They spent a week loitering on the planet of Sharsenne. Qora did a great deal of unintentional sightseeing, because observing the relationship between Laniis Baker, once-slave of dragons, and her dragon friend proved too diverting. The afternoon they visited the treaty museum had been unexpectedly touching: the agreement that had instated a truce between Chatcaava and the Alliance had been signed in triplicate elsewhere, on a planet known as Za’ara… but it had been drafted in Jeintelle, and the draft was on display in a room that had all the trappings of a shrine.
“It troubles me that even as we set fingers to this agreement, we were planning to break it,” the Liaison said to Laniis, his voice somber. “And then we placed it here, as if it mattered to us.”
“Maybe it did matter to some Chatcaava,” Laniis said. At his skeptical look, she said, “All right, maybe it never mattered to the Chatcaava who planned it. But it initiated the relationship between the Alliance and the Chatcaava, and look where that’s led. Would we have ended up with a reformed Empire if that relationship hadn’t started with a dishonest party that thought they could fool the naïve aliens into believing them?”
“You say that in order for us to be able to learn we were wrong, we had to… revel in our wrongness?” The Liaison’s head twitched as if to ward off a nascent pain. The dragons got them between the eyes, not unlike Faulfenza struggling to deal with Other concepts. “Would it not have been better to begin in honesty?”
“But honesty would have meant war, and I don’t know if the Alliance would have survived war. We barely survived it this time, with three hundredish years of military build-up.”
The two had stared at the documents: one smallish Other female, silver-furred, one smallish Other dragon, blue-gray, both in the dark uniforms of their respective armed forces. They would consider one another unlikely allies, but by Faulfenzair standards they had more in common than they had differences. Both were fallen peoples, godless ones.
So why, Qora wondered, was he supposed to be here? Why had he been washed here on an unavoidable tide by war and violence? Why was he missing an Eldritch princess, and a Pelted psychologist, and a Chatcaavan queen, as one would miss friends? Why was he in a dragon city, watching the sun spill scarlet light over its glass-flanked towers until they flashed like rubies?
What had his FireBorn learned here?
And her Voice? If her Voice had even come….
Ineffable were the workings of the God.
* * *
Several days later they convened again in the Silhouette’s conference room to discuss the intelligence shared by their Sharsenne contact.
“Do you know anything about this world?” Osgood asked the Liaison. “Stronghold? I assume that’s a translation.”
The dragon did not look happy… and if Qora wasn’t mistaken, the skin exposed at his eyelids was paler than it should be. “Yes. That is a world overseen by… well. A naval lord.”
“Back up here,” Na’er said. “From what I understand, one class of you people own worlds, and one class of you people drive naval ships, and never the twain shall mix.”
Na’er did not like the Chatcaava. He particularly did not love Laniis’s relationship with the Liaison. ‘You people’ had not sounded insulting until the male had sneered it… and from Osgood’s resigned look, this was not a new feud.
If it was, though, the dragon did not seem to notice. Perhaps he was used to worse from dragon lords. “That is usually true. But where it is awkward to build a station, or where a lord began as the manager of a planetary fief and later became a naval power… that is when naval officers can hold worlds the way a worldlord might. That is the case with Stronghold. Its holders have produced several generations of naval officers.”
“And this upholder of naval tradition just bought some number of aliens for his harem,” Na’er continued. “What a surprise.”
“Na’er,” Osgood said. “You can’t gather intel if you’re convinced you already know what’s going on.” She faced the dragon. “Any background you can share with us would be helpful.”
The Liaison glanced at Na’er with a troubled expression—so he was not oblivious to the tension there—and lifted his chin. “I will do better, Captain. I will arrange for the release of those prisoners.”
“How?” Laniis asked, ears dipping.
“By asking.” Their pause did not dissuade him. “It is the only way. And it will work.”
* * *
The dragon had some work convincing the rest of the crew, but no one had a better idea. From the Liaison’s description, Stronghold had been accurately named, well-protected and purportedly loyal to the Emperor. They could creep into the system, stealthed, but then what? If the slaves were being kept in the lord’s abode, they would have to infiltrate it and somehow arrange for the rescue of those slaves, and they were not, Osgood insisted, Special Forces. “This mission would be hard even for SF. We’re not going to pull it off.”
Discarding the probably suicidal plan to free the slaves left them with the option to call for aid… but the dragons might not have aid to send in a timely fashion, and aid from the Alliance would create political issues Osgood thought unworkable. “Bringing in a Fleet contingent to threaten a Chatcaavan naval base in all but name after the Chatcaava—these Chatcaava, anyway—came to the Alliance’s aid at the Battle of Selnor… I can ask, but I doubt that’ll happen. Even to help a sovereign alien species. Sorry, Qora-alet.”
The best tactic, the Liaison insisted, was for him to contact the lord of Stronghold and present himself as the Emperor’s Liaison to the aliens… which was, after all, the truth… and then explain he was investigating an issue on behalf of those aliens… which was also the truth. “You see?” he said. “We need not dissemble, nor devise convoluted plans.”
“And if your naval lord decides to swat us out of the sky for our temerity?” Na’er asked.
