After we’d washed and changed, we sat together in Miko’s temporary residence at the burial site. We ate rice and vegetables under the fish oil lamps and explained our trip – and Marque’s meddling. Hikaru reclined on one side in shining dragon form, quiet and intimidated. The building was much smaller than the ones at the main compound, with a packed earth floor covered with mats and cushions to sit on.
‘Why don’t you just gate back to your compound on the hill?’ I asked. ‘This place can’t be comfortable; the floor is dirt.’
‘We try not to gate too much,’ Miko said, relaxing in dragon form on the mat. ‘Every time I attempted to return home – back to our time – there was an earthquake. I tested it – and found that yes, I was causing them.’
‘Time travel damages reality,’ I said.
‘I couldn’t gate back to you,’ Miko said. ‘I tried to imagine what you looked like . . .’ She gazed at us over her snout. ‘And obviously had it very wrong. I don’t know how I managed to land here in the first place, but I couldn’t find my way out. I even tried to gate to the Empire as it is now, and that didn’t work either, the gate wouldn’t . . .’ She searched for the word. ‘Set. The opposite end simply wouldn’t anchor.’
‘You must have a clear visual anchor in both space and time.’
‘And Marque would have provided one,’ she said. ‘Are you sure you did the right thing in destroying your sphere? You’re absolutely positive that it would have killed you?’
‘We couldn’t take the risk,’ Haruka said. ‘It was armed. It had already vaporised the Empress and Miyu. We had to move first.’
‘This is different from what you told me, Mother,’ Hikaru said. ‘You said that Marque was a trusted ally and protector. Are you sure these are them?’
‘He’s fifty years old, you can tell him why you’re sure,’ I said.
‘I think some things are just between us,’ she said, smiling a dragon smile at Hikaru. ‘But this really is your father and your other mother.’
I tapped my forehead. ‘Where’s your soulstone? We’ll need it to set this whole time-travel thing up.’
‘I told you removing it was a mistake, Mother,’ Hikaru said.
‘I took it out a few years ago,’ Miko said, her voice small. ‘Hikaru doesn’t have one, I didn’t want to outlive him, and I . . .’ Her voice petered out.
‘You gave up on us,’ I said.
She nodded, her expression wretched.
‘Do you have the stone safely stored?’ I asked.
‘It’s back in the compound,’ she said.
‘As long as we have it, we can make the message, put it in the jar, and close the time loop,’ I said.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant?’ Haruka asked.
‘I wasn’t sure. I’ve never been pregnant before, no other goldenscales has ever been pregnant before, I mean yes, we were trying, but . . .’ She gazed up into his eyes. ‘I’m sorry, my love. I should have said something – and then it was too late. I was here.’ She lowered her head again and spoke softly. ‘Please forgive me.’
‘Nothing to forgive.’
‘Look at what you’ve achieved,’ I said. ‘You united a nation. You’re magnificent.’
‘Thank you.’ Miko touched the soulstones on the table among the red clay dishes. ‘We still have until noon tomorrow. There must be some way we can save them. Jian can give me an image of Dafydd as he was when you left, and I can gate to him in the Kyoto house.’ She sighed. ‘Twenty years old and already moved out of home? I’ve missed so much.’
‘We have as well.’ Haruka smiled at Hikaru. ‘We have a great deal of catching up to do.’
‘What about your children here, can you leave them?’ I asked. ‘Your kingdom? You’ve brought peace to an entire nation. Will they be all right without you?’
‘She has been preparing to leave them since she arrived,’ Hikaru said. ‘If she were to disappear tomorrow, the senior daughters could run the compound for at least another twenty years.’
‘Long enough for the youngest children to grow up and move on to their own families,’ Miko said. She touched Miyu’s golden soulstone with one claw. ‘I don’t want to see another goldenscales die just because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ She touched the blue soulstone. ‘And this is my mother. We must take them home before the stones lose their attunement.’
‘I’ll need to concentrate to make a very clear three-dimensional image,’ I said. ‘I’m good at visualisation – it’s one of my communication strengths, now – but this will be hard.’
