YOU CAN RAISE your head. There are no slaves here.” The words felt dry and coarse on Sabira’s tongue, like an old tunic stuffed in her mouth.
“I am a Servant of the Divine Masters and will be until my dying breath.” Spear’s head remained pressed to the airlock floor. His speech had a distant reverberating quality to it.
“You’re my blood-grandfather.”
“I am a Servant of—”
“Then what under the rocks are you doing here?” Raising her voice made Sabira’s head throb, even with the pain meds.
“Living in shame.”
I remember that shame. How it threatened to bury me only a few weeks ago. Shamed to even be alive when so many others were not. Daggeira mentioned living in shame, too, right before . . .
Is that who I am now? A cause for shame in everyone I care about?
“Living in shame is still living.”
Grandfather Spear didn’t answer.
“The others think this is a ruse. Getting onboard our ship is just the first part of your plan.”
“Such a plan would be bold.”
“And that taking a hostage would be your next step.”
“Here to offer yourself up?”
“I believe you told me the truth. You said you wanted them out of your head. Wanted that thing taken out.”
Spear shifted his weight across his squatting hips, but didn’t answer. He was big enough to cover most of the airlock floor. If he was planning to spring a trap on her, she had little room to get out of his way. And with these pain meds dulling her reflexes, she wouldn’t stand a chance. Once the psychotoxins were flushed out of his system, maybe she could persuade Orion to move him out of the personnel airlock. Somewhere she’d have more room to visit. But she was getting ahead of herself.
“What did the Warseers do to you and Daggeira?”
“It wasn’t the Warseers. We were selected by the High Godseer.”
“Selected for what?”
“Transfiguration.”
That much was obvious. “And?”
“And they drilled inside us. Inside our brains.” His trembling hands clenched into fists.
Sabira held her breath, watching him intently. Uncertain if she could reach the door before he made a move. Slowly, his fists unclenched and his palms pressed into the floor again.
“I have always given body and mind to the Holy Unity. Our bodies were never truly ours to begin with.”
She kept her eyes on his hands, drawn to his silvery prosthetic. When she had fought him in the ruins of the Zol-Ori, she cut off three of his fingers. Instead of giving him new digits, they had substituted his entire hand with a biomech replacement.
“But our minds—my mind, the only thing that was truly my own—I offered that to the Gods freely. No matter how many times I faced death or torture, I never lost faith. Trickster’s seed never took root. But they took that from me. The one thing I could truly offer the Gods. They took even that.”
“And what will your Gods think of you now, betraying the wisdom of Their High Godseer? Murdering the warseer you attended?”
“You know the ways of Divine Will. I made sure of it.”
Divine Will said he would stand before the Gates of Heaven and be found unworthy of eternal service. After death, his soul would drift, frozen and alone in the black void, forever.
“Once that thing is taken out of you, what will you do next?”
“What will you do next, granddaughter, after you’ve run off with Trickster’s Black Devil?”
“He’s no devil. He’s a man, like you. His name is Gabriel, and he has more honor and wisdom than any warseer in the Unity.”
“He’s even got you talking like a devil.”
“Yet you ask for his help. After everything you did to him. To us.”
“Everything I did? More than two thousand servants died on the Zol-Ori because of him.”
“You invaded his home and cut off his hands and imprisoned us all.”
“I liberated you!”
“You dragged me back into slavery!” Godsdamn her head throbbed.
“Then open this airlock and be done with me. Send me before the Shattered Gates of Heaven to be judged.”
“Are you so drilling blind that even after passing through the Gates yourself you still can’t see? There is no Heaven on the other side. No Gods waiting to judge us, to weigh our every word and—”
“Blasphemy!”
“Maybe it is. Maybe the Gods do wait in Their Heaven. But I know this much. The Gods don’t see us. We only see each other.”
“I will live with my shame or die with it. Tell your Black Devil to come in here and take my hands if he wants. Open the airlock, yourself, if you’re not as cowardly as you were on the Zol-Ori. But you’ll never take my faith from me, granddaughter. Never.”
“So be it. I’m not here to take your life or your hands, grandfather. Or your faith.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. You came to gloat over your defeated enemy.”
“Is that really what you think of me?”
“It’s what the Sabira I knew would have done.”
“I guess I’m not the Sabira you knew anymore.”
“You most certainly are not.”
Sabira rubbed at the scar of her left breast, feeling the quickened thump of her heart. She may not be the woman she once was, but she carried all her scars.
“Swear to me then. Swear before Star Father’s judgment and Mother of Life’s mercy. Swear on Conqueror, whom you cherish so deeply, that you’ll do as you’re told. You’ll take the medicine we give you. You’ll eat the food we give you. And swear that you won’t harm anyone aboard this ship, or damage the ship in any way. Look me in the eyes and swear it. And I’ll make sure they take that thing out of you, and the other side of that airlock stays shut.”
Grandfather Spear’s shoulders tightened. He drew a long breath in, and it was a long time before he let out again. Finally, he pushed his palms into the floor and raised his head. Kneeling before Sabira, he craned his thick neck and looked his blood-granddaughter in the eyes.
“I swear it by the Akuh-Ori, the Gods beyond the Gates. Let She Who Waits wait for me no longer if I break my oath. I swear to be docile and obedient, if you take this cursed thing out of my brain.”
As he spoke, Sabira noticed the silvery teeth replacing the ones Gabriel had punched out. And for the first time, she looked past the many scars and glyphs she had always admired in her youth and saw the Human underneath. Saw so much of her own face in his. Saw how much she had inherited from him, within and without. His transition to this new life, especially without the eon sacrament, would try his heart and mind in ways he wasn’t, and couldn’t be, prepared for.
“Good. We’ll be back with the medicine you need. I’ll talk to Orion about the surgery. We have a former medic, too. Ahn will help.” She hadn’t realized how tight her own shoulders had been until they finally settled down away from her ears.
Sabira activated the airlock comms. “I’m coming out.”
“That’s all you came in here for then? My oath.”
“You stupid old man. I came in here because, stars see me, you’re my blood-grandfather. And I still love you.”