CHAPTER 9

It had been an uneasy night. Not because of her anxieties, though the Queen still nursed them, but because she’d had dreams… such vivid dreams, strange and vibrant, that she’d woken yearning and sated and with her mouth pressed into her arm to muffle the need to keen. It had taken a dip in her coldest pool to restore her equanimity, and when she’d exited it the sight of her empty vase struck her again. She was contemplating it when the Knife arrived for their morning meeting. For that was what they were that now, weren’t they? Not visits, but meetings. They had work to do together.

“My Queen,” he said without preamble, “I believe I have secured your escape route.”

She grew still. “Tell me.”

He dipped his head. “There is a basement level in this tower. Did you know?”

Memories, bold and cruel as blows: the dank air. The smell of panic. The stark chiaroscuro of the dungeon’s poor lighting. And her first glimpse of an Eldritch face, tears ringing the enormous eyes, so like, and so unlike, the eyes she had come to love later. “I knew, yes.”

“It is poorly maintained, the basement,” he said. “But there is a tunnel.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Someone put a tunnel beneath the harem tower.”

“One that leads outside the palace. I too am suspicious that it should exist. I can only imagine it was excavated to allow the inhabitants of the tower to flee the convulsions of the court, which would suggest that everyone knows about it.”

“It would, yes.”

“But I investigated this tunnel and it has not been used in a very long time,” the Knife continued. She walked past him to sit by the window, and he turned to face her. “The instruments I brought found no evidence of anyone’s passage for at least a hundred revolutions. Perhaps more.”

“A hundred revolutions,” the Queen murmured.

“Four generations.”

“That is not long, to forget something that might be used against one’s enemies.”

“I know,” the Knife said. “I am looking for alternatives. But this tunnel is in the tower, so we could use it without being noticed, and it opens very near the landing pad.”

“And that pad…”

“Is… potentially useful. It may be equally wise to send our wards into hiding on the planet.”

She imagined that: of over a hundred Chatcaavan females and children scattered. Of the likelihood of their remaining free. “I cannot imagine that ending well.”

His eyes were somber. “Then you understand our chances of success at this point, barring any external aid.”

She thought of Laniis. “I do, yes.”

“Shall I warn someone at the pad that we might be coming?”

The thought chilled her. Right now the only people who knew her intentions in the Empire, where she could be betrayed, were in this room. Including more people would put them at greater risk for discovery… and yet, they would have to, eventually, for the plan to work. “I don’t know.” She regarded him. “You are military. You know better, I think, than I do.”

His wings twitched. “It is hard to decide when we don’t know who we’re fleeing, or when we’re going. If we’re leaving soon, our exposure is minimized… and if our allies are alerted, they can have the shuttle prepared for us, and that will make it harder for our enemies to catch us before we escape. But the longer we remain, the longer our allies have to betray us with a mistake.” He spread his hands. “When are we leaving, my Queen?”

There it was. Not ‘when might we leave,’ but ‘when are we leaving.’ “Do you think we will?”

Whatever answer he contemplated was interrupted by the surprising arrival of the Mother, whose timid entrance was betrayed by the scrape of her claws on the stone steps. The Queen had not yet sent for her; it shocked her that the Mother might come in advance of that summons, shocked and pleased her. There was obviously more mettle in the female than the Queen had anticipated, and if so…

The Knife and the Mother had seen each other now, and that too was revelation. It was clear to the Slave Queen that the Knife found the Mother compelling. Perhaps that was unsurprising; had he not said he cared for his own dam? And here was the Mother, who, unlike the Slave Queen, looked the part of a fertile female. This was a fascinating new permutation of his unnatural attitudes: that he might see the Mother as someone he could be protective of, and fond of.

So that did not surprise her. What did was that the Mother did not instantly recoil from that interest. What Chatcaavan female had ever failed to find a male’s interest intimidating? How did the Mother see the Knife’s benevolence past what should have been revolutions of socially-inculcated wariness? Because it was clear from the Mother’s hesitation that she had evaluated the quality of the Knife’s gaze and found it harmless. Was this some skill passed on with the stories the Mother had heard from her dam?

