This story is a prequel that takes place in the timeline Comet One Nucleus
The first time we met was on a battlefield.
Though the fighting hadn’t begun yet: there was not yet gunpowder in the air. She was stepping out of her armored car, flanked by her security, headed toward the warehouse in which the deal would take place. She cut a striking figure if only because no one else around here dressed so well, silk blouse and dove-gray trousers; she did not hide her wealth even when she came among a people broken by ruin.
But then, who was I to judge. She was my beacon; she was my way out.
I blended in with the town’s militia, the same fatigues as anyone’s, shapeless and brown and dun. It cost me a great deal to obtain—my own uniform is slightly different in colors, but someone would notice I was an enemy soldier. Stay long enough and I’d be found out anyway. I did not intend to stay.
There were two ways this could go: I would get what I wanted, or I’d be riddled with bullets. There wasn’t much in the way of middle ground. I was banking on sheer dumb luck when I planted myself in her path.
Guns emerged from holsters. All were aimed at me. She held up her hand, calling her guards to heel, and looked me directly in the eye. “And who are you?” Her voice was smooth, empty of feeling—professional even; funny, I’d expected it to be acidic with the contempt of someone regarding roadkill that’d sat up and started talking.
“I’m here to tell you not to go into that warehouse, because it’s been rigged full of explosives.”
That got her attention. It evinced in the sharpening of her gaze, the slight change to the angle of her chin. “Is that so? From where did your information come?”
I couldn’t tell her straight up that I knew because it was my team that’d rigged it—everyone wanted her dead, so she could stop selling weapons to their rivals. Nor could I admit that I’d slipped away, treasonous, because I was exhausted of America, of this wasteland, of this life; that she represented freedom. The very thing this country was supposedly founded on; the very thing none of us had.
Instead I said, “I saw strangers come in here last night, they’re from two towns over—I’m pretty sure—and when I went in I knew something wasn’t right.” By now, my former squadmates would have seen me too. They’d be watching the place for the right time to trigger the detonation. My one hope was that at this distance I wouldn’t be recognizable, with the cap I was wearing and most of my hair gathered under it.
She studied me. Her regard had the weight of a knife filleting through meat. “If this is a ruse to keep me in the open long enough for your sniper friends—”
Prescience. Instinct. One thing or another told me that my squadmate—our demolitions expert—had run out of patience, had judged that the explosion would get her at this range. I grabbed her and started running. We gained distance; she did not resist and that helped. My squadmate might be fumbling the trigger. Something—
The warehouse blew.
Heat at my back as I tackled her to the asphalt. Pain, too, but I could for now ignore it. I was always good at that, enduring agony physical or otherwise, at surviving. Then I inhaled and caught the smell of her. Peculiar what we notice in moments of extremis, because once I scented it I had to breathe it in again. She smelled of—I did not have the words to define it, back then; later I’d learn that she smelled of sheer good health, of someone who’d never had to suffer the preventable indignities of diseases that barely existed anymore outside this part of the continent. At the time all I could think was that she smelled of everything good and right, of a thing I’d never had before: home.
None of that made sense. Nevertheless I gulped in another lungful of her. The world tunneled down to the two of us, to how soft she felt under me, to the thought that our pulses were pounding in concert.
“We should get moving,” she said, breaking the moment.
Her armored four-wheeler had gone up in flames. Her guards were in no better shape: bloody, pierced heaps groaning on the ground. I felt no sympathy. When she ran with me, they should have followed.
Wordlessly I pulled her toward the town’s schoolhouse that doubled as a nursery. My squadmates wanted her dead, but not enough to massacre children, and anyway they had planted no further explosives—those things were not easy to come by when you wanted them truly potent. We took shelter in an empty classroom.
She spent a minute or two murmuring into her earpiece, communicating with the rest of her guards, giving instructions and confirming that she was alive. After a moment she looked up and said, “You’re bleeding.”
