The Void Ascendant, page 8
Shadowy forms were silhouetted by the low, reddish light of a dozen tiny lanterns and the fire. Sparks spat onto the dirt floor, sending insects scurrying. Like a broken necklace of pearls: moonbugs. No wonder our surgeons had shaved the spy’s head. Very contagious, moonbugs.
Heads turned as we moved, but it was too dark for me to see faces; only the posture of wings, shoulders, backs, tails, hackles, stiffening with distaste at the stranger in their midst. I don’t want to be here either, I wanted to shout. Don’t look at me like that. You don’t want to see me and I don’t want to be seen!
They pushed me to an empty corner, far from the fire’s meagre warmth. The man who had climbed down the flying creature, who I hated already for he had come personally to free the spy, ripped off his mask and tossed it aside. The spy ducked absentmindedly.
I retreated without looking as he came at me, and hit the wall with my back hard enough to rattle my teeth. He seized my throat, pressing me hard to the wall. His fingers dug not quite deeply enough to cut off my air but with enough pressure to suggest both that he wanted to and that it would be easy, so easy. I knew that already. I’d been at a sacrifice once where the chosen method of execution had been strangling and it had only taken a moment. The inside of the trachea is sticky, you see; it adheres when it’s crushed, and that’s that. What a thing to remember now.
With his free hand he snatched a knife from inside his clothing, the blade short but sharp, chipped edge glinting. The spy glanced at it, then back at me, not moving.
“This is Ksajakra,” the spy said in English. “Leader of the resistance for the city of Valishec. He is not your enemy.”
“Speak properly, Yenu,” the man growled in Low Dath, not looking away from me. He looked like he might be human. The parts I could see of him, anyway. I had been here long enough to know that there was no certainty just by looking at someone; there were simply too many kinds of people out there. His skin was an ordinary dark brown, and his teeth and eyes seemed human. He was tall for Aradec, the top of his head nearly at my collarbones. Thin but big-boned. A fighter. I became very aware of my pulse hammering against his thumb.
The spy switched to Low Dath. “I’m trying to introduce you. This is—”
“I don’t need to know him,” Ksajakra said. “And you, what’s wrong with you? Why did you insist we take this... this turd from the palace? We could have died! Explain yourself. Now.”
“What’s wrong with her is that she’s working with them,” someone said quietly in the darkness, a stocky Turuntu with pale lilac scales. “As we’ve said from the start, Ksajakra. To lead them back here. Him. Specifically. Don’t you know what those robes are? That’s the Royal Prophet she brought here. Brought upon us.”
So. They doubt her too. And now this. What if I can use that somehow, what if...?
Yenu looked unperturbed. And where had I heard that name before? In the silence, the crackling of the fire seemed very loud. Footsteps and cartwheels rumbled above us, briefly darkening what I hadn’t noticed before: a single grimy window, set at what would have been street level, letting in almost no light at all. Glass. A weak point. How...?
Ksajakra released me. “Him, I would kill in an instant,” he said grimly, turning to her with the knife still held high. “You, though... you are my second, you were the beating heart of this cell. You, I would take a minute before I killed. But you insisted on going to the palace.”
“Yes,” she said, “and I insisted that you not come to get me if I was arrested.”
“Your arrest put us all in danger,” he snarled. “They would have tortured you. Found us. Killed us all. And now this, him, the Prophet. You had us take their Prophet. Talk!”
“Not here,” she said. “Too many people are listening.”
“They have the right to listen. They are with us.” His eyes narrowed, and he glanced up at the Turuntu standing by the wall, arms crossed, leaning back casually on her tail. Ksajakra’s face had the look of a man suddenly putting several unrelated things together. I suspected that mine did too. And Yenu’s expression of serenity was crossing over into arrogance; it was bothering him, and me, that she did not seem more fearful, or at least conciliatory.
“Not here,” she said again.
“Fine. Then I will kill him.”
She shrugged. “Then the resistance stops here. We can no longer resist.”