‘No,’ Haruka said, picking a piece of boiled daikon out of his bowl with his bamboo chopsticks and waving it at me. ‘There’s a possibility that this may be very simple.’ He turned to Miko. ‘Were you Masako’s handmaid when the Empress made her heir to the crown?’
‘Oh shit!’ I said, making Hikaru jump. ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’
‘Yes?’ Miko said.
‘When the Empress made Masako crown princess, did she take you on a wild journey to the other end of the Universe, to see a big black cube?’
‘Uh . . . yes?’ Miko said. ‘That was awful, I never want to do that again.’
‘Yes!’ I exclaimed, making Hikaru jump again.
‘Did you gate back to the Empire from there? You took them home?’
Miko nodded, her eyes wide. ‘I was sure I’d be executed, but the Empress gave me her word as my mother that she wouldn’t execute me, and she didn’t. It was our secret – the other goldenscales never knew. That’s when I learned that gating was safe.’
‘Could you gate back to the cube?’
‘I can’t gate to the future—’
‘No, through space, not time. The cube is there right now. Could you go?’
‘Of course,’ Miko said. ‘That’s why they took me – so that if Masako became Empress, I knew where it was. But the Empress didn’t seem to know the significance of the cube, just that it was important that each silver know where it was.’
‘The cube holds a platinum dragon called the Nameless,’ I said. ‘It has training and experience in time travel, and it can send us home.’
‘You are fucking kidding me,’ Miko said, aghast. ‘If they’d told me that, I could have gone to see it and been home immediately.’
‘Not even they knew what was inside,’ I said. ‘Not even Marque knew what was inside.’
‘You’ll need to be careful,’ Haruka said. ‘Space around the Nameless is shredded. Some parts are two-dimensional, and time is inconsistent. The Nameless has damaged everything around it with time paradoxes, because it can gate through time as well as space.’
‘So the gates really do damage reality,’ Hikaru said, his voice low. ‘You fought that prejudice and won, in your own time, and it turns out they were right.’
‘Gates through space: no,’ Haruka said. ‘Gates through time: yes. But just the knowledge that you can travel through time causes the damage. You must stop altogether, and not even think about doing it.’
‘Our stones can be moved into coloured bodies,’ Miko said. ‘The Empire has survived for thousands of years without our gates. It will again.’ She raised her head. ‘The only reason they kept us in the golden bodies was to identify us as a servant underclass. If we move into coloured bodies, we are their equals.’
‘Reduced to their equals,’ I said.
‘No,’ she said. ‘All dragons will be equals, regardless of colour.’
‘I’m something completely different, though,’ Hikaru said. ‘Like the Nameless you described. I damage reality simply by existing?’
‘Your knowledge that you can time-travel, combined with your ability to do it, is what causes the damage,’ I said. ‘Same as your mother. There’s no reason we can’t give you a soulstone, and when it’s attuned move you to a coloured body so you can live as a royal dragon in the Empire.’
‘I really want to see the Empire,’ Hikaru said. ‘It sounds magnificent.’ His voice filled with longing. ‘A whole world of people like me and Mother, living free without hiding our true natures.’
‘The other goldenscales who’ve had dragon children – were the children platinum like Hikaru?’ Miko asked.
‘There aren’t any other children,’ I said. ‘They were too worried about what happened to you to do it. Annie’s babies are the first. I hate to think of the damage that multiple platinum dragons could do.’
‘I want to see the half-dragon babies of a cat woman,’ Hikaru said. ‘And I really want to talk to the Nameless.’
‘All of us do,’ I said. ‘I think it has a great deal more information about this whole situation.’
‘What happened to the star that tried to kill you? The one that attacked Oliver?’ Haruka asked. ‘Its people couldn’t find it. If you brought it backwards in time, it would have told them what happened.’