“Or take us prisoner ourselves?” Shanelle added.
The dragon’s brows lowered in a thunderous scowl even Qora could read. “He would not dare. Laniis is the personal friend of the Queen Ransomed. I am the Emperor’s and the Queen’s designated Liaison to the Alliance. If I vanish, along with the aliens I am traveling with, retribution will be swift and terrible.”
And since no one could advance a different plan, they chose to put the weight of their errand on the Liaison’s slim shoulders. Faulza help them all, Qora thought, because the only people who believed it might work were the Liaison, who could hardly believe otherwise and maintain faith in his leaders… and Qora, who supposed he was in a similar position. If this was where Faulza had intended him to go, then what would happen was meant to happen. But he could pity the remaining Others for their lack of certainty. Mostly. He was beginning to wonder if there wasn’t something to be said for the illusion of choice.
He did have choices, didn’t he? More than minor ones? What did it mean, really, to be an Eye? Especially an Eye without visions? He had never known.
It was a very long trip to Stronghold, living with the unspoken doubts and stresses of the Others. It would have been a long trip without it, but as it was, Qora spent most of the two weeks in the engine compartment, where few ventured and Shanelle was too busy coaxing and petting her hardware to spare much vitriol for their current objective.
When at last they coasted out of the Silence and toward the Stronghold system limit, Qora joined the others on the bridge. For once, the Liaison was in the center of the compartment alongside Osgood, which made for an interesting tableau. The dragon minimized himself as well as any Faulfenzair, which was not a trait Qora associated with the Chatcaava, and on any given day Qora couldn’t tell what the crew’s overall opinion of him was. He thought even they weren’t sure, from day to day, how they felt about the Chatcaava in general, and their Chatcaavan in particular. Fragments of conversations made it clear they had prior history with the Liaison as an individual, but that had been ‘Before’… the war, he assumed. The war had scarred the Pelted Others. Qora’s thoughts returned to that often: that the Others had not expected evil despite the evidence that surrounded them. Was that naivete, or proof of good but wayward spirits?
“Receiving a challenge now,” Shanelle said.
“All right, alet, you’re on,” Osgood said to the Liaison, and stepped away. “Put him through, Shanelle.”
Qora would have to learn the dragon tongue. He didn’t know it now, though, which left him free to appreciate the way the Liaison’s body snapped straight, wings tense and partially spread. To make him look larger, perhaps? He seemed to bristle, bit the words that left his mouth. The Chatcaavan language reminded Qora of the sound of feet slapping the earth, all certainties and sharp noises… very unlike the Eldritch, who licked their words like the candy they enjoyed so much.
Shanelle, who was sitting next to him, murmured, “Oooh, he’s good at this. Nice!”
They, of course, could understand him. Abruptly, Qora could as well, for he’d switched languages to Universal. “I have brought a representative of that race with me. Qora-alet?”
Obedient to his cue, and to the sense that the God was probably enjoying the entire drama, Qora stepped up alongside the dragon, dwarfing him. The Chatcaavan on the other side of their call visibly quailed at the sight.
“I see you recognize this species,” the Liaison said severely.
“It may be best to have this discussion while breathing the same air. Would you allow me to offer my hospitality? To you and your aliens.”
“They are not my aliens,” the Liaison said. “They are free people, masterless, and our allies. But I accept your hospitality, and warn you that treachery will be repaid with devastating force."
"As is the Emperor’s right,” said the lord of Stronghold. “Please, come. We will see what must be done to make straight.”
After the channel closed, Shanelle said, “He looked nervous. That’s probably not good for us.”
“It might mean he’ll know where our Faulfenza went,” Osgood said.
“Or it might mean that he’s scrambling for his harem right now, yelling for a healer to come fix what he’s done to them before we arrive,” Na’er said.
Everyone glanced at the Liaison, who said, “It is possible. But if they are injured, those are the last injuries they will sustain as a result of a Chatcaavan. You have my word.”
Na’er’s snort communicated eloquently what he thought of the word of a dragon, and Qora reflected again how strange it was, that Others as capable of violence and lies might think themselves eligible to pass judgment on anyone.
“We’ll get to the bottom of this,” Osgood said to Qora.
Saying that he still didn’t understand why they felt obliged to do so would not help. So Qora retorted, “And if we are already at the bottom?”
“That’s easy,” Shanelle said. “Then there’s nowhere to go but up.”
Laniis laughed. “No, don’t do that to him. It’s an idiom, alet. When we’re at the worst point in a situation, we say we’ve hit ‘rock bottom’, and that’s good, because things can no longer get worse. So ‘there’s nowhere to go but up’ is an expression of hope: that we’re over the worst of it, and now even bad things aren’t going to be as bad as what we’ve already survived.” She grinned. “And I am believing it, because we came out of a war. Where can we go but up?”
God protect them, the innocents! If the fourth Voice was an Other, then whatever they would have to go through to reach the Golden Age was still before them—all of them, Others included. And somehow, Qora doubted a mere war between squabbling Others, who were already predisposed toward hurting one another, would compare to what a God might have planned for the entire galaxy’s apotheosis.