In how many other ways was the Mother unusual? All this time the Queen had thought herself isolated, alone in her strangeness. If she’d only troubled herself to investigate, what would she have discovered? Or would she have been capable of seeing any of it before the Ambassador had opened her eyes?

“Pardon me-your-lesser,” the Mother said to the Knife before bowing to the Slave Queen. “Mistress, you had said you wished to speak to me and I wished you not to trouble yourself to seek me. I hope I have not transgressed….”

She had, but the Queen preferred it to the alternative. “You were wise to anticipate my request.”

“Shall I go?” the Knife said.

“Stay. But sit there.” She pointed at one of the benches against the wall. The Mother watched him go, wide-eyed at this show of obedience to a female’s command. When the Mother swiveled that startled gaze back to her, the Queen said, “He is my Knife. A gift from the Emperor to ensure my security.”

The Mother did not ask if she was at risk. No Chatcaavan female would ask such a question. They were born into bondage and misery, subject to the smallest whim of the males that owned them. What else? What she said, instead, was, “Mistress? May I ask… why you wanted to see me?”

“Because you love children,” the Queen said. “And there is a good chance they may all die soon.”

The Mother staggered, and the Knife darted to her side. The Queen wasn’t sure which of them was more astonished: the Mother to be caught, or the Knife to be catching her. For her part, she watched them with two sets of eyes. Her Chatcaavan set found the display perplexing. But the set the Ambassador had lent her marveled, particularly as the Knife steadied the Mother on her feet before releasing her. The look they exchanged was wordless: they were shocked at one another, and yet that they shared that shock was a bond, or at least, the foundation for one. Would it flower, she wonder, given time? And into what? Just what had the relationship between the Knife’s dam and sire looked like?

Come to that, had the Mother’s dam loved her sire? The Queen realized she didn’t know where the Mother had come from, when she’d been merely Emerald. Had both her parents cared for her? Was that why she dared love children?

“Mistress, the children must not die. Tell me what must be done to prevent this!”

“You truly wish to know? You will have to be brave,” the Queen said.

“For the children, I can be brave.”

“Braver than you’ve been for them before,” the Queen cautioned. “And you will have to make many sacrifices.”

The Mother was watching her now, her puzzlement giving way to suspicion. “This is another of those times,” she said. “You are going to wear the mantle of a male and do something that only males do.”

Was she? She supposed so. She imagined the Ambassador laughing at the thought, of his hands smoothing up her sides, praising her for her body which he had not found at all masculine. “The Emperor has enemies.”

The Knife had stepped away, leaving the Mother standing on her own. She looked small and fragile, but she had not fled. “Every Emperor does.”

“Those enemies may try to destroy the things he owns,” the Slave Queen said. “And it is my plan to deny that to them.”

The Mother stared at her, jaw gaping open.

“Do you understand?”

“You mean to take the children away before the Emperor’s rivals can kill them?” the Mother asked, her voice tight.

The Queen was pleased. She had not expected the Mother to admit to understanding, when pretending to ignorance was a survival skill every female learned before their eyes cleared. “The children and the females of the harem. Yes.”

“But why have you told me your pla—” The Mother stopped, and repeated, “Because I love them.”

“So you are not likely to betray me or to make a mistake that might imperil the children,” the Slave Queen said. “Yes. But there are a great number of children, and they will need caretakers, females they trust.”

“Yes, I see,” the Mother murmured, frowning. “But it will take more than the two of us, Mistress. You said you intend to bring the rest of the harem? Do they know?” She rubbed all four hands together. “But they won’t be much help; most of them are witless around babies. I am the only Mother who has made the trip to the nursery more than once. The infants will need supplies. I assume there is food set aside for the journey?”

The Slave Queen looked at the Knife, who dipped his head. “I have only begun planning the logistics, my Queen, and I fear I have little knowledge of the needs of infants.”

“Perhaps you and the Mother might discuss it, then,” the Slave Queen said.

The two of them looked at one another.

