by R J Theodore
“How long will all this take?” There almost hadn’t been room in Kirna’s desired spot on Sophie’s throat for the sigil, with her chest already almost completely covered in stylized ship’s lines, interspersed with geometric pulleys at each bend and turn, forming a grayscale lattice of knot work. Above that, the new hand-poked tattoo looked nearly invisible, except for the raised, irritated skin.
Kirna frowned at her handiwork on Scrimshaw’s plating. “It could depend on how deep the ink is, how long it’s healed, or how precise my lines. That’s why I drew them first—so the distortion of welted skin wouldn’t mess up the shape. Anyway, I recommend getting your soul back as soon as possible. Don’t be casual about it, you know?”
Talis admired her reflection. The red skin notwithstanding, it was a nice tattoo. Looked like a tree or something, though it was really nothing more than a set of symmetrically intersecting lines within an enclosing ring.
“Think it would work as a pendant?” She could imagine it rendered in pewter or carnelian on a short leather thong.
Kirna frowned, then wiped her hands on an alcohol-soaked rag and made a note in her leather-bound folio. “It might? But there would have to always be contact with the skin. And . . . maybe as a piercing, actually. The deeper it extends into the skin, the better. But let’s stick to the original principles for now, maybe?”
“Will it work more than once?” Tisker had already settled back from his self-examination and slouched low on Kirna’s spare stool as though he were tempting gravity to pull him under.
“They should, though the tattoo may need touch-ups if they fade. But that’s getting ahead of things. We need to make sure they work the first time.” Kirna flushed around her eyes and down her neck and started cleaning up her equipment in erratic and clumsy movements.
Talis put a hand on the side of her workstation. “Hey, no one here doubts in your abilities. You made the gods-rotted ship invisible, Kirna.”
Kirna cast her gaze to the floor with a small self-conscious shrug. “Thank you, Captain. It’s just. This is really important, you know?”
No one knew it better than Talis. But now, she’d surrounded herself with talent and smarts, and she was starting to feel like they had more than a chance.
Chapter 38
The aliens had the solution too. Saved it on their lifeboats, or made more. Not like they ever told him anything. But they had it. And they stood her on the central dais outside the capital tower and stuck her with it. They used it on his little Em, and she—and any hope of the Cutter Empire recovering from this mess—was gone.
Someone had wrapped their arms around Hankirk, and for a moment, in his shock, he returned the hug. But he wasn’t soothed. His shoulders and neck were set like concrete, and anger pulsed through him. He pushed free of the hug and somehow stumbled to the war table.
Everything he’d ever lost before this was meaningless. When Talis deserted the Empire in their academy days. When he learned she sold Lindent’s ring to the Yu’Nyun. When he discovered the Veritors had betrayed everything he’d ever believed and all his plans fell apart at Nexus. Those moments were nothing. This was . . .
“She wasn’t a threat to them,” he argued with no one. But it wasn’t true. She was smart, and she was on her way to becoming the best hope of Peridot. She was absolutely a threat to them.
The Tempest members in the room tried to keep back, to look busy, but stood frozen mid-motion over their tasks. How many of them knew what Emeranth meant to their plans? How many knew, when they delivered the news that had come in on the wind? They all knew, now.
“This was as much a message as an assassination.” He looked up with a jerk of his neck, in the moment the thought entered his mind. A woman, he forgot her name, was caught in the intensity of his gaze. “They know what we’re planning. They know we’re coming. This is my fault.”
“Sir, no one could have known this was coming,” she said, her voice subdued. He turned from her. She didn’t know anything.
“This was a message to me, and to all those who crossed the open borders, invited for the show. To send a message of fear to the world—that we should know our place. That we’re only as good as animals, livestock to them. That we should fear them. They are using this fear to divide us. But from fear comes unity . . .”
He’d corrected the ignorance that Talis had pointed out. The Tempest had tested the solution. Picked vagrant orphaned children and homeless people off the streets. People no one would miss. With each, the results of the solution had been the same. And now he imagined each of them all over again in his mind, each of them with Emeranth’s face.
It was too easy to picture her sweet features contorted in spasms of uncontrolled violence. He imagined the worst and blamed himself for it.
He should never have listened to Talis. If he’d taken the solution to Diadem, unleashed it there, he could not only have saved her, he might have triggered the revolution he’d been planning. What better to concrete the Cutter opinion against the aliens than to learn what they were capable of? He could have stopped this before it happened.
Now it had happened on their terms. If he didn’t act, there would be no going back. The population would be cowed instead of moved to action.
He stalked to the pile of crates and tore off the tarp. It swung around him like a cape and floated to land in a pool against one wall. He put his hand on the topmost case. His resolve came, clear and strong as if pumped from a bellows.
“This is our moment.” He whirled around. No one pretended to work any longer. All focus was on him. They hadn’t liked being told to wait for Talis and her smugglers to solve their problems for them, and now Hankirk was done waiting for them too. “Every inner crust citizen has witnessed what this can do. The rest of the world will hear of it, on our terms. Send half our ships to spread the word that the aliens have moved against the heart of Peridot, the seat of the Empire. The rest of you are with me. Everything changes from this moment on. We will galvanize the world against the Yu’Nyun, and either destroy our enemies, or flush them out into the open. And anyone who choses not to fight with us can fight the aliens as mindless, feral beasts. We fly to Diadem, tonight.”
