Salvage

by R J Theodore

Illiya had not been present for Meran’s grand debut two years past, but word had spread quickly that a Cutter woman bearing Onaya Bone’s mark—a mark that Illiya had burned into Talis herself—and a strange woman with glowing blue tattoos had marched into the middle of Talonpoint and Meran, the one with the glowing tattoos, had healed a man’s scars and life-threatening injuries in full view of everyone. A man who, by his past, had been condemned to die under Bone traditional law.

  Even Onaya Bone had never graced anyone with such a . . . practical and useful demonstration. She provided pyrotechnics and small alchemical tricks at some of her holiday appearances, but Meran had made the exceptional act of bringing someone back from the brink of death look as easy and as casual as a stray thought. And at the same time, she had defied the Bone goddess and her rule.

  It was now Illiya’s job to meet with the followers of Onaya Bone to ensure her congregation’s faith in the Bone Mother had not wavered. To reassure them only Onaya Bone knew the best time and place to apply the Divine Practice of Alchemy. That they should trust in Onaya Bone’s great plan for her children. Illiya sent them away again, repentant and reassured.

  But Illiya was beginning to feel like a hypocrite and, based on everything she observed, a liar.

  She loved her goddess, but Illiya was a trained intelligence operative. Trained to put the clues together into a tapestry that would give her the full image. Onaya Bone’s instructions and statements did not match numerous testimonies, taken both voluntarily and by coercion from witnesses to the event.

  As Illiya recorded what she learned from the interviews, her unease grew. The stories of this new goddess, Meran. Of what people had witnessed. Onaya Bone claimed she was a fraud, a talented alchemist who should have been crushed long ago, but there was more than alchemy in the descriptions of her actions at Talonpoint.

  Yes, Meran had left quite an impression. And from all these impressions, Illiya was beginning to build an image. An understanding. Some theories.

  And there was the small matter of this battle at Nexus that Onaya Bone claimed she fought. There was nothing to this story but what the goddess offered to excuse her absences and her—dare Illiya use the word—failure to tend to the needs of her people.

  And not once in two years had Onaya Bone answered a call from the communion chamber’s two-way visual display. If Onaya Bone were so preoccupied at Nexus, it seemed that would be a better way to convey her orders to the Temple of the Feathered Stone, as she had always done before.

  Illiya poured a light coat of sand over the ink on a newly finished page to prevent smudges and looked around her audience chamber while she waited to be able to turn to the next blank page. The large audience chamber loomed almost empty around her. It doubled as the archive copyists’ workspace and the aviary for the temple’s resident ravens—and was rarely silent. She had sent the attending acolytes away so she could record her thoughts in private. The codex she was writing was kept in the bottom of her desk drawer where none would come across it. She had yet to make a decision about what purpose, exactly, all these notes served.

  The great hearth burned low. She rose, stretching her back so that her vertebrae, shoulders, and sternum readjusted with a series of pops; then she descended the stone steps of the archive to the fireplace. The wood rack to one side was empty. The entire day must have passed, and yet she barely remembered rising to attend the flames or stretch her legs.

  She crossed to the entrance, opened the door, and seeing no acolyte waiting in the hall, went to fetch a new armload of wood for herself.

  When she returned, arms burdened, Onaya Bone waited on a raven perch near her desk.

  “There you are.” The raven’s voice was coarse and garbled from disuse.

  Illiya felt guilt and panic surge beneath her throat. She hurried to deposit the wood in its rack near the hearth, then found herself unsure of what to do with her newly freed arms. All she could think of was the open book drying on her desk. All Onaya Bone had to do was glance down at it.

  But Illiya was a practiced deceptionist, a skill set that went back further than lying to protect her goddess’s reputation. She kept her gaze away from the codex.

  “My lady.” She bowed with a little extra flourish. “How may I serve you today?”

  “Give me more than your usual reports of failure.” The raven pecked at some speck on her perch, and Illiya caught her breath, afraid the former goddess’s gaze would fall upon her notes.