“I would value the opportunity,” the Knife said.

“Use my chamber, then,” the Queen said, waving them toward it. “I have an errand of my own and will be back in an hour, maybe two.”

They chorused their agreements and she left them behind, wondering if the time together would result in a deepening of their unlikely interest in one another. So many Chatcaava around her nursing these streaks of heterodoxy. Had they all become so adept at using masks that they could no longer identify their allies in perversion? There was no strength without numbers.

Her thought had been to return to the nursery to interview the female servants, but she found herself passing that door, consumed by her thoughts. She still planned to meet with the servants; if anything her recruitment of the Mother had made it clear how important their aid would be to their success. But it was not enough to flee the palace, was it? If the throneworld was taken by the Emperor’s enemies, who would remain behind to warn him?

She had a notion of at least one person who would do. On the ground floor, the Queen presented herself to the guards and said, “This one desires escort to the Surgeon.”

“A moment,” said one of them, and called for replacements. Then the two of them left their posts to the new males and attached themselves to her without further comment. These were the Knife’s new choices; she approved.

The Surgeon’s clinic never closed. She did not recognize the male serving as Triage, but he would be another of those Outside, and one never knew how many of those there were: it made her wonder suddenly if the world Outside was striated with fault-lines of ancient and provincial attitudes, and if that was part of why they were not permitted Inside. The Queen peered at Triage, wondering if she could find such evidence in his eyes... but she saw nothing there save the impassivity of his masklike face. If he found her presence untoward there was no sign of it.

“The Surgeon does not treat females.”

“I am not ill,” she said. “I wish only to ask him a question.”

The male twitched his hand in a shrug. “Down the hall, in his office.”

“Await me here,” she said to her guards, and left them behind.

The Surgeon was indeed in his office. She stepped inside and waited to see if he would acknowledge her. She knew him well, better than she’d ever anticipated: had served as his assistant when the Ambassador had first suffered his honor wounds, had spoken to him when he’d saved the Mother’s life at the Ambassador’s behest, had even sheltered in his clinic when the Emperor returned to the Field to defend his position by killing Second. Standing before him in his study, she understood what she hadn’t before. She felt safe with him.

“This is unexpected,” the Surgeon said, eyeing her. “You are not injured, I assume.”

“No.” She looked toward the closed door, then back at him. “This place is secure?”

“My clinic is Outside.”

“And you are Outside,” she said. “Because to be Inside would be periculous for one in your profession.”

How different it was to see the mind working behind a male’s eyes. Males did not fear to reveal their intelligence. The Surgeon’s was acute; she liked the way he studied her, as if she were capable of having complex thoughts of her own. He hadn’t begun their acquaintance looking at her thus. “What is it you plan, Queen Ransomed, to ask such a question?”

“What is it you know, Surgeon, to call me by that title?” she asked.

The Surgeon folded his hands, long talons arched over their backs. “Males say a great deal to the person stitching their honor wounds.”

“My Emperor doesn’t speak much,” the Queen said. “And when he does, it is only because he trusts those who hear him.”

“Emperors command many they distrust.”

“Yes, but they command. They do not confide.”

His eyes narrowed. “What is it you want?”

What did she want? What else? “Your help.”

“My help.”

She inclined her head as the Ambassador had done. “When the Emperor returns. If things are not as they seem. I want you to shelter him.”

The Surgeon eased back from the desk. “I am Outside. You know what that means.”

“You don’t take sides, I know.”

“To do so would place me Inside,” the Surgeon said. “I can’t execute my function if I’m Inside, subject to the whims and vengeances of those I treat.”

“You once told me that this Emperor was less difficult than the others,” the Slave Queen said. “That he left less damage in his wake.”

His wariness shone in his eyes, and he said nothing.

“Is that not what you’re here to prevent? Waste? Damage? I would think that supporting the Emperor would be another form of surgery: one that prevents sickness. You support the male who creates less work for you.”

He was staring at her, jaw tight. “I would say that honor wounds are necessary for our system to function. But you would have a ready reply to that, wouldn’t you.”