She had said, it seemed, the magic words: he hesitated, then stowed the knife. I straightened up to my full height, putting my shoulders to the wall. My shoulders hurt from having my hands bound behind me, and I hated being unable to stretch. In the dim light all I could see of either of them were their eyes, the movement of their teeth.
That was some threat, I thought. It was almost funny. Resistance to what? To the war? There were no more than twenty or thirty people in the room. It was like someone trying to put out a forest fire with a paper fan.
Just like that, actually, and my stomach revolved queasily at the image. Precisely like that. Not just because it would do nothing, but because it might even bring the fire closer. It might burn them up before they realized that they had gone from hero to victim. Because this was it, this was ‘the resistance.’ And what they were resisting was not the crown or the guards or anything like that. It was not a revolution to overthrow the King and the Queen. What they were resisting was the war.
How they had learned of it didn’t matter; I had only learned of it this morning, but the war had been going on for years. Just because the palace did not speak of it did not mean that the rest of the planet did not. Long enough, at any rate, to decide to resist it...
Yenu wandered off a ways and murmured to someone who worked on the locks of her shackles for a moment till they fell away. I could not see who she had spoken to, only their hands, small and dexterous, like the hands of a raccoon, and then the jingle and scrape as they dragged the fallen shackles towards themselves. Probably sell them for scrap metal; iron was valuable here.
Freed now, unselfconsciously, hidden by the shadows, Yenu began to undress. She was so pale that her skin still gave away every movement, the lanternlight glittering off the scales, the sharp dorsal fin, the blinking eyes on her legs. “This is it,” she said unhelpfully, pulling on a dark pair of full-length britches, then stepping into a proper pair of boots. “This is what makes the rest of the plan possible.”
“This? What this? Speak straight,” Ksajakra snapped.
She threw on a shirt and over that a knee-length black coat of some stiff stuff, like what the guards wore at the castle, though with brass toggles instead of buttons. “Him.”
“The Prophet? We do not need prophecies.”
“Not his prophecies.” A creak in the darkness: a trunk, a drawer? Metal gleamed as she began to slot daggers, knives, and other small items into the coat’s pockets, ending with an intricately-carved rectangular case that she slung across her body like a messenger bag
yes the brown canvas messenger bag remember that yes she used to have it always on her
it’s not her!
on its long chain. She rubbed a hand across her shaven head, then began to head for the fire where the wounded lay. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s clean up first, and then we can talk.”
Ksajakra moved in front of her. “You think I am so easily distracted? I am the leader here,” he said. His voice was soft, but everyone turned to look at him once more. “And at my word, no matter what you can do or you say you can do, Yenu, they will remove you from this resistance and from this life. Lives hang in the balance here. Our lives.”
“She doesn’t care about your lives,” I said. Both Ksajakra and Yenu glanced at me and I felt, with delirious, smug glee, something shift between our gaze. The creature’s eyes were different, but I had seen that look a thousand times before in the eyes of the original. It said: I’ve got this. Don’t say anything.
“Do you know what she is?” I said rapidly, pointing my chin at the spy. “Her. Notice I say what, I don’t say who. Her name doesn’t matter.”
She began to speak; Ksajakra cut her off with a brief motion of his long hand. Empty of weapons, it still resembled a weapon. “You think you know something about her we don’t?”
“I think I know something about her that nobody else does. So maybe for your sake it is for the best that you took me, out of anyone at the palace, hostage. What a coincidence! Or maybe not. Maybe it’s not a coincidence that she demanded I come. Maybe she is working with me. How would you know?” I was babbling now, and his gaze suggested that I should come to a point, before he demonstrated exactly how I could be induced to confess. It would be a familiar speech, I thought. One I had very recently delivered myself. “That thing was made by the... by the Masters. The very ones I suspect you plot against.”
Several people couldn’t help but gasp. Yenu’s face went still, only the barest flicker of hatred behind her expressionless mask.
So I was right. I had been right from the first moment I saw it.