So I was. Stray shrapnel must have grazed my left shoulder blade. “Nothing serious.”
“Let me see.”
I took off my jacket. Stayed very still as she lifted my undershirt. Her hand was like cool velvet on my skin, or at least what I thought cool velvet would feel like; not as if I’d ever come across the actual fabric. The closest I got to was felt. My own blood trickled; I imagined it reddening her perfect fingertips, her manicured nails.
“Shallow,” she declared. “Just as well. My first aid’s in the car or on my guards. You’ve got a lot of scars.”
My shoulders tensed. Defensive, even though I didn’t want to be. “What about them?”
“I like them.” She spoke as though it was the most normal thing in the world, to enjoy blemishes for their own sake. “They give a person character. You’ve saved my life, and that goes for a lot where I’m concerned. My name you already know.”
Who didn’t. Jirayu Vihokratana. One of the few gunrunners who operated in this part of the world, a merchant of death who’d procure anything as long as you could meet her price and pay in currencies worth a damn outside America. Her one redeeming grace was that she did not touch the flesh trade—it was one reason I approached her.
The other was that I did not have many options. In fact I had none, except to enter the meat market, either as muscle or commodity.
“Call me Yvette,” I told her.
She waited one beat for a surname. When I did not supply one, she nodded and let go of my undershirt. Almost immediately I missed her touch. Ridiculous. “Yvette.” Her lips moved around my name, trying it out. I found I liked the way she pronounced it, the way it emerged from her throat and tripped down her lips. “Well, what would you like from me, Yvette? Money? Supplies?”
“I want out of America.” This tumbled out of me as quickly as it possibly could, words tangling against each other, snagging in my haste. “In exchange, I’ll protect you forever.”
Jirayu looked me over, her long eyelashes moving slowly. Her fingers, bright with my blood, alighted on my cheek. “A good pitch.” Her smile gleamed like frozen petals. “I accept. You saved my life, and now you’ll be mine for the rest of your days. Don’t worry, Yvette. I treat my possessions very, very well.”
The first time we slept together was a skirmish.
It had been a long day. An assassination attempt, but those were routine for her. Still it meant neither she nor I had slept for thirty hours; she’d been coordinating a counterattack, commanding her staff before a bank of surveillance monitors, talking into what seemed to be five comm lines at once. For me the sleep deprivation was not the worst—I’d gone without for longer—but for her that meant she was nearly dead on her feet. She took less care than usual once we were inside a safe hotel room and her chief operations officer Noor had triple- and quadruple-confirmed the security was watertight. All her clothes she shed artlessly, as though I wasn’t even present. I averted my eyes. Earlier that day she had said that I must have left a trail of broken hearts behind in America, to which I snapped that there was no such thing, and there’d been an undercurrent between us since that I couldn’t name.
“Yvette.”
I did not jump at her voice. I had better self-control than that. “Yes.”
“Join me in bed. You deserve decent sleep.” An exhalation that’s halfway toward amusement. “I’m not going to besmirch your chastity. It’s a big bed; we’ll put something between us to make sure there’s no accident.”
“I should be standing watch.” In reality I was likely to nod off in a chair, but that was a less dangerous proposition than the bed.
“Noor’s taken care of that. Ey would tell me off for making you stay on your feet.”
Still I had not turned to her; I was afraid what I’d see, and I was hungry for it too. “I can sleep on the floor.” A dog did not get on the bed with its mistress. “Besides, I’d just stink up the sheets.”
Now she laughed. The sound pulled at my senses. It stole my reason, insofar as I possessed one. I hated the effect it had on me. (I craved the effect it had on me.) “Do you think I’m smelling like roses? I’m not having you curl up on the carpet. Take off as much clothing as you’re comfortable and get in here.”
