The Stars Undying, page 43
But before I could finish the sentence, there was a roar in the distance, low and animal, and then a high-pitched hum, which grew louder and louder and broke when a large Ceian ship sped onto the beach and docked itself beside the poet’s.
She made a small, awful noise. The hatch creaked open, and a head emerged. This time I did not know his face. It was only his clothing I knew: his blue cloak, and the golden pins that held it to his throat.
“Jacinta Corelhan?” he said.
“Is the City of Endless Pearl a customs bay?” I said sharply. “State your name and business, stranger, and then return to my exosphere and wait to be processed. Or better yet, come forth from your ship and make obeisance before the Oracle of Szayet, and beg mercy for your discourtesy.”
He looked at me: my robes, my crown, the glimmer in my ear. Then he climbed out of the hatch and swung himself down onto the beach, and dusted off his knees and his jacket and the belt that hung from his hip.
“Did you hear me?” I said. “State your name and business at once.”
“Otávio Julhan sent me,” he said to the poet in Ceian. Then he pulled the gun from his belt and fired.
At this point a great deal happened at once.
I screamed. The crowd screamed, too, and scattered in all directions, tripping over one another to get away. Those few soldiers among them shoved through, toward the man, and seized him by the shoulders. He stumbled back with a look of almost comical surprise. Jacinta the poet took a step forward, and fell into my arms.
I had seen footage, of course, of the body. I did not want to see it. It did not matter what I wanted. It came with each letter, with each data packet, with each report of the war. There was no moment that the world did not show it to me, did not demand it be shown. I had seen his body in the blue stained-glass light of the Libeiracópolan, I had seen his body under the shroud. I had seen his body with the shroud thrown off. I had seen his torn mantle, and his wet dark blood. His hand flung over his face. His eyes, closed by the gentle fingers of some unknown mourner, twelve thousand light-years away.
I knelt and lowered the corpse carefully to the sand. Her mouth was a little open. I could see the broken place where she had been worrying at it, only a few moments before.
After some time I became aware of a noise, and then, a little while later, of a touch. One of my guards was bending down, her hand on my shoulder. When I lifted my head, she sprang back and bowed.
“Holiest,” she said, “what shall we do with the murderer?”
I stood. The living Ceian was staring at me, open-mouthed. I did recognize him, I thought, though I did not know from where. It might have been from any street in the city—from the bar, the night after Ceirran’s triumph—from the factory floor. In his eyes there was a kind of wildness, and a confusion that sent my heart into my throat.
I said to him in Ceian, “Do you speak Sintian?”
“No,” he said, bewildered.
I wanted to curse like an Alectelan and spit on the ground. I was not an Alectelan. I was a queen, and he had done what he had done in front of the Szayeti people.
“I am going to speak to his admirals,” I said, and turned away. “Bring him to the marketplace, and have him shot.”
But there was no speaking to his admirals. It took me nearly a day to determine this—every official I spoke to sent me to another, who sent me to another, who gave me excuse after wandering excuse until I could determine at last that neither of Ceiao’s new powers was able to speak to the queen of Szayet—or, if either was able, neither was willing. “Admirals Julhan and Decretan are at war, Madam Oracle,” said one captain to me. “If either comes planetside in the next several weeks, I expect they will be occupied with that unfortunate business.”
There was a careful politeness on her face that I wanted abruptly to dig my fingernails into. I ended the holo call and buried my head in my hands.
The fog, which usually dissipated in the clear heat of the day at this time of year, lingered at the harbor-gate, and by late afternoon was a golden haze through which the distant shorebirds fluttered and scratched at the beach. I stood, paced toward my balcony and away again. When I had first returned to Szayet from Ceiao, I had found a smallness to my bedroom I had never noticed before. I had slept in another bed, and then another, and in every one I had woken just before dawn, gasping at the closeness of the walls.
My tablet made a soft, clear noise. I turned and tapped it at once. “I thought I would never see you again,” I said, and then jerked back.
“I can’t say I expected to see you, either,” said Cátia Lançan. “How times change. Do you have some time to talk?”
I opened my mouth to snap No, and then closed it. She looked tired, too. There was a puffiness to her eyes, a sharp slant to her mouth, which had not been there on Ceiao, the day she had thrown my Pearl of the Dead into a cup of wine.
“What if I do?” I said. “What do you want?”
“What do I want,” she said. “In honesty? The same thing I wanted the last time we spoke. I’d like a friendship between Szayet and Ceiao.” She propped her pointed chin in her hand, and her eyes narrowed. “And I’d like to invest in quicksilver pearl.”
“Was our last meeting an overture of friendship?” I said coldly. “I didn’t realize.”
Cátia’s lip curled. “It might have been,” she said. “I told you then I was being generous. If I offer to be generous a second time, will you decide again to act so hastily?”
I hesitated, and then pulled my chair out from my desk and sat before her, so that the gold of the growing evening in the window shone through her hands and her cold brown eyes. “You accuse me of acting hastily?” I said. “I recall that you offered generosity with as much confidence as if it were you who had walked in triumph down the Avenuan Libeirguitan the previous month, all while Commander Ceirran still lived.”