I plunged ahead. “Never mind what it looks like. I’m not saying that’s proof of anything. I’m saying that They patterned it after an original. A girl I knew, a human girl from my homeworld. Named Johnny Chambers. Who was also Theirs, who belonged to Them. They offered her a covenant, They made her what she was. Just like this thing.”
More gasps and whispers. People were shuffling closer. Not a few, I noticed with pleasure, were holding weapons. It might be over soon, all over, if I could just get this right. Eyes glittered in the darkness. Yenu did not move.
“Johnny never would have told you this,” I said. “Because she had to control the narrative. What did this one tell you? What did she show you? Let me guess. Secret powers. Intelligence beyond belief. Magic and wonders. A genius, a hero. You said: Look at this. We cannot do any of this.
“And let me guess further. She always said: You can lead; I’ll support you. But listen. It’s an act. She does this not only because she wants underlings to rule, but also because she knows she will need many, many people to sacrifice on the way. Could she do this alone? Probably. Would she rather grease the cartwheels with your blood? Certainly. So she has gathered you as protection to throw you away later.
“And what is her purpose? She is a trap. She was made to infiltrate you, betray you, and draw the Masters to you. I know. Johnny did the same to me. To all of Earth. And in so doing she destroyed our planet. Seven and a half billion people. This thing isn’t here to fight the Masters. She’s here to give Aradec to Them.”
“If that’s so,” Yenu said, “then why would I take you? The one person who supposedly knows about this... this trap? With me as the bait?”
“Because Johnny would have trusted me not to say anything,” I said. “Because she would have expected me to keep my mouth shut and protect her. Even now. You’re just doing what you’re programmed to do.”
“This Johnny,” Ksajakra said quietly. “What happened to her?”
“She died,” I said. “In front of me. Almost close enough for me to reach out a hand and touch. I saw everything. Everything. I saw her blood. I saw her bones. Everything flew apart into pieces. And then my world...”
The silence was thick, solid; for a moment I lost all bearings, felt the dim room spin around me, remembering the thing, the void, hungry for matter and light, crowded with jostling eyes, tentacles, tearing fangs, screaming mouths. Ready for Their prize. The prize she had given Them: a whole planet. My parents, my brothers, my sister. All dead. Everyone else dead. Because of her. Because of her. And me only miraculously spared by being thrown through the void into somewhere else.
I sagged to the floor; Ksajakra hauled me back up by the front of my robe, teeth bared.
“She’ll betray you,” I said wearily, not caring who I referred to. “It’s all she knows how to do. She brought me here to bring the palace down upon you. You know they won’t rest while their Prophet is gone. Not during a time of war. And to bring the palace means bringing the Masters. They’re here, you know. On Aradec. Now. Because of the war. I saw one just this morning, at a sacrifice. He played executioner. They’re here.”
His breath was fast, harsh. But he still did not reply.
“Let me go,” I said softly, addressing only him. “Look at you. You never trusted her, did you? She can talk the ear off a statue. Believe me, I know. But this is it. Where you get to decide whether you want to let me go, so I can bolt back to the palace. You know I don’t know where this place is and could never lead them here. Or whether you want to do as she says, which will mean the guards do come here and arrest, question, torture, mutilate, and kill every one of you. Except her. You’ll see.”
He said nothing.
“What was she there for?” I said. “What was she there to steal? She didn’t tell you, did she? Then something ‘went wrong.’ How could someone with her abilities get arrested by ordinary palace guards? Hm? Think about it. Take as long as you like.”
A cart rolled past the window, shaking loose dust and cobwebs from the low ceiling. The other people weren’t quite crowding us, but were obviously listening, and looked weary, hurt already, as if this had happened before, as if they had been betrayed before, as if each of them had an image in their head of someone who had let them down, or been let down, and come to a sad end. So did I. The semicircle of listeners stopped crisply about three yards from Yenu. As if a force field protected her, an invisible dome. Many of them were armed.
