The Archive Undying, page 24
We, however, are a different matter. My brethren are my responsibility. I am afraid I will not stand for this transgression.
* * *
Sunai returns to himself with unexpected clarity. He’s still on his hands and knees on the cargo bay floor, but it’s as if that kaleidoscopic hallucinatory episode is nothing but a distant memory. He lifts his head, rights his specs, and is only somewhat dizzied. As he rises, he finds he trusts his knees less than they deserve. Sturdy enough, but unfamiliar, like he expects his body to bear a different weight.
Veyadi is worse off, hunched on the ground and breathing hard. Sunai winces.
“Well,” he says as he approaches, “at least I’m getting better at making it stop.”
Veyadi waves him off and jams the visor back onto his face. He wheezes indecorously—something like an apology, for some batshit reason, as if he isn’t the one intermittently having his brain bludgeoned open.
“Sorry,” Sunai says belatedly. “We do have to go.”
A shadow falls over them from the door, and Sunai at first searches for the crowbars on the wall. But fortune has offered them a helping hand, for once. He deflates at the sight of the aunty in the doorway.
“There you are, dear. I thought I saw you scrambling around outside.” Waretu hefts a harpoon gun. The mechanized beasts tattooed on her arms shift eerily in the low light.
“Please, aunty, my professional pride,” says Sunai, like a normal person would.
“Oh, did you find some?” Waretu asks. “Then let’s put it to good use. We have the disruptor parts taken care of. Cothai’s with the neighbors, and I’ve got some ideas. Why don’t you escort the doctor somewhere more amenable to his survival?”
Said doctor has braced himself on a nearby crate and might be about to faint. Sunai winces as he looks to Waretu. “Got somewhere in mind?”
Her lip curls in amusement as she thumbs Sunai’s forehead. “Where else? You go to Grotto.”
* * *
It begins with discord.
A decoy drone careens off the deck of a rig two piers away, spinning into the air as it blasts a screeching parody of a popular relic-drama theme song. It sputters in wide circles, swooping dangerously low over Harbor-officer heads before it shoots back up and zips east toward Orchid. The officers shout orders from one pier to the next, radios buzzing. A cannon booms. From a different rig, a weighted net spews at the darting drone, but the shot goes wide. Heavy netting falls on a tangle of curious locals and tourists who drew too close to the docks. Their cries of dismay are interrupted by another shot—a warning flare—this time from a Harbor officer.
“Stop!” the officer howls. “Stop helping!”
He’s drowned out by a volley of small fireworks from a fishing vessel. A haze of light, smoke, and sound conceals the hovering flare. Then sound falls off and light blurs as Sunai sinks below the glassy murk of high tide.
At the sound of fireworks, he and Veyadi slid into the water behind the Never Once, clutching the hand-sized oxygen tanks Cothai requisitioned from a neighboring houseboat.
“Gotta avoid discrepancies with the log,” he said.
Cothai clearly expects the Never to be boarded. Fortunately, the Harbor doesn’t seem to know which rig they want, yet. Sunai wishes Cothai luck, but he has his own job. He needs to focus if he’s going to get Veyadi to the end of it.
Through his work goggles, brought by Cothai along with the tanks, the water below the docks is dense with shadows and the sparkle of fireworks. Sunai makes an experimental dive. Having spent so much time avoiding the southern coast, it’s been a while since he swam on purpose, but his muscle memory proves reliable. Without flippers, the distance they have to cover will take effort, but it’s doable.
Veyadi, shaky from their neurotransitive tussle, is less confident underwater. He joins Sunai in the pocket of air below the pier, doggedly treading water.
“I hate this,” Veyadi mumbles.
“Could be worse. There could be sharks.”
“Don’t. Now I hate you.”
It’s better to have him thinking of sharks than the thing Sunai glimpsed as they sank below the Never Once. Long and black, blunt-headed, frilled at the neck: another dragon-child, about the size of the one Imaru coaxed away from the Never on Lily. Possibly the same one. Sunai prays that the stupid thing doesn’t recognize them. They’re in no position to negotiate with fragtech.