  “We have reclaimed two simula, Bone Mother. Though,” she held out her brass-capped fingers as Onaya started to lean forward in interest, “they are heavily damaged and in-operational. However, I see promise in that there are more simula in the wrecks than just the one Talis activated in Talonpoint.”

  “Of course there are.” It was difficult to know if Onaya Bone had ever been anything except frustrated or disappointed in Illiya’s reports. “How are my ships coming along?”

  “They are proving useful for the salvage operations; however, progress exiting atmosphere is very slow. I have been studying the alchemical methods you have suggested but have had no volunteers willing to help me. I am only a beginner, and this will take time.”

  “We do not have time. Forget alchemy, then. The aliens did it using only mechanical technologies, and so shall we. Hire Vein engineers if you must. We have lost all advantages that I gave you. Stop wasting time.”

  Illiya inclined her head and interlaced her fingers. “As you say, My Lady.”

  “Did you reach out to Talis for help? A Vein agent contacted her for the same work.”

  Illiya arched an eyebrow, but quickly bowed her head to hide it. “No, My Lady. It was not us.”

  “It should have been.”

  “If you command, I will dispatch a ship to Heddard Bay immediately.”

  “Too late for that. Talis has made other arrangements.” Onaya ruffled her feathers and stretched one wing, extending it out over the incriminating codex, then folded it back into place and settled her head deep between her shoulders. “Send Captain Sekkai to the wrecks approaching the dry reef. She must hurry. Many parties are not just showing interest but have taken action. Failure will no longer be tolerated.”

  “As you command, My Lady.”

  “I will be back in a week. I expect results.”

  Onaya Bone flapped her wings and departed through the ceiling above the roosts. The pages of the codex beneath her stirred in the moving air, but she did not look down to notice it. Illiya let out a relieved breath.

  She took one step toward her desk to put the damning book away when a knock at the door froze her in place.

  Jeska’s voice called, small and muffled, from the other side. “High Priestess, Vessin is here to see you. May we enter?”

  “Of course. Come in.” Perhaps her intelligence network would bring her some news to offset the sour mood set by the goddess’s visit.

  The door opened, and Jeska guided an elderly man into the audience chamber, her hand light on his arm. Illiya invited him to sit before the hearth, and Jeska, noticing the dying embers, moved to add wood and stoke the flames again. Illiya was not dressed in her full audience regalia, but the man was here, and she wanted him to give her good news. That, or be gone again so she could pour herself a drink and soothe away the headache planted by her conversation with Onaya Bone.

  She sat opposite her visitor and tried to look regal while still sinking into a self-serving slouch. “Yes, Vessin. What news have you brought in service of Our Lady’s grace?”

  The man rubbed arthritic knuckles and looked somewhere not quite at Illiya’s face. “There is a cult chapel in Talonpoint, Your Grace. Right under our noses.”

  Illiya glanced at Jeska, who nodded with her chin that the man between them had the answer. “The cult? Which cult, good child?”

  Vessin did not look as though he felt he had any sort of answer, but he stut
tered out the words anyway. “The—the cult of Meran, Your Grace.”

  Her burgeoning headache forgotten, Illiya sat up rod-straight. “A cult of worship has formed to the woman, Meran? In Talonpoint?”

  “Yes, Your Grace. They have dedicated a hidden temple and meet every evening, at the very same hour the false goddess walked through the streets of Talonpoint, two years ago.”

  The junior priestess laced her hands in front of her heart and bowed her head. Illiya swept off her settee and took the old man’s hands.

  “Show me.”

  The House of the First Soul was tucked away from the main thoroughfare of Talonpoint, beneath an unassuming bakery. There was a heavy steel door at the bottom of its basement steps, which appeared as no more than an ice room from the outside, except that a guard feigned sleep in a chair beside its door. He rose at Illiya’s approach, but the baker followed after shutting the door at the top of the stairs, and the man settled down again. The stairwell smelled of brightly scented incense rather than yeast and sugar.

