The Archive Undying, page 34
But yesterday, when they told the crew what Sunai had done to the sentinel-fowl, and what he meant to do to the Maw …
As has become their always, one recollection summons another. Sunai remembers the scene from his place at the balcony door. Veyadi recalls it from the bed. He was watching, then, with purpose and care, as Ruhi stood sipping ice water and tension played down his jaw and throat.
Ruhi was troubled. Disturbed. But he did not, to Veyadi, seem surprised.
“He knew by then,” says Sunai, tight with argument. “That’s why he helped me get back into the archival pit. He knew I could do something. I told you both, in Grotto.”
“You did.” Veyadi remembers Ruhi in the coral spire, too, the flattening of his features that could be called horror as he demanded to know just what Veyadi had found in that shrine. “I don’t think he likes the passenger, Sunai. I don’t think he trusts it. But he does know it.”
He summons the next memory from within Sunai, retrieved so deftly by the instinct he received from Iterate Fractal—that facility for delving through a foreign mind and seeing its inner workings for what they are. The memory he selects:
The passenger speaking to Sunai as he struggled to make sense of what it showed him through the capillary roots. The cool sensation that guided him through the bay to the Anthill frags, a sensation that traveled down his arm and began at his …
Sunai’s hands cup over his throat. He swallows to prove to himself he can.
“It told you that was someone else,” says Veyadi. “Someone who wanted to guide you. With whom it had an agreement.”
Sunai cringes away from understanding as a child from a needle. But he can’t escape the chemical succession of one thought into the next.
The passenger has shown him many things. Open skies over weathered peaks; stifling darkness in great Harbor transports; and again and again, a scintillating sun in a breathless blue Mohani sky. He has seen Khuon Mo, its water and streets, the people within it and their sweat. He was a body in their midst before he ever returned.
No, no. It doesn’t make sense. How could the passenger have climbed into Ruhi? When would it have had the chance? Ruhi never did go to the Dahani shrine. Even if he had, it would have been hidden from him as it was from every eye but for Sunai’s.
“I don’t know how it happened,” Veyadi concedes. “Nothing about this thing is normal. But we can connect the fucking dots. Someone summoned those frags for you. Someone who knew what you were planning to do—who knew before anyone else.”
Sunai laughs, desperate for a release. “Fine. He helped. Good. We need all the help we can get.”
“No,” Veyadi snarls. “He’s only ever helped you try to die—he tried to kill you himself. We can’t trust him.”
Sunai is unbearably present in his flesh on the kitchen floor, soon to be bruised and broken. His throat feels crushed already. No sound will come out of it.
What argument could he pose? He does trust Ruhi, he still trusts him. This awful thing he’s about to do in a Janggori kitchen, it’s a product of a wound wrought by grief and shame. It’s not an act of malice, but of weakness, and Sunai can only pity that. How could he of all people condemn fragility?
“Why?” Veyadi demands. “Why do you keep doing this, Sunai? Jin shoots you, you pretend you don’t care. The sentinel-fowl mauls you, you bury it. The Maw wants to eat you, you beg for its life. Ruhi murders you, you justify it for him. And I—I break into your head, I lie to you, I let you think you did it to me, and you still—” He breaks off, throbbing with disgust, desire, and loathing, only half of it his own. “Please, Sunai, please. Don’t let me do this. Tell me to stop.”
Sunai inhales, holds it, waits for the words to come. He can think of none worth saying.
He exhales, and their private world blows away. He lacks the conviction to keep it.
* * *
The world they return to is caked in humidity, pre-storm air billowing in through the open balcony doors. Veyadi is the first to pick himself up off the polished ivory floor. Sunai only rolls onto his back.
The pocked white ceiling is threaded through with green lights that flicker gold, meant to evoke roots illuminated from within. Sunai imagines himself receding into them. Drawing away. Veyadi’s emptiness echoes his.
“Are you going to help me kill the Maw?” Veyadi asks.
“You think I’d make you face the harbormaster all by your lonesome?”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Sunai bites his lip hard enough that Veyadi winces. He says, “I don’t know.”