“Commander Ceirran died not a minute later,” she snapped, and looked at once as if she regretted it, but my lip curled.
“Have the people let you walk down the Avenuan Libeirguitan since?” I said.
A muscle in her jaw worked. “Madam Oracle,” she said, with deliberate patience, “I would like to make a deal with you. My— The respected councillor Jonata Barran and I are presently the admirals of a very large army, stationed within the Swordbelt Arm. We are, in addition to this, some of the only remaining living members of the Merchants’ Council. On these facts can we agree?”
“We can,” I said, after a pause.
“I am glad to hear it,” she said. “Admiral Barran and I are in possession of many, many ships and many, many soldiers. What we are not in possession of is money with which to pay them, and to pay for their supplies. It is here, Madam Oracle, that I hoped you might be of assistance.”
I laughed, high and hard. “Councillor, I’m afraid you’re misinformed!” I said. “Of all the places in the Swordbelt Arm to come to for money—of all the places in the galaxy, even—I am terribly sorry that your strategy is based on such a misapprehension. Please feel free to reach out the next time you’re looking for a planet without any wealth at all. Good evening.”
She leaned forward and said, “We both know that’s not true.”
The humor left me at once, like a cold wind. I said, “What in the world can you mean by that?”
“You have wealth to send me,” she said, “if you’re so inclined. What you are lacking is the ability. But you may have heard, Madam Oracle, that I come from a manufacturing family. You may even have heard that among the materials we manufacture is diving equipment.”
I stood at once, my hand hovering over the tablet.
“I do not know what you think of me,” I said quietly, “though I must assume it is very little. You have twice now provoked me to commit an act of personal betrayal, in the first instance against someone for whom I cared deeply, and in the second against my faith and my god. I have already refused you in the matter of a treasure small enough to be held in the hand. I cannot imagine what price you think would induce me to give you the treasures of my home’s own oceans. I must urge you not to provoke me again,” and I would have ended the holo then, had she not said:
“Sovereignty.”
I stopped.
“Is that a threat?” I said.
“No,” she said. “No, it’s not a threat. Please sit down. You should know by now that news in the galaxy moves quicker than you think.”
I shut my eyes, and I sat. “This is about the poet,” I said. “I should have known.”
“Who?” said Cátia. “Oh—the woman who died? Yes. It’s about her. More to the point: It’s about the bounty hunter who shot her. Do you know that it’s against the law to aid the proscribed?”
“Ceian law,” I said at once.
“Yes,” Cátia said. “And it’s against Szayeti law to commit murder.” She leaned back and tapped her fingers on a table just out of the holo’s vision. “Which do you think Otávio Julhan will decide takes precedence?”
I leaned forward, furious, and she held up a hand. “I’m only acting as messenger,” she said. “And I’m making you an offer, Madam Oracle. I will send you, free of cost, a freighter full of whatever you might need: seaships, submarine cranes, undersea drones, steel spiders. You send me five ships full of quicksilver pearl—just five! I’ll even cover the cost of shipping. And then, when my war is won, you and I can negotiate a treaty to enforce Szayeti sovereignty. We can even give your planet a special status, if you like. Friend of the Ceian Empire.”
“What if I do nothing,” I said, “and negotiate such a treaty with the admirals who currently occupy Ceiao, should they win your war?”
She sighed.
“I told you earlier that Admiral Barran and I are in possession of many, many ships,” she said, “and many, many soldiers, stationed in the Swordbelt Arm.” She folded her hands in front of her. “I’m afraid that this part is the threat.”
I shut my eyes. In the distance, far beyond the sea, the ships roared.
“I need time,” I said. “I need to consult with my ministers.”
“Take a day,” she said. “Take two, even. I can afford to be generous.” She smiled without warmth. “I just can’t afford it for very long.”
Her image vanished. I stood and picked up the tablet, and whirled and dashed it against the wall.
It shattered at once. Against my carpet, the sparks danced and died. I closed my eyes. Then I stepped carefully over it and leaned out into the hallway, where a guard sprang to attention.
“Please call a maid,” I said, “and please have a new tablet delivered to me. I’ll be back later in the evening.”
I had been a child the last time I had gone exploring in the palace. It took me a long time to find the place I wanted, and for a while I was afraid that it had been destroyed in the explosion. I remembered it only vaguely, the way I remembered dreams. But at last I turned down a hallway I half recognized, and pushed open a door I half knew, and coughed at the dust.
It was an ancient room, filled with old tablets and moth-eaten clothes, and I did not think it had been opened more than twice in the last three centuries. What I was looking for was buried toward the back, under a rusted helmet and a scrap of red feather. It was round, and flat, and gleaming silver. It looked nearly exactly like its counterpart I had given Ceirran many months ago.
I knew how to operate the recorder I had given Ceirran, and I knew how to operate this. I slid my fingers round it, found a warm little indent on the side, and pressed hard.
At once a head appeared, handsome and dark-haired, with cool golden eyes. I was fourteen years old, it said clearly. My father had given me a ship that no living man could fly. And when I cursed his name, you smiled at me, and you said: no living man, yet.