  “Feeling better this morning, ma’am?” The phrase was spoken by rote, its meaning seemingly separate from the words. Illiya smelled a coded inquiry.

  “Still rather blue, thank you.” The baker’s reply earned them entrance. Illiya wondered what response any other answer might have provoked.

  The room beyond had once, clearly, been a cold storage. Against metal-lined walls were troughs for ice blocks, now covered with wood planks to form benches. There were hangings around the room to disguise its former purpose.

  Pillows were spaced across the floor, several of them taken by quiet worshippers.

  In the front of the room, a shoulder height pillar was decorated with blue glass, behind which candles burned to make them glow. A rough, formless idol of Meran.

  Its base was piled with offerings: beaded jewelry, flower petals, bowls of cream, and a tray piled with coin and precious stones. Melted wax around the pillar described a history of candle burning. Some had fresh candles atop, adding their own wax to the mess. A hearth bowl burned on a low table to one side.

  There was also a basket, half full of folded sheets of paper. Illiya knew prayers when she saw them. An attendant used thin tongs to hold one over the flame in the hearth bowl. The flames turned blue, and someone in the room gasped for joy. Apparently, this was a good outlook for the prayer contained within.

  The room was otherwise silent. The supplicants did not pray or murmur under their breath. There was only the sound of the flames consuming the paper, and the light rustle of clothing. The warm air was thick from the smoke and poor ventilation.

  Illiya kneeled upon a cushion toward the back of the room. The skin on the back of her arms prickled. She was terrified and thrilled. She was there as a spy, but also to satisfy questions she had on her own behalf.

  The baker prayed before the pillar for several minutes, then touched two fingers to her forehead, then to the idol, before standing and returning to her business above.

  The High Priestess of the Temple of the Feathered Stone descended into the timeless ether of her thoughts, unsettled by the temptations she felt tugging at her soul. She did not notice the passage of time until a smooth-skinned man sat beside her and said her name. The incense had changed, as had two of the candles around the base of the pillar.

  Illiya had come in plain clothes, her face unpainted—her fingers, neck, and ears ungarnished by the precious trappings of her station. She had not even recognized her own reflection in the mirror. But this man knew who she was. In her surprise, and driven out of her reverie, she missed the start of what he was saying.

  “—that you come here. We know that it is difficult to accept what is happening.”

  She tried to piece it together from context. What did this man judge to be her role, here? An agent from Onaya Bone’s temple? Or a pilgrim on own her spiritual journey? If she had come cloaked in feathers and jewels, it would be the former. In her homespun cotton and straw-soled sandals, though, it could be either.

  Why had she come?

  If she wanted intelligence, she might have sent an acolyte whose face was less well known.

  “How many attend this chapel?”

  “More, each day.”

  “Has she communicated with her attendants?”

  The man dipped his head. Though he dressed as plainly as anyone else she had seen in the room, Illiya suspected he led this congregation. “Not here. We do not have the reach of her Vein followers.”

  Of course. There would be worshippers across all the peoples of Peridot. She had been so focused on the turmoil within her own temple. “Technological reach, you mean. They have a radio.”

  He dipped his head again, and his top knot of feathered hair bobbed with the motion.

  She could travel to the Vein cities. Hadn’t Onaya told her to, already? Ordered her, in fact.

  “Thank you.” She began to rise.

  Her thoughts were not well-guarded. The man clasped her fingers gently. “Will you tell her, for us, that we await her with open hearts?”

  Illiya’s breath shattered in her chest. To which goddess was she meant to convey his prayer? At what point had she betrayed, in her heart, her dedication to Onaya Bone?

  She nodded to the man. “I will tell her for you.”

  Her steps were unsteady as she left the chapel. She kept a hand on the wall for support as she ascended back to the bakery. Back to the market street of Talonpoint. Across the sands to the Temple of the Feathered Stone where she conducted lies on behalf of Onaya Bone.

  Illiya was grateful her business would take her elsewhere. She needed to escape her congregation for a while and seek her own spiritual clarity.