I dared a glance. She was covered in the sheets, only a rounded shoulder visible. Her skin was luminous. Trying not to appear sullen I took off my suit jacket—stained by debris and spilled drinks after all we’d been through—and unbuckled my belt, peeling off the tailored trousers. Shirt and boxers: it would do. The former was expensive, the cut and material handpicked for me by Jirayu. At the tailor’s, when she first brought me to Krungthep, I didn’t stay put until she came at me with the measuring tape herself. I’d been stock-still then, too aware of her hands on me, her breathing as she catalogued the breadth of my shoulders, the circumferences of my waist and thighs.
The mattress dipped as I climbed onto it. The sheets felt like clouds. I had still not gotten used to creature comforts—growing up I was taught any kind of luxuries were sinful, from soft beds (which I never had) to food that tasted better than stale field rations (which I also did not have). Since joining Jirayu’s staff, I had not stopped sinning for a single moment. The tailored clothes that fit and felt good against my skin, the meals that came in courses and which had categories other than edible and not edible. I’d tasted more species of fish, crustaceans, and mollusks than I’d known existed; pork and fowl cooked a thousand different ways, flavored with ingredients I’d never heard of. One sumptuous feast after another, and I gorged myself on every one. I’d been lean through most of my life. In her employ I filled out, comprehended for the first time that my body was not just for surviving but for satisfaction. I could take pleasure in eating, in bathing, in having moments to myself. Even breathing felt more fulfilling, away from America’s oppressive sky.
And then there was Jirayu.
Up close I could see minor blemishes in her skin, dots of hyperpigmentation, a mole ruby-red rather than the more typical brown. No one was truly perfect, though she came close. Her body was a product of plenty and careful maintenance, groomed every day when she had the time, subjected to rigorous routines in the gym. Part vanity, part because she had to be able to run and defend herself when push came to shove. She’d never emerge victorious from a brawl, but she wouldn’t be instantly crushed either, and her marksmanship was uncanny.
Thinking about her and the physics of guns kept me safe, until the second I inhaled too deeply. She didn’t smell like roses, as promised, but the muskiness was more pleasant than it had any right to be. I breathed with more care. Her back was turned to me: it wasn’t as if she could see my expression.
“Tell me something,” she said from her side of the bed.
“You’ll ask anyway.”
“You implied you hadn’t had . . . many relationships before. Is it because you didn’t want to?”
There was teenage fumbling with a few boys. There were awkward kisses in exchange for more rations. “I didn’t have the time.” It felt stupid as soon as I said it. “None of them particularly interested me.”
She made a contemplative, thrumming noise. “Do I interest you, Yvette?”
“What? I—”
“I’m turning around,” she said, as though I might bolt and flee the room.
Instead I froze in place as the sheets susurrated and she shifted to face me. Most of her was still covered, but I could see the shadows between her breasts, the hollows at the base of her throat that spread into her collarbones. My breath hitched. It was audible to her, it had to be. The dimness did nothing to diminish her. Before, she looked exhausted. Now she looked fully and sharply alive, illuminated from within.
One corner of her mouth quirked. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“I don’t . . . ” My heartrate hammered. Nearly painful. “You hired me to defend you.”
“Sex is what you make of it. It doesn’t have to be more than the act.”
I tried to articulate—that I wanted to possess her and to be possessed by her, that I wanted her to devour me whole—and what came out was, “I haven’t . . . not with a woman.”
“Ah.” Her voice was rich and deep; I thought of the sea with all its wealth, its ravening appetites. “Then it’ll be a discovery. Do you want me to do things to you, or do you want to do things to me? I’ll teach you what it’s like, either way.”
My mouth was a desert. “I think I want to touch you.” More than that I wanted to taste her, I wanted to feel what her skin would be like under my teeth. Savage instincts. I could not voice them outright. They would repulse her. She was made of starlight and silk; I was made of baser things.
“Then touch me.”