“Sir, isn’t there another way? It can’t be too late.” The man who stepped forward had a family in Diadem, Hankirk knew. But individuals and their personal relationships would have to be sacrificed for the greater good. They had to act now, or surrender.
He flicked his hand in a short wave. Two other men seized the speaker from either side. He struggled, but they pinned his arms down and lifted him bodily from the floor so that he had no leverage against them.
“I’ve already figured it out.” Hankirk spat. “We need to make sure there’s no coming back from this. If we allow this to be the new normal state of things, the Yu’Nyun will enslave us until they are done with us. Until they have sucked us all dry.
“You didn’t see what I saw in Diadem. With xist own hands, their leader took apart one of their own kind, a layer at a time. They have no sympathy. They have no compassion. If they’d do that to their own, what would they be willing to do to us?
“I’m sorry my friends, I should have prevented this. But you have my word that I’ll set it right. But we must be prepared for decisive action, no matter the cost.”
He stood at the head of a line of volunteers and handed out gas masks and air filters. He swallowed his anger. His personal loss. It was too late for the crown princess, but she was just one piece on the board. Yes, she was dear to him. He would have waged war against the entire world to save that little girl.
And he’d do exactly that in her memory instead.
Chapter 39
The Temple of the Feathered Stone was a beacon of hope for a distressed population. When Illiya returned, the front entry hall was crowded with worshippers seeking guidance. Word of the Yu’Nyun power play in Diadem had spread
throughout the skies. People were worried, from clerks to export agents to the farriers. The only ones who were not allowed to be frightened were the Priestesses. The Temple was solace of the Bone people. Their comfort. Their spiritual center. They could not afford for the acolytes’ hands to tremble as they swept sand from the floor. They could not afford for their High Priestess to find her faith shaken.
Those who came for reassurance formed a quiet line as Illiya passed them, respecting the contemplative hush of the holy space but pressing behind her as she moved deeper through the rock to her audience chamber.
An acolyte held them back, gently, at the door, to give Illiya a moment to settle herself following her journey. She had not slept since she left, first anticipating the results, then lost in the university, resting fitfully on the chairs in the waiting rooms as she was bounced from ilum to ilum. Sleep had not come more easily after hearing Meran’s voice. She began her journey with hope. She returned more confused than ever.
And her flask was three-days empty. She crossed to her large desk at the head of the archivists’ stations.
The bottom drawer was open the slightest amount. With the temple’s omnipresent sand, drawers did not roll open on their own.
Her pulse surged as though her blood had turned to sludge, and her heart despaired of moving it. She reached a tentative hand toward the drawer pull. It grated as she pulled it. The contents within were as she recalled them. The codex of her notes on Meran at the bottom, as she left it.
She took a deep breath, then retrieved the bottle of distilled Rakkar nectar that lay across the top of that same drawer. Its level was lower than she left it by a few shots. Beyond that, nothing was disturbed. No one had found the codex of her notes, read her heretical conclusions. Her acolytes had merely taken advantage of her absence. Relief coursed through her chest and stomach and almost took the strength from her knees. She collapsed into the folding leather stool at her desk and drank deeply, directly from the bottle. In a moment, she would have to sit up, spine proud, and exude a faith in Onaya Bone as solid as the rock around them.
She put her head in her hands. The metal details of her golden claws snagged her carefully arranged hair, and she sat back up to pick them off, one-by-one and drop them onto her desktop. Beneath the jewelry, her natural talons were filed to a blunt point, their surfaces scratched by the undersides of the embossed metal caps. Her fingertips were moisture-logged and wrinkled.
Just a few minutes, she promised herself. The flow of pilgrims would not stop for days. There were long days, and longer nights, ahead. She needed a few minutes to recenter herself.
The visit to speak to Meran, in the most literal sense, had been a success. But what she’d hoped to learn, the connection she fantasized she might make . . . hadn’t happened. It had been like talking to Onaya. Where are the rings? Always the same question. One goddess or another, they were all the same.
Illiya sighed, rubbed her eyes into her palm heels. Then capped her bottle, dropped it back into the drawer, and shut it again.
She carried the handful of finger caps to her stone settee, perched forward on the edge, and nodded to her attendant waiting by the door. As the steel door opened to allow the first petitioner, she slipped the caps back onto her fingers, took a deep breath, and found her most serene expression.
She doled out spiritual guidance for hours, never sure which goddess, which lady, she referenced. Meran demonstrated real power in a way that Onaya Bone hadn’t—couldn’t have, even if she intended to—in years. Eventually it seemed as though some of her own words cut through the wall of exhaustion. Yes. Onaya Bone was the Mother of her people who created them by wrapping sand around a core of Nexus energy. Who kept them and strengthened them through her presence, guidance, and dedication. She was not an unknown. If she wanted to keep the rings out of the hands of a false goddess who rose out of alien technology, perhaps she had good reason. Perhaps her impatience was an urgency that Illiya should respect and honor.