“That it would be better for us all if we lived in a world where that wasn’t true?” she said. “A world where males do not torment one another to prove their right to rule? Any animal becomes vicious when goaded. How many generations of Chatcaava have goaded one another now, to create this permanent state of aggression?”

“What you suggest is impossible.”

She studied his face. His inscrutability had become almost impenetrable, which made her think… “You do not believe that.”

“An astonishing conclusion to have been derived from nothing, Queen Ransomed.”

“But true nonetheless,” she said, sure of it now. “You long for things to be different.”

“I long,” he said, voice clipped with sudden anger, “for there to be less waste. But life ends in death, Queen Ransomed. Nothing changes this.”

“But the time between life and its end… that matters, doesn’t it?” She paused, because he was seething now, looking away from her with lips peeled back just enough to show teeth. “If it didn’t matter, why treat anyone at all? Let them die of their wounds and reach their natural end. What use Surgeons, if the quality of the life while it exists doesn’t matter?”

“This, then, is what the Ambassador did to you,” the Surgeon said. “He put these thoughts in you.”

“No,” the Slave Queen said, surprised to find it was true. “No, these thoughts were always in me. The Ambassador only made it safe to speak them. Just as you are now, Surgeon, by not giving me to the court to be punished.”

“That would avail me nothing. You belong to the Emperor, and the Emperor indulges you. If he likes his females male in their thinking, that is his business.”

“And you like this Emperor, or you would work against him.”

“I am Outside—”

“You would work against him,” the Slave Queen said, considering him with interest. “By not doing your best work.”

The Surgeon bristled. “You suggest that I would withhold my ability, when withholding it would make me unworthy of my status Outside?”

“I suggest that no one works well for a master they despise,” the Slave Queen said. “I had not realized it. But even among us, there is such a thing as loyalty, and leadership.”

The Surgeon was studying her now the way he would have an interesting disease. “You suggest incredible things.”

“The Empire will change,” the Slave Queen said. “You have been good to the Emperor. I would not have you on the wrong side of that change.”

“Enough!” He luffed his wings, astonished. “You dare come here and warn me? As if you had concern over my fate!”

“I do,” she said. “And also my Emperor’s. He will need you.” She smiled suddenly, feeling mischievous. “He will create that world of less waste that you desire so ardently, if you help him.”

“Your insolence is beyond belief—”

“Is it?” She canted her head, somber again. “I, too, am Outside, in a way. Females cannot partake in the world of power and agency of males, Surgeon. Some would say the Chatcaava have been lessened by that division. You, the other males who are Outside… how much more could you do if you did not have to live outside the world of males on the Inside? What could you accomplish freed from the necessity to maintain your neutrality?” She leaned toward him. “If you could choose sides, Surgeon… what an ally you would be! What amazing things you might do for the world you would choose to bring forth!”

He stared at her, wings sagging.

“Yes?” she asked.

His head twitched to one side, as if from a slap. Slowly he folded his wings, tucking them neatly against his back. “You speak unspeakable things. But you are correct. They are ideas I have entertained on my own. Now and then.”

“Then I will leave you to their contemplation,” the Slave Queen said. “And with the promise that this Emperor would listen to your ideas, if you advanced them to him. If you stepped Inside, you would be welcome at his side.”

“And if he fell?”

“How could he, with the help of you and others like you?”

The Surgeon snorted. “You speak with the tongue of freaks, female.”

Something in his tone—she’d amused him. “But?”

“No ‘but’. You are perfectly suited to be mate to the creature you call Emperor. He thinks with the thoughts of freaks and makes them Chatcaavan. There is a vigor to hybrid creatures that cannot be duplicated with purebreds, and he is busy cross-breeding everything he sees with everything he already knows. It has been… an interesting assignment, seeing to him.”

The Slave Queen drew herself up. “He is Greatness.”

The male cocked his head, eyes resting on hers. He said, after a moment, “Maybe.”

“Surgeon,” she said. “Good day.”

“Queen Ransomed,” he replied, paused. “Come again.”

She hid her smile of triumph and stepped out again.