She was letting me take the lead, or rather letting me set the terms. I thought, at first, of slipping my hand inside the covers, but that was the way of those adolescent explorations. This was not America; I was no longer the gawky teenager who barely knew what she wanted. I was not wise, but I understood perfectly well what I felt for Jirayu—a voracious, consuming need. Deliberately, throttling back my own impatience, I peeled the covers off her.
All my life I’d been taught to worship, but nothing God had on offer could possibly compare to her. Her body seemed sculpted from pale fire, shaded here and there by the dark smoke of hair. I was careful, mapping the dimensions of her with hesitant hands until she said, “I’m not made of glass, Yvette. Get on top of me. Pin me down.”
“I don’t want to hurt—”
“I don’t bruise easily,” she said, smirking. “Try following orders.”
Awkwardly I straddled her. I kissed her fingertips and her wrists, and then on her instruction pinned them above her head. For all this she did not look helpless. She looked as hungry as I was when I put my mouth to her throat, and because I couldn’t resist the thought that’d been preoccupying me for so long, I bit her.
Jirayu arched under me. Gasped. “Oh, you’re good.” A breathy pause. “Next time though, only do that when I ask. Otherwise I might lose control too soon.”
I released the skin of her neck, the siren song of her jugular, and laughed. “Impossible. You never lose control.”
Eventually I had to let go of her wrists, instead holding her down with my weight. She liked that too, and even more as I teased and touched her breasts, my mouth wandering ever lower. If nothing else I knew the basics, and she had to guide me very little. The taste of her was everything I dreamed of; I drank and drank, and she filled me until I could think of nothing else.
Later she taught me my own pleasure; under her hands it was nothing like my own efforts at self-gratification. Under her hands it was like being seared by the moon’s cold, like being taken apart and put back together right.
We lay sweaty and scented with each other, and I tentatively reached for her, ready to pull back at the first sign of revulsion—that she might not want the intimacy, that she wished for this to be merely about physical catharsis. But she let me. She drew me into her arms and I rested my head against her stomach. In so short a time I’d already forgotten what it was like to breathe in a world without her, to live my days outside her presence.
(Her work was unrighteous. One might even say it was evil. She profited from the misery of my old life, from the misery of any child in America who had to grow up as I did, and it didn’t trip her up with remorse. I doubted she ever thought about it at all. Yet I was infatuated; I was caught. She offered me peace, and I was always selfish.)
“Is this fine?” I nuzzled her belly, the silvery striae there. Jirayu could afford to have them erased; she did not bother.
Her laugh vibrated down her ribcage. “What, do you want me to grade you? You passed with flying colors.”
“No, I mean—you don’t usually take your guards to bed.” As far as I knew she only ever purchased the time of escorts. No dates, no girlfriends. Maybe she’d had them before I came to her notice. I could ask Noor; ey knew everything, might even yield this bit of intelligence.
“Oh, that.” Her hand cupped the back of my skull. A firm hold, all ownership. “They don’t particularly interest me.”
I huffed. “And I do?”
“Who else has pledged to protect me forever? I can buy people’s willingness to stand between me and a bullet. But you I didn’t purchase. You saved my life and then offered.”
“That’s because—”
“You wanted to get out. Enough to turn on your colleagues.” Her fingertips stroked my nape. “I know. I found out how you really knew that place was rigged; nothing I hold against you, though. You’re a survivor, Yvette, and I like that about you.”
I closed my eyes. I could sink into her voice, the cool fathomless ocean of it. “How long have you been thinking of having me?”
She was quiet. I listened to the rhythm of her respiration, her vital processes; I listened to the room’s ventilation. We were both still, the sheets damp against us. Of the world without I could hear nothing—the accommodation was soundproof: no noises from the streets or the corridor. It was easy to pretend we were all that existed, all that mattered, entwined in each other as if this was the purpose for which we were made.
“I suppose,” she said, “since you were on top of me shielding me from pieces of warehouse.”
“God. I probably smelled.”
