"Failures," the Queen said. "Winged females can change the race permanently. That is why they stopped. Why they decided to prevent anyone from doing so, and stole the wings from their daughters. We had only animals for templates, and we failed at least once, and terribly."
"The Chatcaava... are engineered?" Vasiht'h breathed.
"Self-engineered," Sediryl said. "Goddess and Lord. So you can pick and choose? Bits of every alien you learn? And keep those bits?"
"As well as shift shape to them completely?" Vasiht'h added.
"Yes," the Queen answered. And said, sheepish, "I would not mind having my mane washed."
"Thank the Goddess," Vasiht'h said vehemently. "Because I need to do something useful."
"So you can do this?" Sediryl asked as the Glaseah started lathering. "Have you tried?"
"No!" the Queen said. "I just learned it was possible, just now... the idea is... I don't know where to begin."
"Well, I know," Vasiht'h said. The Queen rolled her eyes upward, trying to see him. "You're missing something that was taken from you, arii."
The Queen tucked her wing-arms in.
"You could fly," Sediryl said, wondering what it must be like.
"That feels like a selfish gift. How would my wings serve my children? Their vanelessness would not be passed on to others-" The Queen inhaled abruptly, nostrils flaring.
"You've thought of something," Vasiht'h said.
"I could have children," the Queen whispered. "They took my womb from me, but I could take it back."
Vasiht'h soaped her hair up to her horns and poured water down the back of her neck. "That would be perfect."
"Except no one could see that from the outside," Sediryl pointed out. "The symbol has to be visible."
"That's too bad," Vasiht'h said. "Because the other thing she could take would be the longevity of the Eldritch."
Sediryl froze. So did the Queen.
"Or the Faulfenza, I guess, if you fail trying for the Eldritch version. You wouldn't live quite as long as Lisinthir, but you'd make it at least two-thirds of the way through his life." Vasiht'h picked up the brush from beside the tub. "So you'd have two chances to succeed. Maybe more if we find other long-lived aliens. Can male Chatcaava do this too?"
Flustered, the Queen said, "I... yes... they cannot give those traits to their children, that is all."
"That's all!" Vasiht'h laughed. "Goddess." More somber: "Goddess. I can't imagine making those choices. It would be taking Aksivaht'h's mantle onto yourself. We're not made for those kinds of burdens."
"And yet you have them now," Sediryl said. "I can't imagine what that must be like."
"I can't either, except as an abstract," the Queen admitted. "It terrifies me." She twisted around to look up at Vasiht'h. "But to live as long as the Ambassador!"
"The Eldritch need company." Vasiht'h met Sediryl's eyes. "As much company as they can find. It's unnatural for anyone to be alone for as long as they are."
The Queen covered her face. "I don't know where to begin. But I must begin, because we cannot stay here. We need to go home, and help where we may."
Sediryl reached over and took the other woman's wrists, gently pulling them away. "You know where to start, and it's an all right place to start because you're not giving yourself anything that wasn't taken from you. Sister mine: start with those things. There will either be time for the more threatening possibilities later... or it won't matter, so worrying about them won't do any good."
The Queen shuddered and nodded.
Vasiht'h smiled at Sediryl over the Queen's horns. "I couldn't have said it better."
"Do you know how to do this?" Sediryl asked.
"No," the Queen said. "But... yes. I think... if I simply try... it will happen. Because it is a natural function." She wiped her face. "But it involves that fevered state again, and I do not... I would rather..."
"Stay here," Sediryl said. "We'll watch over you."
"Thank you," the Queen said. "Yes. Please."
"You'll be fine," Vasiht'h said. The certainty in his voice made both of them look up at him and he paused, his hands full of the Queen's hair. "When we were captured, I questioned the Goddess's existence. I should have known better. We're exactly where we're supposed to be to learn the things we need to learn. We're going to leave this place, ariisen." He smiled at the Queen, tired but with something shining in him that made Sediryl envious, and awed. "You're going to save yourself, and a lot of other people besides. You're going to change the worlds." When the Queen gaped at him, Vasiht'h finished, "Quite a long way for the Slave Queen to have come, isn't it?"