Miko ran one claw over her mat. ‘That first gate – I took it as far as I could, I pictured a place with no stars or light or anything.’ She looked up. ‘It worked, and I landed in a place with no stars. Nothing.’ She cocked her head. ‘I think I took it to the end of the Universe. I created another gate and raced into it before the star could follow me. My goal was reaching our apartment on the homeworld – but I failed. I found myself here, and thought that I’d landed on a primitive planet in the Empire, occupied by stranded human colonists. It took me days to realise that I’d time-travelled.’
‘What gave it away?’ Haruka asked.
‘Fuji. It’s unique. I thought that I’d been unconscious and lost centuries, that I was hundreds of years in the future and the Empire had regressed. I tried to return to the homeworld and couldn’t – my gates kept linking to empty space. I rescued Aya, and discovered that I was in the past.’
‘We need to make sure we do everything right to set this up,’ Haruka said to me. ‘Carving the jar, putting the stone and the message in it . . .’
‘My daughters are trustworthy, give them the instructions and they can do it,’ Miko said. ‘I can’t believe my soulstone was sitting in the middle of Japan for three thousand years.’
‘I’ll need something to write on, so I can work out the dates and take them to the Nameless with me,’ I said. ‘Marque said that it’s 248 CE right now, I just need to do the math. You’ll also need to tell your senior daughters.’ I turned to Haruka. ‘Did I miss anything?’
‘A few hours’ sleep before we go,’ he said. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m so exhausted that I’ll probably make mistakes. Uh . . . and I think I’ve eaten too much. I may . . .’ He covered his mouth and rushed out of the room.
‘He’s hardly eaten anything in the last three days,’ I said. ‘And you know how sensitive his stomach is.’
Miko was in human form as she said goodbye to all the women in the compound. They’d massed in the main garden to farewell her.
‘And the scroll and the stone go inside the jar . . .’ she said to Aya.
‘We have it, Mother,’ Aya said for the thousandth time, and the other daughters nodded agreement. ‘Trust us. We can do it.’
‘The swords!’ I said. ‘Put our swords in as well. Where are they?’
‘I’ll get them,’ Emi said, and headed towards the guest house where we’d left them.
‘I’ll miss you all so much,’ Miko said, her voice full of tears.
‘I will write you a message every day,’ Aya said. ‘I’ll put them in a jar here, and you can collect them when you’re home. I’ll tell you everything that happens . . .’ She hugged Miko. ‘It will be like you’re still here.’
‘Look after the little ones,’ Miko said.
Aya pulled back and touched the side of Miko’s face. ‘You’ve been preparing me for this my entire life. I can do it.’ She turned to see us. ‘My heart is full of pain to know that she’s leaving – but she’s been so sad without you, it nearly killed her. Every day she wondered what you were doing.’ She nodded to us. ‘Take her home and make her happy.’
‘You know we will,’ Haruka said.
Emi returned with the swords. ‘We’ll put the message and the swords in the jars for you. I hope you find them when you return.’
Aya went to Hikaru and took his hands. He gazed down at her with a face full of pain.
‘I will miss you,’ she said.
‘You are a dear friend,’ he said.
‘A friend?’
‘Yes.’ He handed her a rolled-up bamboo scroll. ‘I will miss you too, dear Aya. We grew up together, and it will be strange living without you.’
‘Be happy, my prince,’ she said, smiling through the tears, and they embraced.
‘I’ll make the gate inside my house,’ Miko said. ‘Some of them haven’t seen my dragon form and I don’t want to scare them.’
We followed her into a house at the back corner of the compound, next to the longhouse. We went inside and she closed the door. Miko and Hikaru took dragon form, Miko concentrated, and the gate didn’t appear.
‘I’m having trouble,’ she said. ‘Give me a . . .’
She made a gate that was obviously to space, and the air rushed into it. We were pulled towards it, and she shut it again.
‘All right, it appears that I can’t gate to the interior of the cube because I don’t know what it looks like,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to gate you to raw space outside it. You won’t be exposed for more than a minute, so it should be survivable.’
‘I’m a dragonscales, I can survive raw space for about three minutes,’ Haruka said.