“And again when I checked you for injuries. Scars are very attractive. The back muscles helped.”
This time I had to grin. “If I knew that was my ticket out of that shithole, I’d have worked harder on weights.”
The timber of her amusement was the only orchestra, the only opera, that I needed. She told me that she’d canceled a series of appointments, that we would have the next week to ourselves. I did not object, did not ask if she was sure she should spend all this time on me. I had landed at last in the place I belonged, and I would savor it, for a week, for a month, for the rest of my days.
The first time she died—
(I can’t think about this. I promised that I’d protect her forever. The mistress is supposed to outlive the hound. It was never supposed to be like this. Even now it doubles me over as I attempt to relearn the use of my own body, to acclimate to its changes. The thought takes away my breath. It makes me want to stop. It is impossible to continue.)
The first time she died, everything stopped. It was an ending. It was my ending. I did not want to continue because I knew that I’d always be trapped in the moment, that I’d never shake off the weight of grief. I’d had a lifetime of digging mass graves and turning away from them, and feeling nothing after. She was the first whose mortality I could not walk away from. She was the first whom I bent everything I had to keep safe. A thousand times over I’d have suffered for her; any pain could be borne as long as it was in her service, and I—I could not keep my promise.
(But I must gather myself. I carry her death with me so that I would not fail a second time.)
We were in Singapore, which at that time had become—through a complex series of negotiation between those living at the law’s fringe—an accepted neutral ground: this was a place to conduct business, not for shootouts or assassination attempts. The premise was taken with lethal seriousness. Start something here and all the syndicates and consortiums would flay the skin off your bones, and then break the bones one by one. No one was too powerful or too wealthy to escape that penalty. Or so I was told.
Nevertheless Jirayu brought her security. She checked in at a hotel vetted from previous visits, ate at restaurants that’d already passed Noor’s inspection, visited tourist attractions that were approved by her consortium. But she treated me as off-duty; I was to enjoy the vacation with her, not reconnoiter every room, lobby, and street corner. I did so regardless, for which she gently chided me.
It was strange, to be brought as her companion rather than her hire. My colleagues were of varied opinion on the fact that I was a permanent addition to her bed. Some gave me a ribbing; a few were irritated at the preferential treatment I’d gotten since, but Jirayu’s organization wasn’t an army—there were ranks, but we weren’t soldiers and her fraternization didn’t damage the hierarchy. Noor approved: ey said something to the tune of Finally because ey’d been serving her for so long and this, apparently, was the first time she kept a bedmate on for longer than three months. To me that was a shocking discovery, but ey explained that for Jirayu there could only have been a kept woman. She might have found a true partner if she sought a match in a mafioso daughter or triad heiress, but she didn’t have a taste for those kinds. Aren’t I a kept woman? I’d asked Noor, and ey said, You have too much teeth to be a concubine.
“Want to see the Garden by the Bay?” Jirayu was saying “The light show’s pretty.”
We were in a restaurant, eating fusion pasta. I still had the urge to stand behind her rather than sit with her—a bodyguard didn’t dine with the boss—but I’d worked at checking myself, at accustoming myself to this new and strange station. Still her protector, yet intimate as never before. “Isn’t that outdoor?” Meaning it left her open to a near-endless variety of threats: sniper rounds, grenades, an assassin blending in with the crowd to strike her down with something as primitive as a knife.
“I booked a room at the Marina Bay Sands. We’re not staying there, but spending a few minutes on the balcony isn’t going to do any harm. Visibility is going to be horrendous for any sniper.”
All correct, and yet it was a risk she normally didn’t take. “I can watch footage of the lights some other time.”
She clicked her tongue. “I want you to see the real thing. No?”
(I should have said no. I’ll think about that for the rest of my life.)
“All right,” I said, then grinned. “As my lady wishes.”