The guards escorted her back to the tower, and she ascended the stairs past the jeweled mosaics and the males standing duty outside the menders, the nursery, the gift harem, the imperial harem. The Surgeon would be a powerful ally, not only because of his abilities, but because no one would expect a male Outside to harbor a male Inside. What the Surgeon hadn’t realized was that he’d already revealed his allegiances. Nothing had required him to offer the Emperor a safe harbor for the Slave Queen in the event of a serious challenge, and yet he had acquiesced to that arrangement long before the Ambassador’s arrival. Whether that revealed the Surgeon as someone who favored the Emperor or as someone who hated unnecessary death hardly mattered. He had a moral center, one the Slave Queen could predict. If—when—she and the others fled, her Emperor would have an ally. That was enough.

When she arrived at her tower, the Knife had gone but the Mother remained, perched on the lip of one of the nests depressed into the floor. All four hands were folded in her lap, and she was looking out the window at the ruddy streaks in the sky, the gradient of deepening purple as the sun set. Surprised, the Slave Queen halted.

“Long ago, it seems,” the Mother said, “you gave me the jewels. Do you remember?”

“You were named Emerald then,” the Slave Queen said, approaching her. “After your eyes.”

The Mother looked up at her with that bright green gaze. “I said then that you could be crueler than you were.”

“I do not love cruelty.” The Slave Queen sat across from her.

The Mother dipped her head in agreement. And added, “I like the Knife.”

She considered her reply. “He, too, does not love cruelty.”

That seemed enough for them both. “What will you do now?”

“Speak to the slaves in the nursery.”

“The slaves!” The Mother glanced at her. “They cannot speak, or read, or write. How do you mean to do it?”

The Slave Queen looked out the window. The stars were gleaming now on the dark wake of the sunset, bright pinpricks against the purple. “Meet me there tomorrow afternoon, and you will see.”

“I admit, this isn’t where I expected to find an Eldritch,” Laniis said, stepping closer to Meryl. She glanced at the whorl of bodies entering and exiting the main Pad station off the Starbase Ana port, glad that she had only two people to keep track of in the crowd and that both of them were taller than her—and almost everyone else.

“A starbase?” Meryl asked. “Or a farm?”

“Either?” Laniis said. “I’d never seen an Eldritch before I ended up in the Empire. All their press says they don’t leave their world.”

“They don’t, unless they’re kidnapped. Usually.” Meryl guided them around the edges of the throng toward the priority Pads. “But there are a handful of them known offworld. Amber’s one of them.”

“If ‘hidden on a backworld on the fringes of the Alliance’ counts as ‘known’,” Na’er said cheerfully.

Meryl snorted and squeezed them into the quick-moving line. “It counts, believe me.” She added, “Three for transit to the agriculture dome. Two Fleet Intelligence, one Fleet Regular.”

The Pads chimed. Meryl walked over one, and Laniis followed. They exited out of the noise and bustle into a nearly empty room with a floor and ceiling of warm wood and brass-colored metal. The walls were all flexglass French doors, flung open and overlooking rows and rows of crops beneath a sky as flawless a blue as Laniis could remember seeing. The temperature was perfect, warm with a sultry breeze that smelled of sap and growing things. They were in some kind of observation tower; she had the pleasant sensation of being perched over an idyllic world, undisturbed by sapient habitation. While Meryl went to talk to the Asanii felid behind a nearby counter, she drifted to the nearest door and rested her fingers on the frame.

“Bit too cultivated for me,” Na’er said from behind her. “But it’s got a kind of divine arrogance to it, doesn’t it? To just go into space like this, make an artificial moon-sized shell, and then fill it with tiny worlds designed to suit us.”

“Is it arrogance, or a form of worship?” Laniis asked. “We mimic our creators.”

Na’er snorted. “Humanity’s barely crawled back out of their solar system.”

“I meant our real creators,” Laniis said. “The Speaker-Singer. Your gods.”