The Queen's mouth shut abruptly and her shoulders squared. "Time is passing. I should make the attempt."
Vasiht'h stood, unfolding one of the towels and holding it out. "Bedroom or antechamber?"
"I would like to lie down somewhere near the sky."
"There's a couch in the sitting room." Sediryl pulled herself out of the pool. "It's not too heavy. We'll push it to a window."
Which is exactly what they did. Sediryl helped Vasiht'h shove the couch next to the windows. Both of them oversaw the Queen's settling in. She declined the blanket Vasiht'h offered and the clothes Sediryl suggested. "I wish to feel the air on my skin." Anxiously: "Don't go?"
"We'll be right here," Vasiht'h said firmly. "The way we were when you first fell unconscious."
The Queen relaxed. "Thank you." And closed her eyes, and within moments was... unconscious? Asleep, at least. Sediryl worried at her lower lip.
"She'll be fine," Vasiht'h said. "I'll stay with her while you dress."
"Yes. I..." Sediryl looked down at the towel she'd tucked around herself. "I got distracted. Thank you, arii."
Vasiht'h laid his lower body alongside the couch. "The view is beautiful, anyway. We picked a nice place to hear about the Chatcaava's existential crisis."
"And resolve it, I hope."
"And resolve it."
Sediryl let her fingertips drift over the Queen's cheekbone. The skin felt no hotter to her, but the woman didn't wake, either.
What was also strange, and not-strange, was how quickly the habits of her childhood returned to her after years of living in the Alliance had accustomed to her to absolute privacy. Having Vasiht'h in the antechamber felt normal, rather than an intrusion. Sediryl was grateful; she hadn't enjoyed the way she'd found the extra people in her pirate suite maddening. She missed her dog, though, and wondered if she could salvage it from the wreckage of the Visionary or if she'd have to restore it from back-up when she returned to Starbase Alpha.
She accepted that she would return. That she'd see home again. But between her and that future was a path off this world she had yet to find, and a pirate base full of slaves she intended to liberate. Sediryl believed herself capable of this even as she realized she was dry and now naked and couldn't find anything to wear. She had the clothes she'd discarded-comfortable but dirty-and... what? She started hunting through the room, wondering if she'd fit into any Chatcaavan clothing she found, when a strange buzzing noise jerked her head up. Frowning, she scanned the room.
It sounded again, then: "-iryl, Sediryl? Can you hear me?"
Sediryl's mouth dropped open. "Maia? Maia!"
"Oh, thank the gods in the stream. Sediryl! I made it! You made it!"
Sediryl pounced on the console, wishing it could emit her companion's solidigraph. She would have found a way to hug Maia, even had she appeared in her ghost-glimmer form. "Maia! I can't believe... but how?"
"Uuvek wrote me a wrapper so I could navigate the Chatcaavan networks. But it's completely englobed. If I get deleted here, my main personality won't remember a thing I know, which is why we need to talk, now."
"No," Sediryl said. "No, Maia. You needn't... the Visionary. It's here."
"What??"
"Damaged, but the computer is at least partially operational," Sediryl said. "It's how we escaped from the pirate fleet."
"Oh, I could kiss you! How in all the hells did you
manage that?"
"I don't know!" Sediryl said, pained. And cold, too. She groped for the blanket off the bed and wrapped it around herself. "I don't know how I survived any of it. Maia, it was awful. I made so many poor choices...."
"You did it."
"I... I'm sorry?"
There was no brooking any argument with Maia. That tone of voice: she was stating facts, not opinions. "The Twelveworld Lord left Apex-East, just as we hoped when we asked you to divert the pirates here, and his leaving opened that system up. The Emperor took it back."
Sediryl sat abruptly, glad the bed was under her and not the floor. Her fingers, curled into the blanket at her chest, felt numb. "It worked?" she whispered.
"It worked," Maia said. "But we're not done yet, and we don't have much time. Are you imprisoned here? Can you leave? How badly is the Visionary damaged?"