Veyadi’s anger burns low and slow in Sunai’s bones. Sunai wonders how anyone could keep a fire going that long. That strong.
“If you don’t,” says Veyadi, “I’ll do it alone.”
34
Seventeen years after the corruption of Iterate Fractal, Madam Wei formally invites the Harbor to Khuon Mo. She marks the occasion with a gala, to be held on the rooftop of the Heavenly Pearl.
It will be a begrudging affair, calculated to express that though the Harbor may finally have acquired its precious robot, Madam Wei still has her investors, her journalists, her well-dressed toughs and saboteurs. You’ve shown me yours, now I’ll show you mine.
Sunai is reminded of Leaf 31: “Wound,” which describes a dying queen who returns from the battlefield with a seeping hole in her midsection that cannot be healed, and which continues to leak blood and fluid years after her death. It can only be stopped when the weapon that made the hole, a spear fashioned by her brother and wielded by her sister, is once more plunged into her flesh. The queen immediately resurrects and drags her body across the kingdom to lay herself to rest again before her enemy-siblings’ ancestral shrine.
Of this Iterate Fractal said, “What is lost may be recovered, even when it seems gone forever,” and, “Learn to apologize.”
Neither madam nor harbormaster expect anything like an apology from the other. They share a table, yes, but each is more interested to learn whether her rival would prefer to lose her hold over the city or burn it to the ground.
An elevator paneled in carved bone and festooned with printed leaf banners carries guests to the decked-out roof, where they’re greeted by a terrace bordered by faux fruit trees and silk-flowered trellises, artfully styled to mimic wild growth. Its view of Lotus in the hours before sunset would be striking, if Lotus and its concrete crown were at all lovely to look at.
Sunai looks anyway, searching for the Maw. It’s been absent for nearly a full day, but its shadow lingers in his expectation even as it neglects to manifest. Hallucinations attempt to make up for the truant ENGINE. They flit from every corner to which he casts a glance: a dark curve under the waves, a glimmer by the shore.
“They’re calling you an archivist,” someone says by his side.
He asks, “Are they being rude about it?”
The someone is a round-faced older woman, one of the madam’s special guests, and her long-nosed companion. She wears her wealth with understated dignity, a tailored suit, simple jewelry of fragrant woods. A citizen delegate of the Immaculate Empire, by his guess. While her companion laughs, the woman frowns.
When she looks at Sunai, she sees what Madam Wei and Jin have made him into for the event: a slight, bespectacled Mohani man, and a young one, dressed in green-and-white robes reminiscent of the person he was once asked to be; without his braid to mark himself, Jin offered him a third-gender talisman, which he wears on a cord around his wrist because it’s better than nothing; his face is worn and sleepless, his mouth tight with unspoken anxieties. To a stranger, he seems soft and harrowed. Of course his attempt at humor surprises. Of course it concerns.
Sunai touches three fingers to his chest. “Sorry, aunty. I’m new to being myself in public.”
The citizen delegate doesn’t ask outright where he’s been all this time, nor does her companion ask why Sunai chose now of all times to make himself known, but the questions they do present illustrate the story they’ve learned.
Word is spreading, from Grotto and from the madam: You know Imaru? That Ginger Company woman, the one who returned to Khuon Mo after years rescuing our people on the mainland. She had a partner, you know—that’s him there. A relic. He escaped the Harbor into the wilds; couldn’t bear the thought of what they’d done to Iterate Fractal, I imagine. But now they’ve done what he hoped they never would, so he’s come back to—
To do what? Unclear. They hunt for some sign in his demeanor, in who he attends and who he ignores. Sunai, ill-equipped for subtlety, aims for civility. For his troubles, they dub him inscrutable. Sure.
Dr. Lut, now there’s a man of vision, so the story goes. The model of noble protest, he observes the assembled crowd from an elevated table beside the madam, across from Wei Jin, themself a sour bundle of concessions to their aunt in a silver-threaded skirt, sable top tied with elegant silk knots, third-gender talisman hung from a flowery pin in their short hair. Their surrendered pistol lies shoved in a drawer of Veyadi’s suite; they met that demand with more muttering, but less resistance.