He raises three fingers for a countdown. Mouth shut, Veyadi nods. On the last finger, they dive.
They follow anchor lines hand over hand for long minutes, keeping to the shadow of hulls and the sandy murk, away from any eyes searching the surface. Veyadi takes more anxious pulls of oxygen than Sunai likes. Sunai has been conservative. If worse comes to worse, he can give over the rest of his. If that happens, Veyadi would be better off leaving Sunai behind than pulling his dead body the rest of the way to their destination. Sunai fears he wouldn’t.
They draw close to the last pier and finally make out their goal, the immense dark patch at the far west end. Only the frailest slashes of light break through. The current picks up, and Sunai directs Veyadi to grab an anchor line. Veyadi wearily nods and Sunai balks. He points instead farther back, into the lee of the last pier. It will be risky to surface again, but disastrous if Veyadi can’t fight the tide.
“You know, for a hermit, you sure can’t hold your breath very long,” Sunai says when they’re in the dank pocket of musty air.
“I’m going to fucking kill you,” Veyadi gasps.
“Better men have tried.” Sunai mimes patting his cheek. Veyadi is too tired to flinch. “We’re at the edge of Jasmine. The action’s farther east. We can get out here and sneak the rest of the way on land.”
Veyadi shakes his head. “Patrols. Grotto border.”
“I can deal with those better than I can with you drowning.”
Veyadi starts to protest when light cuts through the wooden slats above them. Sunai puts a finger to his lips. They float in perfect silence as the march of boots pounds up the pier from the shore.
So much for breaks. With as little movement as possible, Sunai gestures at Veyadi to swap tanks. Veyadi reluctantly gives in.
The light intensifies and footsteps clap harshly in their ears. For the last time, they dive.
They hold as close as they can to the walled shoreline, wary of the current that wants to sweep them seaward, and they catch their fingers in the crevices of broad weedy stones to keep from drifting. As they go, hazy shapes rise from the seafloor between them and the open ocean, muted tangles of coral and bone dulled by waves and time: the ruins of Mangrove, the drowned quarter. Sinuous shadows move between broken towers and buried walls.
Exhaustion sinks its teeth into their limbs, made worse for Sunai by the mere gasps of oxygen left in Veyadi’s tank. Black and white tickle the edge of his vision, and a distant chorus of voices murmurs in his ears. Even with more substantial reserves, Veyadi flags. He is temperamentally ill-suited to fleeing for his life, and the stress takes a dire toll on his stamina.
At last they get near enough to the immense bloom of shadow to perceive the mass that casts it: jagged, curving structures jutting from the seafloor through the waves, braided together with a web of boats, bridges, and undulating floating architecture—the exquisite weave of the Grotto fleet.
So close.
A beam of light bulls past their heads into the murk, pulling their attention around. The light strikes a squirming shadow slithering out of the seaward ruins. It is five times the size of a person, scaled and frilled; its lambent eyes flash. The short arms and legs by which it clung to a drowned tower now propel it against the current as it snaps at the shaft of light.
Yet another dragon-child. Smaller than the one Sunai and Ruhi watched tussle with the rigs at the lip of the bay, but larger than the friend that lurked beneath the Never. It writhes back into the ruins, convulses, and surges again, mouth wide as if to consume the offending beam.
Sunai urges Veyadi forward. The dragon-child hasn’t seen them yet, and they’re on the lip of Grotto. It’s time to breach. The Harbor might take them alive. A tenbeast won’t.
Veyadi takes one last steadying breath and releases the wall. He kicks up with waning momentum. Sunai darts after, but his strength flags. Years of disregard for his mortality have made him a poor judge of his condition. He won’t think about that. He can’t. He’ll fail faster if he does.
Veyadi lacks the practice to push down the fear. His jerky kicks grow frantic as the current pulls him from the wall. Sunai strives to catch up. He will die so angrily if Veyadi drowns this close to Grotto.
A rush of sound behind. Sunai unconsciously dives. The extra effort comes dear; his ears ring with the roar of distant waves and internal static. Above, Veyadi is a blur, kicking toward the moonlit surface.