It had worked? Somehow... somehow she'd done what she'd promised? At such a cost, but... this war, an interstellar war... Qora was right. People died in war. It was awful, and she hardly knew what she was doing, but she'd managed the task she'd been assigned. It should have filled her with confidence. It filled her instead with the realization that she had so much to learn, and that she was so fortunate to have people around her to help her do so. It filled her with relief that somehow she'd earned them some kind of reprieve in a conflict she understood, viscerally and suddenly, would not be resolved in a Pelted lifetime. Maybe not even an Eldritch one.
Sediryl shook out the blanket and set it more securely over her shoulders, and began to talk.
In the end it was easy. The Queen put her head down, wondering if she would be capable of this incredible act the Keeper claimed was the birthright of all Chatcaava. She tried to imagine what the race had been like in that beginning, when all females had been winged and everyone could and did Change, and partially. How wildly variable the populace must have been! With males experimenting with new traits that differentiated them. Surely some of those differences had been spectacular. Added height, or reduced height? The horns... but what kind of horns? Had someone tried fur? Or true scales, rather than the hide of normal Chatcaava? Normal Chatcaava!
The Keeper had said that the partial Change could be dangerous, and this warning should have concerned the Queen. But she felt no concern. The mountain breeze caressed her face, combed the mane that fell in damp tresses over her neck onto her chest. She sensed the nearness of the Glaseah, heard the footsteps, back and forth, of the Eldritch. And deeper yet, she felt herself. The crown of patterns, the roots the Guide had shown her. She did not fear the Change.
It drew her down into warm darkness, and in that darkness, she asked for, and received, what she'd lost.
When next she lifted her head, the motion pulled on muscles that once again supported weight. She didn't need to look to feel the attachment of the vanes along her back. The sun had set during her efforts; she spotted the Eldritch in a chair across from her by the light of the tablet that illumined her face. "My sister?"
Sediryl set the tablet down. "Welcome back."
"How long...?"
"A few hours. It was amazing to watch. The skin just kept growing, inch by inch..." Her smile was lopsided. "You did it, sister mine."
The Queen stretched her wing-arms and the vanes didn't resist. Surprised, she brought one of the wings forward as far as possible and ran her fingers over its surface. The skin... the skin was supple, and whole. Whole.
"I have rescued myself," she whispered, and choked on the keen that tried to come up her throat. Her hands flew to her mouth.
Sediryl's voice, floating in the dark, had a welcome briskness. "Shall I turn on the light so you can see it properly?"
"Please."
The Eldritch's boots, so like and unlike the Ambassador's, clicked over the floor. A moment later, a light welled into the room. "There's a mirror over in the bedroom, if you'd like to use it?"
"Yes," the Queen said, pushing herself off the couch.
"Vasiht'h's asleep by the bed," Sediryl said, quiet. "But I don't think anything less than a fire siren will wake him up. The light certainly didn't keep him up." She stopped inside the bedroom, beside the mirror. "There you are."
The Queen braced herself and spread her pinions, which she had not seen whole since her childhood. And they were beautiful. They were also... mottled? "Are those shadows?"
"I think they're stains. Tattoos?" The Eldritch reached toward one wing, paused. "May I...?"
The Queen nodded hastily.
With gentle fingers, the Eldritch tilted one of the wings by the leading edge, touched the pattern. "No, those are like birthmarks. A discoloration in the skin. But obviously less random."
Her wings were whole. But the quilting that had once scored her vanes had been rendered as faint lines on pale skin with the imperial thorns dusted in darker gray.
"It's beautiful," Sediryl said. "I guess you didn't plan it?"
"No," the Queen said slowly. "Those are ghosts of the marks that were once torn and burnt into the vanes to prevent me from flying."
The Eldritch's mouth firmed into a hard line, a poorly hidden grimace. "You must have believed they're part of you."
Were they? She spread them fully. How different the designs were when the skin could fold naturally! Less obvious, unless she wanted to display them. She hardly recognized herself with whole wings open like this. The female in the mirror was as new on the outside as the Queen had felt on the inside since the Ambassador had led her to the revelation of personhood. "They are a part of my past, and a part of my future. A symbol of Change."
The Eldritch's voice was cautious. "And now what do you do? Do we do?"