That won me a laugh. Jirayu had started helping me with books—my literacy level was never the best, even in my native English; she’d been reading fairytales to me in bed, modernized, simplified adaptations of Malory and de Troyes, Gawain and the Green Knight and The Vulgate Cycle. Not exactly American, but I’d had enough of Americana. Fantasies of chivalry were more interesting; it gave me the idea of imagining myself, as it were, her parfit gentil knight.
Noor coordinated the guards to both precede and follow us up to the room she reserved. Being with Jirayu meant our privacy was limited, but I’d known that as her security. Noor and the rest stayed within the room while we ventured out on the balcony. Jirayu checked her phone and said, “Starting in a minute.”
And, in a minute, it did. We could hear the music from here, muted, but the view of the lights was comprehensive. It was a spectacle, the enormous tree-like structures with their false canopies lighting up and shifting colors in time to an orchestral soundtrack that I faintly recognized as American—another artifact of my faded homeland—until the black sky was drenched with it, an ocean of colors. I’d never experienced what I would describe as a sense of wonder but this came close, and more so because of who I was with.
“Yvette,” said Jirayu, “I’m about to ask you a very important question. You can say no and it won’t change anything. It’s more of a formality.”
All my nerves drew taut. “Yes?”
“Will you be my wife?”
I thought I’d misheard. She was—the finer things in this cosmos, the pearls and silk and the radiance of distant stars. Everything I wasn’t. The very thought she would take me to be her . . . her . . .
But I hadn’t gotten through life without taking opportunities as they arose. I had not misheard. I breathed in and breathed out and said, “Yes—yes, of course.” As though I’d ever entertained the possibility, as though I’d been waiting for it.
Her smile was characteristically slight, illuminated by the distant light show, by the world gone to the scintillant hues of nebulae, by—
She fell.
The heat of her blood on my cheeks as I caught her, cushioned her from the balcony as though it could possibly matter; a headshot, one instant in this world and no longer the next. I shielded her body, as though there was anything left to protect, as Noor shouted and screamed for eir subordinates to storm the nearest balconies, to . . .
They left me alone with her body. Ey knew as well as I did there was no saving her; saw where the bullet pierced. The deed was already done. She was gone. The only remaining duty was vengeance. I’d hear, after, that they found the shooter; that Noor made them pay inch by agonizing inch, that it was the finest work of torture anyone had ever seen. Noor even found out who ordered it, and arranged the massacre of that syndicate, and then their families. Ey was nothing if not loyal to Jirayu.
But in that moment I clutched her to me, felt her warmth still, became insanely convinced that she was alive somehow; I brushed away her gore-soaked hair, tried not to acknowledge that what I felt was not only blood but brain matter, as I said, “Yes, I’ll be your wife. Yes. So please . . . ”
She didn’t answer. She never would again.
I stayed with her a long time, until she began to cool. The worst thing—the absolute most unbearable thing—was that the light show continued around us and the music kept playing. Even now I can’t think of Singapore without feeling nausea, without remembering what happened. The orchestral number playing then: I could never listen to that again without seizing up and doubling over as though I’d been punched in the gut.
Whether I wept, I could not recall. The world had disappeared. Jirayu’s light had gone out. We were on a high balcony; the most obvious solution was to climb over and hurl myself at gravity, dare it to reunite me with her. I was starting to do that, too, when they appeared.
What Gamayun looked like you already know. From the start it was obvious they were not of this world, not of this Earth, and human in no way.
At the time, that didn’t matter, either.
The mannequin creature bent toward me, extending its cadaver’s hand. It said, “This isn’t over yet. She doesn’t always die. Somewhere, this went differently, or will go differently. You have the power to shift this outcome. Would you like to try again?”
I didn’t understand. I didn’t know what I was being offered, save the thin thread of comprehension in She doesn’t always die.
I had not survived this long without seizing opportunities when they presented themselves. I took its hand, which felt like ceramic and bone and carved teak. “Tell me how I can meet her again.”