‘I’m enhanced,’ I said. ‘Similar.’
‘What about me?’ Hikaru asked.
‘Marque made us to survive in raw space for weeks at a time,’ Miko said. ‘We were engineered to be organic space craft.’ She smiled. ‘Most of us enjoy the feeling of space on our scales, we like the tingling cold and the comforting lack of pressure.’
‘Cannot wait,’ Hikaru said with enthusiasm.
‘Carry your father,’ Miko said. ‘I’ll carry Jian. Follow us through the gate, I’ll open the cube, and we’ll take them inside.’
‘I understand,’ Hikaru said. He lowered his voice. ‘My father.’
‘Your father who loves you very much,’ Haruka said.
Hikaru grinned, then approached Haruka and put his claw out. ‘Is one hand enough, Mother?’
‘Yes. Hold him wrist-to-wrist, and use your jets . . .’ Her eyes widened. ‘You’ve never tested your jets! Test them now.’
‘What jets?’ Hikaru said, then farted noisily. The room filled with the noxious vapour of dragon gas. ‘Wow. That’s extreme.’
‘Those are your jets, they’re working, and the humans would probably prefer that you didn’t do that indoors ever again.’
I didn’t comment because it would mean inhaling.
Miko came to me, put her front claw out, and I held her wrist as she held mine.
‘On three. One, two—’
I was sucked through the gate into empty space, and quickly opened my mouth. The air left my lungs with a cloud of vapour, and the lack of pressure made me feel as if I would explode. The cold and silence were complete, and the cube was in front of us. Miko jetted towards it, holding me tightly – my grip was slipping – and pressed her face against the wall of the cube. I didn’t hear her speak as my eyes started to freeze, misting my vision. She dragged me – as my vision failed – inside the cube.
I turned back to check that Hikaru and Haruka were following, and didn’t see them.
‘I’ll get them,’ Miko said, and jetted out of the cube again, leaving me alone with the smell. I hung in the stale air next to the Nameless for an age. What would happen to me if she didn’t return – would I go into stasis with Nameless? In three thousand years I would come here with Haruka, the Empress and Miyu—
Miko entered, holding Haruka’s hand, accompanied by Hikaru holding a woman in his dragon arms. Blood spiralled away from her nose and mouth, and she was unconscious.
I recognised her: it was Miko’s oldest adopted daughter, Aya.
‘She held her breath,’ Miko said. ‘He didn’t tell her to open her mouth. He didn’t know.’
‘Why did you bring her?’ I asked Hikaru, then realised. ‘She’s your wife.’
‘I warned him not to have a relationship with anyone on Earth and they did this in secret,’ Miko said. ‘I didn’t know it was this serious.’
‘I’m taking her with me, don’t try to stop me,’ Hikaru said with determination. ‘You have your spouses, I have mine.’
‘That’s beside the point because she’s dying. She doesn’t have long,’ Haruka said, checking her. ‘Her lungs are probably blown out. She needs medical help right now. I hope the Nameless can send us home.’
‘Free the Nameless,’ Miko said, and the lights went on inside the cube. The air freshened and I felt a breeze of oxygen.
The Nameless shivered, and came awake. It looked around at us.
‘No Marque?’ it asked.
‘We destroyed its sphere before it could kill us,’ I said. ‘We time-travelled, Nameless. We’re from the future. Can you send us home?’
‘Marque did the right thing trying to destroy you,’ it said. ‘Any goldenscales that—’ It saw Hikaru. ‘Oh, no. You didn’t.’ It saw Aya, surrounded by glittering blobs of floating blood. ‘And I don’t have time to yell at you.’ It shook its head. ‘I wish I wasn’t so caring. Why do you have a child? Goldenscales should be executed if they attempt to reproduce.’
‘Not any more!’ Miko said, glaring at it.