Beside them, Veyadi’s dark eyes are cutting, his posture stern. He wears clothes that could be mistaken for his own—academically modest in a mainland sort of way, though the fabric of his trousers implies they could be worn into the wilds. He is of course as dolled up as Sunai, as anyone would realize if they cared to think about how the doctor arrived in Khuon Mo. The fiction prevails. The city teeters on the edge of eras, and it yearns for stories with which to make sense of that menace, change.
The doctor hates the ENGINE he made, they say. He never wanted it. Thinks it monstrous. He was forced to build it, and ran when he could. He returns with the backing of Madam Wei, and of a relic—an archivist!—and under this auspice, he’s agreed to meet with the harbormaster. What demands will he make? What can he extort from her? How likely is he to be stabbed?
It’s an exciting day.
Here’s the problem: Sunai lacks a narrative. Veyadi knows what he wants and reaches for it, even as he feigns good health by sitting out of reach and glaring at anyone who dares approach. When the harbormaster arrives, he’ll say: Give me the reins of the beast I built, or I’ll teach everyone how to break it.
But Sunai? Great question. Harbormaster Ueda, have you considered putting your massive enslaved war machine out to pasture? Not a metaphor. I’d like to let the robot graze on whatever it likes to graze upon.
Unfortunately, the Maw has already demonstrated its preferred diet. It is slowly digesting Veyadi, and Sunai as well. Letting it free or leaving it alone, neither option is viable. Killing it might save them, yet Sunai foolishly balks.
The thought summons a glance from Veyadi on high. Sunai toasts him from the bar with a third cup of expensive liquor—irreproachably smooth Aigatan rice wine—and thinks of all the compromises he has already made, thank you very much.
First, he’s here. Second, he brought a cane—one of Jin’s, recut for his height. Third, he hasn’t spoken to Ruhi at any point during the three days since their mutual mindscape horror show. Fourth, he has stopped apologizing, because Veyadi hates it. Fair point. Sunai won’t apologize for what Veyadi thinks he should: he still doesn’t want to kill the Maw. And not due to any moral objection either, it’s just … What, pity?
To wit, he doesn’t want to. How is he supposed to change a want?
Imaru arrives to drink half of cup four. Sunai is grateful, because he loves her and she’s handsome in her gold brocade jacket, but he grows brittle once he remembers he’s upset her. What she says when she pushes the porcelain cup back into his hand is, “I finally reached them.” Who? He needn’t ask. “There’s something strange going on here. They’re coming with the harbormaster’s contingent. They want to meet.”
Sunai balks. Meet? As in meet him? Imaru pats his shoulder to say, The very same.
Sunai sends another glance Veyadi’s way. Well? What about this?
Veyadi’s brow creases, his mouth a dark line, but they neither of them have time to properly sort through the thought.
The elevator sings open.
Out strides Harbormaster Ueda Naru, projecting metal and rust. A shortish, stocky woman with close-cropped military hair, she decks herself in a heavy Harbor-blue uniform ill-suited to the tropics. Her prosthetic arm is function-forward downworlder make, fit for a post-corruption state, as is one of her legs from the knee down, light carbon fiber showing the wear of regular use. She should be careful with that scowl, or she’ll wear it out too. She comes to a stop to survey the lot. The scowl persists.
The harbormaster doesn’t go anywhere alone. She is trailed by bureaucrats, assistants, fellow Harbor officers. They filter into the terrace crowd like needles stuck into quivering jelly. Two of the retinue follow the harbormaster toward the madam’s table.
One is Ruhi. He looks quintessentially himself, if tidier, less ready to wander out into the wilds. These last three days, Veyadi has been unable to think of Ruhi without a shock of desolate frustration. Now he rings hollow in Sunai’s mind. Sharing Ruhi’s stage would make Sunai feel like a clown in cosplay, were it not for the harbormaster’s other companion.
The harbormaster’s second friend is dressed unlike any other guest: in a hooded cloak and robes akin to a monk’s—or Sunai’s. The harbormaster doesn’t bother to introduce them. Neither do they introduce themself; they don’t speak at all. But who else could they be? The harbormaster has brought her own relic.