Eventually the air within her chamber felt cleaner. The words she used to reassure her congregation ran truer.
The robes and ornaments she wore to reflect her station grew lighter.
“We are serving the congregation dinner now, High Priestess. I could draw you a bath.”
At the reprieve, Illiya began to tremble in every muscle. The best she could do was nod her thanks to Jeska and steady herself against the backrest of the settee.
How many hours she’d been at her duty, how many hours since she returned, she had no idea. But she was weary both in body and in fortitude. Jeska had carved out a few precious moments for her to rest.
She exited the audience chamber through the side door that led to her rooms, picking off each piece of jewelry, one at a time. She peeled out of her robes, her wrapped cotton bindings, until she remained as she was born. She lowered herself into the tub filled with ice water. The bracing cold coursed through her like electric charges. Her focus returned. Her fatigue pressed back by the shock of temperature shift.
Prickles stood out against her skin. Her vision tunneled on her knees where they stood against the field of ice across the surface of the water.
A rush of noise made her aware she was not alone. She tried to ignore it while simultaneously resolving to plug up each and every one of the aviary gates that granted the temple’s holy flock access to every room in the temple.
“You met with Talis.”
Illiya’s head was pounding, her joints pulsing with fire. And she was naked in an ice bath. It seemed imprudent, even for the goddess. Illiya inhaled deeply, rather than indulge the temptation to mutter. Between the rings, the alien poison, and the piece of simula with its well-fitting control collar, there was work to be done. She did not become high priestess to Onaya Bone for leisure.
Well. Perhaps she once did. But her true calling was as clear and undeniable as the chill in her bath. She took a deep breath, and it steamed as she exhaled.
She looked up from her bare limbs, and the prickles that spread wherever the air touched. Onaya Bone perched on the railing of the dressing area’s chair, above her vestments. Her head and shoulders were back. The four gleaming magenta eyes were reflected in the metal details of Illiya’s dressings on the seat beneath her.
Illiya touched her hand to her heart, then to her forehead, and then spread her hands in the best gesture of welcome she could manage from within a tub.
“Yes, Bone Mother.”
“What did you learn?”
Illiya closed her eyes. “The aliens have closed the borders with foreign dignitaries caught inside. They have administered the alien solution as a display of power, corrupting the soul of the Cutter crown princess, whom they coronated under false pretenses.”
“What of the simula?”
“Bone Mother?”
“Did you find me a simula?”
“Talis brought a portion of a broken simula to Haelli University.”
“And?”
Illiya took a deep breath. A moment before she had reached total spiritual clarity. Now her blood was up again, and the cold bath could hardly compensate. “And the researchers turned it on, connected it to their own technology, and signaled Meran at Nexus.”
The High Priestess began to shiver and reached for a towel. She could not decide why she had not mentioned the circlet.
“And what did the imposter say?”
“Meran said that the alien solution corrupted the souls of its victims. That there was nothing she could do until Talis brought her the rings.”
She braced herself, and Onaya rose to the prompting. She ruffled feathers, opened all six eyes wide in outrage, and shuddered bodily. “I knew she could not be trusted.”
“Talis? She has no intention of bringing Meran the rings.”
“No, Meran! She aims always to overthrow us. To strip our powers, one by one. It’s a miracle the others h
ave held her back this long.” Onaya opened her wings partway and then resettled them. “Forget the simula. This solution forces the soul from a body. Bring me some.”
“Why? Bone Mother, is this truly what is most important? Your congregation is thirsty for your guidance. What words would you have me offer them? Word of the solution has spread, and they look to the Temple for peace and wisdom.”
Onaya Bone shrugged, or shuddered, Illiya couldn’t tell which. “You will think of something. I must go ensure that Talis keeps her mission at the forefront of her mind—or make other arrangements.”
Illiya opened her mouth to ask another question, but Onaya beat the cold, humid air with her powerful wings, and rose through the raven’s gate toward the temple’s exterior, leaving a shower of feathers to litter the surface of Illiya’s bath, and no answers for Illiya to give her people.
Chapter 40
Nexus, ensconced within the ocean’s embrace, filled the sky ahead of Fortune’s Storm. It hung, enormous, dominating their vision.
The ocean water curved away in every direction, suspended by alchemy in the sky around Nexus. Through it, the piercing green light refracted in shifting, rippling patterns. Deep within the water, Talis could see large shapes swimming, backlit by the glow.
Tisker slowed the ship, bringing it to all-stop, and turned their broadside parallel to the water’s surface. Amos and Scrimshaw had stayed below, but Kirna had gathered with the rest of them at midship. Goggles protected their vision as they considered the obstacle before them—and above them, and below them, and stretching out to either side. Talis had to admit, she had no plan for getting through the ocean.
The last time they were at Nexus, Lindent Vein had wielded the seawater like a whip, casting icy tendrils against the Yu’Nyun, surging wave after wave in solid blue walls in an attempt to damage the starships. It had done nothing. But the disruption of water around Nexus left most of the sky clear and had let them get right up to the green sphere revealed within.
