FOUR DAYS LATER, Orion-lem and Coraz brought a docile and restrained Spear into the medbay for surgery. Sabira stood vigil outside the doors hour after hour, until she fell asleep in the corridor.
Since leaving Loshan, Sabira hadn’t seen much of the others. She had helped Coraz give Spear his meds and generally made sure her blood-grandfather behaved himself. Otherwise, she’d kept to her cabin—exercising, brooding, exercising some more. Her constant headache had retreated more with each day, and she weaned herself off the painkillers. The strange, fuzzy distance between Sabira and her surroundings faded with the last of the meds. Anything she touched felt raw and coarse in their wake, as if all the nerves in her body had been left exposed. Every night, after spending a full day repairing the Shishiguchi’s complex systems, Torque would shamble through their cabin door and collapse wordlessly on her bed. Otherwise, Sabira spent most of her days alone.
When Edlashuul woke her up outside the medbay, it was well into the sixth day of their journey to the Gates. The vertical mandibles of his mouth and six curving sense tendrils the Vleez had instead of eyes, ears, and nose, filled her waking vision. Startled, Sabira jerked away from his touch, then felt a twinge of shame at her reaction.
“—You need to eat,” he said through the translator in his respirator mask. “Me, too. I’m starving. Let’s go.” He held out his two lower arms, offering to help her to her feet.
Sabira brushed his six-fingered hands aside and stood with a grunt, knees popping. Looking through the medbay window, she saw a blank lem alone with Spear. Obfuscated by medtech arrays and sanitized sheets, he was mostly hidden from her view, but she noticed the implant had been completely removed. The lem busied itself trying to patch all the empty spaces that thing had left behind.
“Where’s Coraz gone?” Sabira rubbed her face and stretched out the stiffness in her hips.
“—Sleep. Much-deserved sleep. Come on, let’s get something to eat.”
Sabira’s stomach grumbled. “I could do with a cup of coffee.”
“—You like that stuff?”
“Not at first.”
“—I’m trying to get the sembler to make better plushberries. They’re getting better, but still don’t think they taste right. Back at the Embassy, I used to eat fresh plushberries every morning. I thought that was how the Monarch must eat, they were so good. I can never quite get the sembler to make them as good as they were then.”
They met Derev in the corridor outside the dining hall. Seeing the two of them, Derev pulled up short and began wringing a blue-green cloth absentmindedly in his hands.
Sabira nodded to him. “You hungry, too?”
Derev blinked, wringing the cloth tighter. “We were eating. Dawn felt a chill, so I went for her shawl.”
“That’s gold,” Sabira answered. “I’m happy to hear she’s up and around.”
Sabira entered the dining hall, and it was her turn to pull up short. Ed collided into her back, and she half-stumbled into the kitchen.
Dawn sat at a table facing the door, head bowed over the bowl in front of her. She wasn’t eating. Her shoulders trembled with muffled sobs. Playa sat beside her, ignoring her bowl while glaring at Sabira, eyes boring into her like drills of cold, grinding ice.
“How are you feeling, Dawn?” Sabira asked.
Dawn looked up, parted her lips as if she was going to say something, then lowered her head wordlessly.
“She’s feeling cold.” Derev slid awkwardly past Sabira. He draped the shawl over Dawn’s shoulders. Ed followed Derev and went over to the sembler.
“Playa,” Sabira said.
“Our great protector,” Playa answered.
“That’s not fair,” Dawn said, just above a whisper.
“Lots of things aren’t fair.” Playa’s glower never wavered from Sabira. “Like deciding who lives and who dies.”
“That’s not a decision any of us get to make,” Sabira said.
“Except you.”
“I didn’t—”
“Who have you been with, huh? Not with us. Not helping with Dawn while Coraz was busy. Not helping Torque with the ship.”
“I was with my grandfather.”
“The one who killed Maia.”
“Yes.”
“Maia’s killer gets to live. Here. With us. While he”—Playa choked back a sob—“while he’s in a box next to hers.”
“That wasn’t my choice.”
“Then whose was it? Who chose for us to lose a good loving man to be replaced with another . . . another killer like you.”
“But Sabira came back for us,” Derev said. “She came and got us.”
“You stay out of this,” Playa said.
Dawn looked up from Playa to Derev, but held back whatever she was about to say.
Playa pushed herself back from the table. “Back on Dancer’s World, when the Vleez invaded, our Master fled his palace in a hurry. But not before commanding his Servants to eliminate any khvazol left behind.”
Sabira sucked in a short, tight breath. Rain had told her a similar story about himself, Zonte, and Cal when Dancer’s World had been retaken by the Monarchy. Cal had been moments away from losing his head to a servant’s blade when the Vleez soldiers rescued him. All his brood and blood had already been cut down in front of him.
“The servants decided to have some fun with the pillows first.” Playa stood. “The women servants . . . they were even more brutal than the men. I remember . . . I remember wishing they’d just shoot me and get it over with. Wished that for a long time after. Dawn and I didn’t meet any survivors from the other palaces until we were on the Monarchy ships. I was still so . . . That’s when Zonte found me. He was a pillow, too. He understood. He helped me . . . ”
Playa approached, never taking her cold gaze from Sabira. “After we drank Maia’s eon, everything changed again. My faith in Dancer . . . everything I believed, prayed about . . . And Zonte was there again. We went through it together. We found our place at the Embassy, on Dlamakuuz, together. Now he’s gone . . . No. Not gone. Taken. His light . . . his love . . . Taken. I don’t even know why.”