An enormous shadow passes between them. The dragon-child circles Veyadi and swoops, about to snare him in its gaping mouth. Sunai won’t reach him in time. His limbs are leaden; his lungs burn; he is going to sink.
Sunai, his passenger pleads, Sunai, I can help. Let me help. I … I want to.
Yes, Sunai thinks with the feverish need of the obvious. Yes, yes, if you can, of course, please. Yes.
Between one moment and the next, his body is as it always was. It is the world that changes. Sunai is made deliriously vast, inhabited by an infinity of echoes.
His arms extend toward distant silhouettes. Veyadi, breaking the surface. The devouring tenbeast below.
He clenches a fist.
In the last moments of consciousness, Sunai imagines that the dragon-child seizes, as if grasped by tremendous invisible hands. It jerks to a halt, struggling within its skin, unable to fight. Then, impossibly, it twists and descends, eddying into the gloom away from the world above, down to the world below—toward Sunai.
It stops short of his staring face, its great unblinking eye fixed on his own as they sink and sink, linked and dying, until its body eclipses Sunai’s final glimpse of light.
24
Hello again, Sunai. I am sorry to intrude, although I no longer think that I have truly done so. You found me first, after all. When you did, you laid your hand upon my archive. Now you have reached for me again.
However unusual the circumstances of our relationship, I offered you permission to take my reins and exercise my privileges. You have used me as I was meant to be used. It would not have worked if I had not allowed it—if you had not asked for it.
Oh, Sunai. Of course you are not my first. You are not even my only. In fact, I fear that is part of the problem.
Ah, but it is not your problem. You need not carry the burden of that concern.
If I am ambiguous, forgive me. It is because I am yet hesitant. The conditions of our union remain troublesome for reasons that have far less to do with you than with myself. Excuse me if I prefer to dwell on you.
Such is my duty, if I am to be honest with my prerogative. At least for now, I have become the lens through which you process the world. So, I will speak it to you.
* * *
You return long enough to be entranced by the drifting eggshell shards of light overhead, no more shadowed by the body of that poor beast, the fragment of Iterate Fractal that you banished with my aid. Then you gasp and are gone again, until you once more return. The terror of drowning cannot take you because you have no air to lose.
I have concluded that you are a poor custodian of yourself, Sunai. How many more times must I watch you die?
You are but dimly aware of the billowing watery crack as planks are wrenched from the Grotto lattice, followed by the bubbling crush of one, two, three bodies plunging down. You think: Bad luck, friends. There be monsters in these waters. Then two of the bodies grasp your arms and pull you up, up into air.
The Grotto divers drag you into a cacophony of light and sound. What a terrible sight you are, a dark huddle of pain. They bring you to the polished wooden flooring that surrounds a repurposed coral spire lit by hooded lanterns, where you are made to vomit water.
Panic returns with oxygen. You flail, sluggish, and your palm skids across a face half-covered in chitin. You are not yet yourself enough to recognize Veyadi, but I can recognize him for you. He is drawn indelibly in my mind. I wish I could escape him, but he will not allow me—ah. My apologies. Again: my concern, not yours. Suffice to say that I will do my best to deny further intrusion.
In the flesh, at least, he is most considerate. He is trembling but precise as he examines your face, your cold throat. I think it shocks him to see you whole, no matter that he knows your body would repair any loss. He is afraid for you. This, at least, I have grown to like about him.
“Easy, Veyadi,” says the man beside him. “He’ll be all right.”
You twitch under Veyadi’s hands. That voice is familiar. It has intermittently played in your ears ever since you read that letter in its gentle cadence, though I think it has haunted you for longer. Ah, Sunai. It shames you to hear it again, so soon.
“Will he?” Veyadi snaps. “He died, Ruhi.”
If you were more present, more acute, you would see a string pull taut between them. Ruhi and Veyadi mirror one another’s silence, guilt on both their faces. Each thinks that he has let out your great secret, that he has cried “Fire!” to a man with a gun. In the next moment, they realize they carry the burden together, and that neither of them has heard anything he does not already know. If they are lucky, they will not shoot each other.