“My gods were a fiction created by over-zealous Pelted eager to forget that we were ever made by fallible, mortal people.” Na’er shook his head and said in the cadence of a broadcast evangelist famous for her fiery condemnations of humanity, “’They would call us their children. But children cover ugly truths with pretty lies! When we refuse those lies, we refuse their claim to us!’”

Laniis flicked an ear back, looking over her shoulder at him.

Na’er shrugged. “I’m sorry, arii.”

“Don’t be.” Laniis resumed looking out the window. “I don’t blame you for not believing in a divine creator. And the Aera never seemed to have very nice ones anyway.”

“I like the concept of the sacred wind that changes,” Na’er said. “As a philosophy, it suits me. The rest of it…” He shrugged. And added, “I don’t know how you can still believe after what you’ve been through.”

Thinking of the unlikeliness of her rescue, Laniis said, “How could I not?”

Meryl called from behind them. “Ariisen? I’ve got our coordinates.”

“Time to go meet another Eldritch,” Na’er said. “Ever think you’d see three?”

“I never even thought I’d see one!”

“This one should be good,” Na’er said. “A first for me.”

“Now, children,” Meryl said wryly.

“’Into the breach!’” Na’er said, thrusting a fist up heroically.

The Pad deposited them outside a snug little house in the middle of the grain section of the dome. It had a small observational tower tucked at its corner, like the minaret of a glass and metal castle, but it sported an otherwise rustic aesthetic, from the low roof to the rocking chair on the wooden porch. Laniis half-expected some sort of Terran dog to lope out of the yard to announce them and was disappointed when one didn’t appear at their approach.

The wooden steps creaked as Meryl strode up them and rung the literal bell hung outside the door. A moment later, they all heard exuberant barking, and the door opened for a dart of fur and color and light. Delighted, Laniis said, “I knew there would be a pet!”

From the porch, a woman said, amused, “Of sorts, anyway. He’s a solidigraph, but Hyera insisted I needed company. Bells! Bells, sit!”

The dog—it was a dog—sat and regarded them with interest. There was no doubt of its solidigraphic origins, since its fur was a kaleidoscope of riotous colors that shed glitter when it moved. It was also accompanied by what appeared to be a school of tiny orange and white fish, which drifted around it like a piscine halo.

“Blow me away,” Na’er said, stunned. “What on the worlds is that?”

“That is a designer edition digital pet,” the woman said. “Their name is Bells and Whistles. Bells is the dog. The whistles are the fish. Listen to them long enough, you’ll hear it.”

Laniis twitched her ears toward the grouping, and after a moment discerned the faint sound when the fish shifted position… a breathy whistle, distant and sweet.

“God Almighty,” Meryl said, staring at it. “That can’t have been cheap.”

Their hostess laughed. “So, what brings Fleet to my door?”

Laniis looked at her now: this female Eldritch Amber had said might help them. She hadn’t seen a female Eldritch since the princess, and she sensed she would never see one quite like this again… because this woman—Sediryl Nuera Galare from the name elegantly penned on Amber’s envelope—was nothing like that woman, or either of the men she’d met. She was dressed in unabashedly modern clothes, brown pants tucked into boots sensible for tromping around fields, with a sky-blue long-sleeved shirt buttoned down over an ivory undershirt. There were no jewels threaded into the crown braid on her head. There were no jewels on her at all, only the hint of a necklace tucked under her collar. She didn’t need them to proclaim her authority, wealth, or confidence. She had her hands in her pockets, an insouciant smile, and she was beautiful like something vital and quick and present.

“Your cousin Amber sent us to you with a message,” Meryl said. She pulled the letter from the inside of her jacket. “He said you might be able to help us with something.”

“Amber sent you to me?” Sediryl’s brows lifted. “This should be good. What is it exactly that he thinks I can help you with?”

Laniis said, “He said you might be able to get Chatcaavan refugees out of the Empire.”

Silence then, filled only by the occasional rustle of the grain in the wind. The world, this arrogant world, this piece of prayer, filled with sunlight and the toasted grain scent of ripening wheat, filled that silence with meaning.

Sediryl stepped back and gestured to the door. “Let’s talk.”