Chapter 31

Two enemies dead, one castrated, and one fled. Vinnet and Maggie needed to leave.

Maggie stood frozen, out of the pool, mirroring Sarah’s distress. Her wide eyes flicked from the bloody bodies to Vinnet and the sword, and she shook.

Sarah likewise fixated on the blood and bodies; she’d seen the like only once before, in Banebdjedet’s palace. Violence was still new to them.

“Look away and come here.” Vinnet walked toward the exit, where they could turn their backs on the scene.

How can you be so calm? Sarah focused on the human bodies’ blood and stillness, but the dying infant Kemtewet could have been props to her.

One day, she’d see symbionts as people, Vinnet reminded herself. No host started that way. Ask me when we’re safe.

Maggie caught up and stopped at a distance, dripping and shaking.

Grabbing her hand and holding tight when she pulled back, Vinnet forced Maggie to meet her eyes. “We’re going home. Stay close and silent.”

Maggie nodded.

We’re going home, she repeated to Sarah.

No one dies like that there. Lies like that seemed to soothe Sarah’s dazed mind.

Nowhere was that peaceful.

“Let’s go.” She opened the door barely enough for them to slip through and found the two waiting spares, their shifts clean and dry. They wouldn’t stand out like Anjedet’s sopping and bloodied gown. “Give us your clothes. Now!”

Either because they thought her a queen or because the katana still dripped with the doppelgänger’s blood, they stripped immediately. In minutes, she and Maggie wore something more sensible and stalked away unchallenged.

When they left the spares out of sight, Vinnet squeezed the katana’s hilt. It would be lovely to keep it handy, but for now, they needed stealth more than the weapon. Besides, in other parts of the Central Palace, their opponents would have plasma guns that made swords obsolete.

She set it in one of the side corridors and kept moving, all the way to the entrance where the Green Flame had parted from them. She saw no one. Tugging Maggie forward, she sprinted down the corridor, heaping silent blessings on whoever decided to include sound-dampening flooring: plush, discrete, and stealthy.

Vinnet paused at the exit, glancing back and listening for pursuit. Stealth worked both ways. Beyond this door is the kings’ area, where vassal attire will be conspicuous. The servants there work throughout the palace’s restricted areas.

Won’t they recognize us?

Possibly. She scanned the door for traps, and her hopes sank at the sight of two disks, one matte gray and one shiny black, embedded in the ceiling over the exit. Two matching sets were embedded in the walls at the side. Short wavelength imaging.

What’s that mean?

If they had this system on earlier, they’d have seen me within you and known I wasn’t a queen; I’m too short. Vinnet took a deep breath into Sarah’s lungs. They’ll know now. She activated the door and led Maggie through, but no siren blared into the hall’s pristine silence. It should have been swarming with people.

What happened? Why didn’t it go off?

Maybe it’s a silent alarm. Perhaps our runaway observer already set it off. That seemed right. Any moment, security forces would swarm. She pulled Maggie along, their running footfalls reflecting off the hard-surfaced halls.

Sure enough, echoes of other rushing footsteps reverberated ahead of them. It sounded like too many to fight, especially unarmed as she was, and they surely had a visible-spectrum image of her from the checkpoint at the exit from the queens’ quarters. She couldn’t count on deceiving them.

She grabbed Maggie’s arm and activated the next door on the right. It opened into a small, square room with three portals: a door with no access panel, which meant it was one-way—in only; one ahead, at about Sarah’s chin level, a dark, fluid-filled port set into the wall; and a trapdoor in the floor with the disposal symbol. An emergency exit. Strand it!

“What now?” Maggie whispered.

“Into the garbage chute, flyboy”? Sarah suggested.

The disposal unit is a dead end. It immediately deconstructs discarded bodies dropped in.

How do the servants get out?

This is an interlock. They leave their vassals on this side to fall into the disposal and swim through the port in the wall. They take a new vassal on the other side. She looked at the human-sized door. That’s where the vassals come in when the servants enter. The other side of the passage is in the feudal areas with us, too. She grabbed Maggie’s hand.

How do the humans get in?

By teleportation, as we did. She backed into the hall. “That won’t work.” Not unless she wanted to leave behind both humans in her charge.

So is that how we’ll get out, teleportation?

As when we arrived, we won’t have access to the control panel from here. Even as Anjedet, we wouldn’t have the authority to command a servant to let us out of the Central Palace. Checking that the coast was still clear, she pulled Maggie back into the hallway through the kings’ and lords’ quarters.

Is there another way?

Not yet. If not the way servants or fealty left, perhaps they could leave the way normal Kemtewet citizens did after the execution. Except the two areas weren’t supposed to connect.

The corridor to the feudal day rooms began at a pair of ornately embossed doors. Vinnet hesitated before actuating them. “If this doesn’t work…”

Maggie raised an eyebrow at her.

“You might want to decide now how you’d rather die” sounded too callous. She shook her head and activated the door. It’s not as if she’ll have a choice.

It always felt weird being escorted by humans who knew Katorin was Gertewet and who would happily kill her for it. She certainly meant them no harm, and anyone who knew her knew that.

They’re afraid. Setira had watched silently through most of the show and tell. You made a lot of progress by showing off Khonsu, but you weren’t going to change their minds in an hour. If you’ll recall, you didn’t change my mind in an hour.

Katorin swallowed. It took years.

And you succeeded.

The humans led them outside, into a world of sunlight and blue skies and blowing wind. She should have enjoyed such beauty, but instead, she could only worry that she and Donn might tip Khonsu’s precious gel out onto the cracked pavement.

Are there symbionts uglier than Khonsu?