Or, that will be what the rest of the party thinks. Sunai knows better, as does his crew, as does the madam, who takes the matter in stride.
The reason the hand peeking out from the hem of the relic’s robes doesn’t look a human’s is because it doesn’t belong to one. To the guests, it must seem encased in chitinous armor, with veiny protrusions snaking between the knuckles.
To Sunai, the Maw seems poised to once more grasp his cheeks and shove its archival seeds down his throat.
* * *
The platform on which Madam Wei’s table sits is fashioned as if grown from the trunk of an extremely fake tree. The table itself is petrified wood inlaid with nacre tiles depicting Iterate Fractal’s three shrines. A scatter of fresh-cut flowers—the only natural thing in sight—interrupts the porcelain tea setting.
“A gift extended to you by one of my guests, who wishes to remain anonymous,” Madam Wei says as Jin, youngest, pours the tea. “The leaves were found tucked away in a tin at the bottom of a drawer salvaged from a fragtech in the Yermala River basin. Who would have thought Aigata wreckage would travel so far.”
The tea tastes as old as she implies: thin and papery.
“Do you think you’re being charming?” Harbormaster Ueda takes a sip. “It’s gone stale. Might as well be water.”
“Consider it a lesson in sentimentality.” The madam drinks her tea as if savoring it. “Nostalgia holds such power in this city.”
The harbormaster regards Madam Wei with barely concealed contempt. She leans forward, perhaps to say just what she thinks of Khuon Mo’s nostalgic impulses. Sunai doesn’t really hear her. His attention is split—between Veyadi and himself; again between the harbormaster and her ENGINE; again between this table and the bay.
Here at the table, the Maw, seated patient beside the harbormaster, hands concealed in its lap.
There also in the bay, the Maw: for the first time in a whole day, a surge of fractured white has flooded up over the Jasmine pier and collected in a tremendous avian stoop. The Maw drags misshapen wings behind its swaying serpentine body, past the ships and rigs in the waterfront. It reaches the border of Grotto, it circles itself, stretches, and slides back into the waves.
They’ve seen the Maw’s person-shaped appendage exit its greater shell before—on Lily, when it attacked Sunai. Veyadi thought that was anathema, a proof of treachery; he thought the Maw had escaped its bounds and evaded those who held its leash. But if that same figure perches now at the harbormaster’s right, she can’t be wholly at odds with the notion.
The real problem: Which one are they supposed to kill?
“I’m not here to dance around ‘sentiment.’” The harbormaster drains her dreadful cup and refuses to let Jin pour another. “We know you’ve been trying to compromise the Maw. I’m telling you to cut it out. We’ve got a bigger problem than your grudge against Iterate Fractal.”
A frisson of doubt in Veyadi as he leans back in his seat. Alongside his wariness, he feels an unbidden relief upon sight of the harbormaster. He knows her to be dogmatic, obstinate, and honest. If she speaks of a problem, she means true peril. What has she detected? Veyadi glances down the stairs, toward the table where Ruhi and Imaru exchange news in low tones. Because Veyadi shivers, Sunai does too.
Neither of them have told anyone what Veyadi suspects about Ruhi. Sunai doesn’t want to; Veyadi thinks it dangerous—no telling what the passenger will do if it realizes they doubt it’s truly trapped.
Veyadi also thinks that Imaru would kill Ruhi if she knew what he had done to Sunai. While the thought satisfies, it doesn’t justify. It leaves Sunai unable to drink any more of his tea.
“That’s an unexpected amount of ‘we’ for a harbormaster,” Jin says.
“Look at me: a natural diplomat.”
“So you say.” The madam glances over her cup at Veyadi, then Sunai. “Yet you neglect to address the individuals whose opinions matter most.”
“I have plenty to say to Dr. Lut. I’ve been advised against saying any of it in public.”
Veyadi withholds a snort. Sunai glances his way uneasily. Despite what Ueda Naru has compelled Veyadi to do over the years—build that ENGINE, feed his fellows to it—Veyadi is not without affection for her. Sunai’s curiosity summons a cautious frown from Veyadi.