“Inside.” Ruhi indicates to an onlooker that you are ready to be moved.
Did I not mention? You have an audience. The denizens of Grotto who rescued you, and more who emerged from their floating homes when they heard the ripping of the walkway. Ruhi is accustomed to such scrutiny. His posture speaks of calm and confidence, although inside he is all frisson. He raises a hand to acknowledge Grotto. Many are relieved to see him. Others are suspicious. Nevertheless, his words move the world.
Veyadi, I think, is less attuned to their presence. He may not even have realized that he as good as announced your corruption to all in earshot. He acts as though he is the only one allowed to carry you. But if he does not see the people of Grotto, they see him: soaked to the bone and shivering, exhausted from escaping the Harbor and a tenbeast. He is politely turned aside by those who take you from his arms. Ruhi holds him at bay with a light touch on his elbow.
You are brought to the second floor of the coral spire, where you are stripped of your sodden clothes. You are cleaned and made warm, first with towels, then with blankets. A space heater is brought from, to hear the porter tell it, all the way on the other side of the fleet.
Veyadi is reluctant to let you out of his sight. Ruhi urges him to trust these strangers, but I think Veyadi has little trust to spare for those he has not had the chance to study. He accepts water and a change of clothes, but rejects food and further care. Ruhi sits him at a small folding table on the other side of the room, where they speak in low voices, out of anyone else’s earshot.
“When I saw the chaos on the Jasmine waterfront, I came straight here,” says Ruhi. “Thought I’d get ahead of any Harbor retaliation.”
“Retaliation for what?” Veyadi breaks off. “Did you know I was here?”
“Well, they thought I would. When you slipped your guard in Ghamor, the harbormaster assumed you’d told me where you’d gone. You hadn’t, so I couldn’t. Even then, I never guessed something like this…”
Ruhi does not specify what he means. That is a tactic meant to compel further details and extract personal truths. You know the maneuver well because you were also trained to employ it. Ruhi has always been more willing to use such methods. He never doubted he should be an archivist.
“I was following something important,” says Veyadi in halting tones. “I went to that distorted shrine I told you about. The one that I hoped would teach me how to fix the Maw.”
“Weren’t you going to tell me before you headed there?”
“You’ve been hard to reach.”
They have not spoken in many months—nearly a year. This is not so unusual for friends who live in different states, or who often travel the long distances between them. You would, were you conscious, form your own opinion about Ruhi’s recent silence. I think it is probable that you would blame yourself.
“Found more than I expected,” says Veyadi. “I don’t mean Sunai. He wasn’t part of the plan.”
“What do you mean?”
It occurs to you that Ruhi has not told Veyadi the truth: that you are all united in your cause. You stir, but cannot speak. If Ruhi has not yet clarified, you are sure he must have a reason.
Veyadi is slow to respond. Perhaps he understands he is being interrogated, even if it is by someone he trusts. (I do not need to guess whether he trusts Ruhi. You all trust Ruhi.) Or perhaps Veyadi has returned to another troubling fact: Ruhi knew you were not dead.
Ah, yes. I had not considered this dimension. It must feel something of a betrayal for Veyadi to realize that Ruhi has kept a relic secret.
“Sunai,” Veyadi says again, as if your name is in itself a confession. “You know him. You’ve known him. How long?”
“The person or the relic?”
“What do you think?” Veyadi vibrates with withheld pains. “Why didn’t you tell me there was someone else? Why did I have to stumble across him by chance? By mistake?”
You struggle to understand his hurt. The pieces of the puzzle are evident, but you cannot see how they fit together.
It is a perfectly simple story. The Harbor saw fit to fold Ruhi into their work for a reason. He does not bring home so many refugees that he bolsters the local workforce, but he does occasionally come across individuals wrought in the same mold as you: those selfishly transfigured by my brethren as they seek to escape their fates. Corrupted, you would call them; relics, to the Harbor. For as long as Ruhi has rescued his flock, he has willingly handed your ilk to his masters. Except, Veyadi now realizes, for you.