  Chapter 15

  Dug was breathing heavily by the time Talis got him back to their room. Inside, Tisker was pacing and Sophie was visibly unnerved, her hands shaking as she turned toward the door.

  Her crew could handle a lot, but Dug getting knocked down was something they’d never had to experience before. They didn’t ask if he was okay. He was standing, he could move, and that was enough. It had to be. Talis tugged on her prayerlocks. Dried blood flaked away in her hands.

  “Grab everything. Let’s go.” Talis held no emotional attachment to the space where they’d spent the last two years.

  In anticipation of Bill’s return, they’d packed everything already. Anything left was nothing they’d miss.

  “I don’t understand what happened.” Sophie stooped to pick up a pack, retrieving the auto-torquing lock hammer before slinging the bag over her shoulder. Confused, yes, but still had enough wits to be prepared. “Who would be after Dug? Or any of us?”

  “It’s Eneil. It’s got to be.” Talis’s eyes burned with the threat of frustrated tears as she hoisted one of the packs. Hard edges of one of the grapple cannons and the electrocancellation barrel dug into her back. Two years of planning this. Days away from enacting that plan, and here they were, leaving in a hurry, the same paupers as they arrived. “Trying to strong-arm us into taking their job. Make us vulnerable. Make us afraid. Push us to the docks, straight aboard Im Ufite Rantor. Force us to say ‘yes.’ Or kill us for saying ‘no.’ If we don’t cooperate, they don’t need us.”

  There was no doubt in Talis’s mind that Eneil’s thinly veiled warning from that morning had been a threat. One she should have paid much more attention to. The crew offered no other questions, following her out into the hall. They didn’t bother to close the door behind them.

  “Back stairwell.” Talis didn’t wait for them to agree before she started walking.

  Sophie caught up with her as Tisker and Dug trailed behind at the pace forced by Dug’s injury. “Captain, the back takes us deeper into the city.”

  Talis held a fire door for the other three to pass through. “I know, but that city guard they tripled because of tourists is going to be a p
roblem. And now we have an assassin on our heels.”

  Sophie stopped. “Not our heels, Captain.”

  In the distant shadows of the weakly lit corridor, a Bone man stood between them and the stairs to the back exit. Talis could just barely make out his face. And the mining dust that covered him.

  Talis took a step back, one hand on Dug’s shoulder. “Back. Sophie, the door.”

  The figure at the other end started to jog toward them, and Talis caught the glint of a blade catching the light as he moved.

  Talis slammed the fire door shut, and Sophie adjusted something on her lock hammer before pressing the tiny prongs at the end of its barrel against the keyhole. There was a low whoosh and thump from the business end.

  Their would-be assassin reached the door only a moment later and stared at them through the narrow pane of glass. He had smoke-purple eyes that reminded her of the rippling pattern of folded steel. Talis knew she’d remember those eyes as long as she lived. The handle rattled a couple of times, and she could tell the man was slamming his shoulder to try to force the door.

  “Go.” She walked a few steps in reverse as the others turned back up the corridor the way they’d come.

  Her fingers felt cold. Anxiety. They’d just been within inches of the man who’d nearly cost them one of their own.

  They heard voices and footsteps when they reached the front stairwell. “The Cutters live one floor up, sir!”

  Dug’s lips were pale and there was a sheen of perspiration on his skin. There was no fighting past the assassin, or the Lippen guard.

  “Up,” she whispered, and propelled them forward.

  They were light on their feet as they took the first turn in the stairwell. Sophie and Tisker carried Dug between them, coordinating their steps so as not to stumble. One floor up, they headed for the rear stairwell again, descending as quietly as they could while still being quick about it.

  Sophie sabotaged the lock behind them as they left their tenant building while Tisker and Dug leaned against the tunnel wall, panting with the effort of getting him around. Talis caught Tisker looking at Dug’s bandages. She’d already looked, herself. The wraps were still secure and from what they could see, the sutures were holding.