"Now... I go to the clinic and see if I succeeded on the inside as well as the out," the Queen said after a moment. "And then... I don't know."
"Because the sooner we leave, the better," Sediryl said, and something in her voice...
The Queen pulled her wings in, turning to face the Eldritch. "You have heard something."
A disembodied female said, "From me, specifically."
The Queen gasped. "Your friend has survived?"
"By hiding on the ship of the Twelveworld Lord, if you'll believe," Sediryl said.
"He gave me a ride," the voice issuing from the console agreed. "And an interesting trip it was, keeping company with him. Lady, your Emperor is fighting the Usurper now. Any help we can send him would be useful. Maybe even crucial."
"Then I will go now."
Sediryl touched her arm. "My ship is here, too. We crashed in it, in the forest... I don't know how far away, but the Chatcaava who brought us here will know where it is. If we can fix it, or bring it with us, Maia will have a place to stay. She'll be able to communicate with the Alliance. We'll have more news...."
News of their families, for which they must be starved. "We will see how much power my ability to Change has conferred on me," the Queen said. "Stay. I will be back as soon as I know."
Given the significance of her request, the Queen was grateful that only the Keeper and a male introduced as the Senior Ranger accompanied her to the retreat's surprisingly modern clinic, there to be examined by the resident Surgeon. That male assessed her wings and found them of an appropriate size, though he cautioned her against long flights until she'd strengthened the muscles of her wing-arms, back, and sides. But it was his internal examination that inspired the Queen to hold her breath, waiting.
"You look to be in good health," he told her. "Is there something you were expecting?"
"My grandsire had my womb removed."
The Surgeon's brow ridges jerked upward. "I see. That problem seems to have been resolved, my Queen."
"Then...."
"The expected organ is in the right place," the Surgeon said, putting away his tools. "And I found no anomalies in my scan, so unless it fails to function when used, I assume it to be as normal as the wings you now have." He finished clean-up and faced her, bowing low to expose the backs of his wings.
&nbs
p; "You concur, Surgeon," the Keeper said. "She has used a partial Change on herself."
"Yes. She came to us mutilated, and now is whole."
The Keeper sighed out with a shudder. "Then, we have found our Breath."
"And she is the former Slave Queen of the Empire!" the Senior Ranger said, eyes round.
"Queen Ransomed," the Queen corrected. She slid off the bed. "The Emperor re-titled me."
"It is appropriate," the Keeper agreed. "Holy One, we are at your command."
"Which means... what, precisely?"
Surprised, the Senior Ranger said, "My Queen, the Twelveworld is yours. All its wealth, its worlds, its people. We belong to you. We are the treasure the Living Air intended for the use of its high priestess."
"W-what?" the Queen stammered. "But the Lord of the Twelveworld...."
"Held the fiefdom in trust for the Breath, awaiting her return," said the Keeper. "He was a steward, nothing more. Now that you have come, he is your servant."
That the male who had summarily dismissed her into the untender mercies of pirates was now her servant...! Would he respect her elevation, or resent it? Or once again, decide to do away with her as an inconvenience? But then the rest of their statement unfolded in her mind like an infinite and unbelievable pattern. "The fleets under his command...."
"They are yours by right, my Queen," the Senior Ranger said.
"The sooner you inform the worlds of your return, the better," added the Keeper. "Though you may of course choose the venue. Perhaps you wish to return to the throneworld for the announcement? The Twelveworld Lord's flagship is here. You may secure his fealty and use his vessel for transport. Shall we fetch him down for you, Mistress?"
What time was it? Late evening. But the worlds beyond this world were inexorably turning, and time was slipping away with them. Warships surely kept different time from any planets they were visiting, anyway. "I will see him after I eat. Changing has made me hungry."
She was escorted back to her rooms, not because she was some important male's possession, but because she was now-Living Air guide her-the mistress of an entire imperial fiefdom. What would they expect her to do? Did it matter? The time for personal management of her properties-her properties!-would have to wait on the war. There they left her in solitude, breaking it only to bring her a meal she didn't want but ate anyway because she'd told the truth: the fugue had left her famished.
From Ruins Page 32