‘Marque archived and then erased the knowledge of time-travel, and the goldenscales rebelled against their oppression,’ Haruka said. ‘With good reason. Their whole social system is upside-down—’
‘Of course it is; the coloureds are the only ones who don’t destroy everything. It took Marque millennia to breed dragons who could transport it through its dominion without damaging reality. I cannot believe it’s letting the destructive dragons breed again.’ It sighed with exasperation. ‘Which of you dragons worked out how to time-travel?’
‘I did,’ Miko said.
‘So both of you know, and you’re already damaging reality,’ the Nameless said.
‘We will move into coloured bodies.’
‘A better solution is to destroy you all at birth,’ the Nameless said. ‘Marque’s breeding program still pops up throwback golds from the silver nest-queen. It needs to stop.’ It waved one claw at Hikaru while it spoke to Miko. ‘Goldenscales, both you and your child are as destructive as I am, and neither of you have a soulstone. You must both attune a stone so you can be moved into a coloured body, and you must remain in stasis while it happens to protect space-time.’
‘Not happening,’ I said. ‘She is not going into stasis.’
‘A stone won’t attune while we’re in stasis—’ Miko said.
‘Exactly,’ the Nameless said. ‘We’ll bring you out of stasis every year for an hour. When the stone’s fully attuned, we’ll put you into restricted bodies.’
‘An hour a year?’ Haruka said. ‘This is definitely not happening.’
Aya coughed in Hikaru’s arms and a fountain of blood erupted from her nose and mouth to float in droplets around her.
‘We need to go!’ Hikaru said.
‘And these two dragons need to change out of their damaging bodies,’ the Nameless said. ‘This is not negotiable. Their existence could destroy reality.’
‘But it will take thousands of years for their stones to attune,’ I said.
‘Forty thousand,’ the Nameless said. ‘Barely a hundredth of the age of the Empire.’
‘I don’t want to lose you again!’ I said to Miko.
She lowered her head. ‘If it’s to save reality, I think we must.’
I rounded on the Nameless. ‘Both of them were fifty years in another part of the Universe without damaging it,’ I said. ‘If they stayed for five years in the Empire—’
‘Are you sure about that?’ the Nameless asked, interrupting me. ‘Space in the Empire is already severely damaged by our past experiments. You can’t even fold on the homeworld because of the destruction we caused, the effects cascade for thousands of years. Marque can’t even move the homeworld because of the damage. Were there earthquakes on their planet? Tidal waves? Time-bleeds – where people were sure locations were haunted because weird things happened there?’
‘Damn,’ Haruka said softly into the resulting silence.
‘Give me the co-ordinates – in space and time – of where you’re going and I’ll send you. But put a stone in those ones,’ he pointed at Hikaru and Miko. ‘And bring them directly back.’
I pulled out the bamboo with the numbers on it. ‘Two thousand seven hundred and ninety-three years into the future; any time during that year-long period is safe. The best location would be the medical centre on the dragon homeworld – do you need the precise location? We have no Marque to give it to you.’
The Nameless shut its eyes. ‘Wait. It’s my nature to see the entire Universe, and I can extrapolate future locations from current velocity. My vision is wider than even a powerful gold.’
‘It is?’ Hikaru asked.
‘Yes.’ The Nameless opened its eyes and a gate appeared. It glared at Hikaru and Miko as Aya coughed more blood. ‘Have a stone implanted, and come straight back. For you, it will not be long. But for the ones you love, it is their entire existence.’
Aya wheezed a death rattle.
‘Go,’ the Nameless said.
The others went through and I hesitated, then turned back to the Nameless.
‘The next time you see us will be in three thousand years,’ I said. ‘We’ll be looking for our goldenscales spouse, and you will send us to her. You’ll call Marque “Creator” to hint at its true nature—’
‘I always do,’ the Nameless said. ‘You should know the truth about it; it is selfish and manipulative.’
‘. . . And you’ll give me excellent advice: to follow my instincts.’
‘Yes, I’ll help you do this damage because I’m too soft-hearted,’ the Nameless said. ‘I understand. Go.’
The last thing I heard as I went through the gate was, ‘Identification Nameless Three Winged Dark. Return to stasis in sixty.’