Good, I thought. Good. This is what you do when you have been betrayed. This is how you operate. Or should operate. Your first priority should be ensuring it doesn’t happen again. By whatever means necessary. And they wanted to, I could sense it. Or perhaps I just hoped I could.
For a moment I wondered whether Ksajakra was the one holding them in abeyance, then noticed, with a twist of displeasure and even confusion, that they weren’t looking at him; they were looking at her.
“I’m not a made thing,” Yenu said mildly. “His whole argument hinges on it. You know They can’t create life.”
“They are the only things that could make something like you. An abomination,” I retorted. “Look at you. What’s your middle name, hm? What was Johnny Chambers’ middle name?”
She looked away, her face twisting, the mask gone. It returned when she looked back at us, and stroked a hand again over her shaved head.
Knew it. “You don’t know,” I said. “You’re a thing. They made a copy and they didn’t even make a good copy. The original had a perfect memory. More than perfect.”
“You, shut up. Now the palace’s dog has said his piece,” said Ksajakra. “Maybe we let him bark too long. But what he has said makes sense in my bones. You may say your piece. And we will see if it is any better.”
“Leaving aside whether you’d believe him over me,” she said, “after everything I’ve done for you, you really want to know why we need him? Why I insisted we take him? It’s because he can do magic.”
The crowd murmured; the weapons stayed raised. “He killed ten of our people,” someone said: a half-familiar face over a powerful square body. No I didn’t, I almost said. You killed at least three of them, I saw you. I only wounded them.
“She lies,” said someone else. “Then she tells us it is for our own good. She doesn’t trust us.”
“If Ksajakra trusts her, that’s good enough for me, and it should be good enough for the rest of you,” a woman’s voice said stoutly.
“Ksajakra, kill the royal dog,” someone else said, pushing forward: a human, slender and dark-haired with a scruff of beard. “Let me do it. I will, if you only say.”
“Get back!” the woman snapped. In a moment they were all talking at cross-purposes, though taking care, I noticed, to keep their voices down.
“She lies,” I agreed. “Everyone knows the Prophet is a conduit only. A pathway.”
Yenu ignored me. “You remember what happened at Sharatar. It could be worse next time. Now we have a backup. He is maybe the one person who can do magic in all the city, perhaps all the kingdom, that They haven’t found out.”
I stared at her, stunned. Ksajakra glanced briefly at me, then back at her. “Prove it,” he said to her. “He says you lie.”
“He would say that,” she said, then looked at me, shaking her head in false regret. “I saved your life, you know, Nick. They would have killed you.”
“Stop pretending you’re her!” I shouted, unable to stop myself; several people flinched, and everyone fell silent. I saw the glint of blades in the dim firelight. “You don’t know me, monster!”
“She lies, you lie,” Ksajakra said again, his voice grim. “I suspect. Yenu, make him do something we can see.”
She shook her head. “You know what happens.”
I didn’t know, but I could guess. In a system reliant on the monopolization of magic by the ruling bodies—the Masters, Their minions and thralls, and Their conquered worlds—any unsanctioned use of magic would be like a wildfire on the landscape: visible for hundreds of miles, even if the spark where it had started was not immediately evident. Do it enough times, though, and They would know exactly who to watch for when the fire raged up again.
I thought again, a dog worrying at a bone: But the Archive. How, if not magic?
Wanted me as a backup. To do what? What were they planning?
I said, “Don’t listen to her. Ksajakra. What has she been telling you? About this ‘resistance’? She doesn’t save lives. She takes them. And if you people fight the Masters, you’ll all be killed yourselves, and you’ll provoke Them into killing innocent people. She wants that. Listen, cooperation is the only way to save lives. You want to end the war? Then help the Masters win, quickly and bloodlessly. Don’t fight Them. The war ends when They win. Not before.”
His face wavered for a moment, as if seen through water. Yenu shot me a look of pure hatred.
“No,” she said. “We fight Them. Somebody has to. They can’t keep doing what They’re doing.”
