take this as an emblem of your authority. And you should bring at least one of us with you. The Knife would be a good choice. He did well enough with the Fleet personnel on the Silhouette. It should be no hardship for him to go."
"I'll see who can be spared." Lisinthir opened his hand for the medallion, a flat, cold disc of bronzed metal with the Empire's talon-swipe sigil. "Shall I say you mean to come to their aid?"
"Yes," the Emperor said. "Though I can't give a specific time or definite numbers. We'll win, but I don't know how many will die securing that victory. And I must tour the throneworld's worst areas, see if I can halt the riots."
"You'll manage." Lisinthir closed his fingers over the disc. "Soonest begun, soonest done. My cousin...."
"Will have the best of care," the Emperor promised. "Perhaps Crosby will consent to stay and oversee his treatment."
"I'll ask," Lisinthir said. Looking up at familiar yellow eyes in an Eldritch face, he said, "Do you still think more of me than your empire?"
Startled, the Emperor sat back. Then laughed, soft. He cupped Lisinthir's face. "You are my empire, Perfection, and my empire is us. There is no more separation." He dipped his head down just enough to win a kiss and finished against Lisinthir's lips, "But you did slow me, change me, and we did go too far. And I find I am grateful."
And the gratitude that passed through their skins was tinted with remorse and regret, with hope and determination... with the acknowledgment that knowledge and transformation came at a cost, and sometimes that cost was borne by others. Opening his eyes, Lisinthir found the Emperor looking at him, a smile whimsical and sad touching the corner of his mouth.
"Now," Lisinthir said, low, "you are become Greatness."
"If I am Greatness, it is only because I have been guided by Beauty, and Perfection." The Emperor kissed his brow. "Go, beloved. As soon as I can follow with help for the Alliance, I will come."
"I hold you to that promise," Lisinthir said, rising reluctantly.
From Ruins Page 29