Sabira’s jaw trembled. She clenched her hands and forced the trembling to stop before she spoke again. “Zonte died saving my life. He gave me his shield to go after Daggeira. We needed to get the weapon before she did.”
“And did you get the weapon?”
“No.”
Playa stood only centimeters away, the ice in her stare grinding. “You should have been with him. But you went chasing after some weapon instead. More weapons to kill more people. That’s what he died for?”
“He died protecting me.”
“You were supposed to be the one protecting him.”
Sabira closed her eyes. Bowed her head. “You’re right.” She waited for the blow to land, ready to take all that Playa had to deal out.
“To think . . . I shared him with a killer like you.” The staccato of Playa’s running footsteps faded down the corridor.
Sabira would have preferred a barrage of fists and tearing nails. She steadied herself against the bulkhead, reeling as if she’d taken a blow to the chin.
“—Sabira?”
She held her palm out, keeping Ed back. Stunned, she looked around, reminding herself where she was. Both Derev and Dawn cast their eyes down.
“—Sit. I’ll make you some food.”
“I’m not hungry,” she muttered and staggered through the door.
“—Come back. Where are you going?”
She didn’t have an answer.
“Approaching the stochastic horizon. Disengaging gravity and inertial fields in fifteen minutes.” Orion’s voice filled the corridors.
Suddenly nothing felt familiar. Not the gray smart-fabric tunic, normally a whispering caress over her scars, now rough and abrasive. Not the walls of pale woody reeds and eggshell white ceiling. Not the tasteless, odorless air, lacking the sting of biomech fumes or the musk of thousands of closely confined humans.
Not the people she thought of as her new brood. New family.
Perhaps the observation deck might bring comfort. The stars, though less densely packed in this forgotten corner of the galaxy than the local cluster she’d always known, still lured Sabira with a familiar gravity. She found no one else on the deck. She drifted past the couches and stood before the display. The ancient, shattered megastructure grew steadily larger. This glowing red nebula, much farther removed from these Gates, spread ever wider across the length of the wall, but remained distant enough to be bordered by black void.
“How is he doing?” Sabira asked the empty room.
“All your grandfather’s vitals are strong,” Orion’s disembodied voice answered. “The surgery will be finished within the hour. He’ll need several days to recover, but he will fully recover.”
“Thank you.”
“And what of Loshan Bastion?” Gabriel’s voice filled the deck as he entered. “Any activity? Signs of pursuit?”
“Higgs detectors are giving me a headache, they’re spiking so hard,” Orion said. “Something crunchy is most definitely happening back there. But no signs of off-world activity, pursuit or otherwise.”
“What about the satellite network? The snares?” Sabira asked.
“Completely inert. We’re passing through their orbits now.”
“How could you be so sure they wouldn’t activate?” Gabriel rubbed his palm in circles around the back of his scalp.
“I sent probes ahead to prime the Gates. They swung by without a glitch. But even if the snare satellites decided to not play nice, this time I have a trick or two of my own at the ready. Either way, we have to get as far from the dwarf planet as possible, as quickly as possible. Sabira’s old friend could be waking up any minute.”
Other voices drifted into the observation deck from the corridor. Ed came in first, his sense tendrils were loose and splayed apart. He carried a handful of plushberries that he popped one by one into his mouth. Cal followed, holding the eeshl in his arms. Sabira longed to embrace the eeshl to her chest and feel its weight against her heartbeat.
Cal stopped at the door, eyeing Sabira. “I thought you were at the medbay.”
“I was.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Cal asked Ed, who made a placating gesture with two of his hands.
“What’s wrong?” Gabriel asked.
“Nothing.” Cal placed the eeshl carefully on the floor. Stubby claws extended from its many folds and wrinkles. “People shouldn’t make promises they don’t keep, that’s all.” He turned and walked out. Ed chased after, calling his name, and the eeshl scampered behind, clicking its mandibles excitedly.
Gabriel reached out as if to place his hand on Sabira’s shoulder, but pulled back. “Everyone reacts to grief in their own way, at their own pace.”
“Is that what this is?” Sabira sucked the meaty inside of her cheek, feeling the sharp ridges of her teeth against tender flesh. Imagined biting hard and fast. Imagined the blood filling her mouth. Choking her throat.
“Among other things, yes. Grief. Trauma. Zonte was . . . Zonte was loved.”
“Yes, he was.”
Razor-sharp thoughts cut through Sabira’s mind, carving raw pathways she didn’t want to follow, leading to conclusions she didn’t want to find.
Gabriel’s handsome lips twisted in concern. His eyes met hers, gold flashing around dark pupils, catching specks of starlight. With all the beauty of the universe around them, his attention remained focused on her.
Someone still sees me.
Sabira cupped the back of his neck in both hands and pulled his lips to hers. His breath was warm and so very close when his hands braced against her shoulders, stopping her with the slightest pressure.
“I’m sorry.” He eased back, gliding from her embrace.
“No, I . . .”
“I’m flattered. Honored even. But even if . . . I can’t. You are a political refugee in my care. It would be unethical on my part.”
Sabira backed away, rubbing the line of her scarred breast. “I’m the one who’s sorry.”
Again, that weight of unfamiliarity draped itself over everything. Even the stars weren’t right.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice coarse, her throat raw. “I’m sorry.”
Humiliation blooming hot on her cheeks, she hurried from the observation deck, leaving Gabriel as a silhouette, backlit by the blood-red smear of the nebula.