“I was wondering when you might look for it,” said the living Alekso softly beside my ear.
I didn’t look at him. He drifted forward a little and bent toward his own face. The holo-Alekso turned toward him blindly, and my Alekso reached out a hand. It passed through his own cheek. “Is it your true self?” I said.
“No,” he said, leaning closer toward it. “You know better than that, Caviro’s daughter. Your ancestor spent weeks putting its contents into my new body. This thing is only memories. What you carry in your ear is my soul.”
“But nothing else went into the Pearl,” I said. “Only these memories, and your living blood, when you still lived, and the intelligence to animate them.” I swallowed hard. “Are you anything more than that?”
He didn’t look at me. “I don’t know,” he said. “Are you?”
I watched the face over the recorder speak for a little while longer. Then I said, “I want advice on the Ceian war.”
“At last,” said Alekso, and straightened. “Your Councillor Lançan’s overconfident, in my opinion. With even a hundred good ships, and a few decent pilots—”
“No,” I said. “Not from you.”
He looked at me without expression. Then he said, “You were never planning to give me to your sister, were you.”
I set down the recorder, and the low murmur of its voice ceased at once. His living face watched me, unmoving.
“No,” I said. “If it had only meant letting her become your Oracle when I became Ceirran’s, and my remaining the queen of Szayet, maybe. I might have considered it. But you would never have consented to anything less than kingship. And I would never have let the Szayeti people go.”
I had expected him to become angry, to snap, to shout. But he did none of these. Instead, he stood silently, looking at me, and then he turned and went to the door and through it into the hallway.
I set down the recorder and followed him. He walked for a little while without speaking, me a step behind, and then turned and drifted through a pair of glass doors and onto the balcony, which I opened and then shut behind me. There was a cool wind in the air, carrying with it the smell of salt. We stood there for some time, he and I, he looking at nothing, me looking at him.
“I’ve been expecting this,” he said after a while.
“You must have,” I said. “Ever since I made it.”
“No,” he said. “Not because of that. Do you know that every one of your ancestors, from your father back to Caviro’s first child, has asked me to restore their dead to life?”
This silenced me for a moment, but at last I said, “But they didn’t have a Pearl.”
He said, “Neither do you.”
“I do,” I said. “It might be damaged—of course it’s damaged—”
“It’s not damaged,” said Alekso. “It’s gone.”
I exhaled at that, slow and careful, and turned my back to the water to look within, at the warm redness of the hallway, the old royal tapestries, my father’s favorite paintings.
“Then undo it,” I said.
“I can’t,” said Alekso Undying.
“You built it,” I said. “You built it with me. You can tell me how to make another one, one that doesn’t require the blood of the living man to work with its recorder. You can tell me how to make a Pearl that doesn’t need a recorder to work at all. You can tell me how to pull the living man out of the memories. You can tell me how to repair the Pearl that was broken. You can tell me how to make it right again.”
“I can’t,” he said. “Think a minute! If I could, I wouldn’t care whether you kept me safe. You have no new Pearl. If you had one, you would have no living blood to code it to his genetic print. You have no soul to bear.”
“You were the greatest inventor this galaxy has ever known,” I said. “If every one of my ancestors since Caviro’s first child has asked you for it, how have you not yet made a way to undo death?”
“Do you want the truth?” he said.
I turned to stare at him.
“Everything I made,” he said, “he made with me. Every bridge I built, every foundation stone I laid, every weapon I fired was as much his mind as it was mine. He was my hands, he was my voice. He was half my genius. He was half my soul. In all justice the city should bear his name beside mine, and the only reason it doesn’t is because justice never mattered to him. I give his children advice, I give them orders, I watch the palace, I watch the harbor and the ships and the sky… but I could make nothing new for Caviro’s first child. I have made nothing new since.”
I said, with difficulty, “Did my father know?”
“No,” he said. “Some of your ancestors might have guessed… but up until you I chose them all. Up until you, I wanted them all. When they looked at me, they saw the king he said I was—the king he believed I was. That was all I asked for.”
“Then you really are only the memory of a man,” I said.
“It’s done, Caviro’s daughter,” said the dead god of Alectelo. “It will be done whether you blaspheme me or no. I can’t undo it any more than I can shove myself out of this pearl and into flesh and bone. You can keep people on this side of death, but you can’t pull them back over the line. You can’t, and I can’t. It would break the world.”
“I’m not asking to break the world,” I said. “I just want one conversation.”
Alekso turned his head away from me and stared across the concrete harbor, into the sky.
“If I could drown your planet all over again,” he said softly, “if I could boil it and break it and fill it with locusts and wild dogs, if I could hurtle it ten thousand light-years away from your sun, if I could send the seas out hissing into the void, if I could put a knife’s blade to your throat and push, if that would, for one second of eternity, put Caviro in your place—do you think I would hesitate?”
I knew Alekso could not truly see. I followed his gaze, though, up and up, to where the ruins of Ostrayet hung silently over the ocean.
After some time I said, “Then what do we have to say to each other?”