On Sais, Katorin didn’t smile at her host, because she feared others would recognize her interaction. Here, she refrained, because she feared they wouldn’t. Probably not.

Slinging the bucket between them, they waddled across the near edge of a paved area for the local vehicles until they reached the adjacent building. Inside, the small lobby split into two hallways of identical doors. Except the first on the left, where sawdust and metal chips marked recent construction and a single, distraught guard marked trouble.

Katorin and Donn set the bucket down.

“I don’t know what happened, Major. The prisoner said he didn’t know how to use the facilities, and since he was funny-looking, we believed him. Sergeant Rodriguez went in to help him.”

No. Katorin caught Donn’s eye and signed, “I’ll go.”

After all, his team still seemed angry at him and Kitchell. Maybe they’d work with her. She eased forward until the front guard held out his arm to stop her. She stopped.

From here, she could barely see into the first room’s open door and watch as Major Patrick stepped up to study the prone body.

“You killed him?” The Major’s voice promised retribution.

“The Sergeant did. He was real upset about it, wouldn’t say anything after.”

“Where is he now?”

He pointed. “Couple doors down the hall. He didn’t look so good.”

Setira’s heart beat in her ears, loud and distracting. Katorin called over it, “Major, may I look at the body? I suspect you’re not going to like this.”

The Major’s hard eyes studied her, but she waved Katorin forward.

Approaching, she studied the body from shoes to shoulder.

Behind her, Major Patrick shifted her attention. “Are you boys from Spokane?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Why aren’t the local boys here?”

It shouldn’t hurt to see Cube Head still and motionless, his boxy hair flat on the floor like a settled die, his slack eyes forever gazing at the wall. He was just another Kem, except…

“There weren’t too many to begin with, ma’am. One had to go help the girls next door, and the rest… Sergeant Rodriguez said the other two or three prisoners—I wasn’t clear on how many—were more of a concern than this one.”

Katorin reached out and touched the flabby pocket of skin to the left of his vassal’s spine, where Cube Head himself used to reside. “Major, this is only the vassal. The Kem must have moved into Rodriguez.”

“How?”

Donn answered before she could. “Kem learn how to switch vassals like we learn first aid and CPR.”

Katorin hadn’t realized that before. On Sais, switching vassals was first aid. “Let me help. I worked with him as a cover during my last assignment. I know him.”

Major Patrick nudged the clueless sentry down the hall. “Which room?”

“106.”

Exchanging nods with the Major as she passed, Katorin reached the room first. She tried not to mind the rising pistols behind her.

Three knocks, and she let herself in. Now was no time for cute nicknames. “Paul?”

Beyond a narrow passageway with opposing doors, a dim bedroom sheltered itself behind shades. Barely enough light leaked through to show her adjusting eyes a barrel of Earth’s weapon of choice pointing at her from the adjacent room.

She froze. It looked like a passage to room 105, but if so, the swarm of troops outside should stop him if he tried to leave. “Paul?”

“Beryl?” he whispered. The gun didn’t move. The new vassal’s voice was deeper and raspier. An hour ago, Paul would have been no threat, even with a gun, but the new vassal knew how to use it. “Don’t tell them. Please. You showed them, and now they’re going to want to kill me.”

Anyone who knows you wants to kill you. Slowly, she shifted her weight from foot to foot, getting him used to motion. “No, Paul. Remember when you thought I wanted you for information? That’s exactly what they want. If you keep talking to them, they’ll be happy you’re alive.”

Somewhat.

“But now, they think I’m dead, and they’ll leave me alone.”

As good as any time.

Katorin swiped the muzzle up and tackled him, shoulder to stomach. The gun fired. Something hot bounced into her hair. She should have bowled him into the ground, but he hit a hollow wall with a crack, leaving her short of the position she’d planned. Pinning his legs, she caught his arms before he repositioned and snapped his wrist back. The gun clattered free—but still close.

With one hand, she caught his unbroken wrist, and with the other, she pinched his actual body in the new vassal’s still-tender neck.

He froze.

“No one thinks you’re dead. Yet. And I’d rather not kill you when they want you alive.”

By night, cleaning robots scoured the daytime rooms in the Central Palace that were reserved for the Kemtewet fealty: audience chambers, conservatories, libraries, dining halls, and gardens. Vinnet happened across the first robot when transitioning from a desert garden room to a musical hall.

As the robot finished buffing its area, it spun in a circle, reorienting. Its laser guide swept across the floor, scanned past Vinnet and Maggie, then backtracked. It steadied on Sarah’s leg.

“Keep away from it,” Vinnet warned Maggie. Maybe she should have kept Anjedet’s sword.

You’re going to fight it? Let’s run!

We can’t outrun the whole network. They may be in the public areas, too.

The fixture maintenance arm rose from the robot’s pitted crest, looking for all the world like a three-fingered skeletal hand crafted out of knives. The arm canted forward, and the hand splayed. The robot jolted toward them, rolling faster than it looked like it should.

Vinnet picked up a nearby stringed instrument and held it like a bat. I courted a Gertewet who was on the design team for these.

The robot closed in. It leveled its gleaming hand at her face.

She backed around a large percussion instrument, luring it toward friendlier terrain: a decorative lip in the floor its wheels could barely handle.

Do something! Sarah insisted.

The robot dropped down the lip, and Vinnet swung.

The string instrument shattered on the top edge of the robot. As the articulated blades clawed into the remaining splinters, the robot tipped.

But not far enough.

Vinnet growled under her breath. Too weak! She swung again with the backbone of the instrument then jumped feet-first toward the dome and its grasping blades.

Both struck home.

She pushed the robot to topple up over the lip, but it caught her shin as she fell onto her back.

“Sarah!” Maggie screamed.

A wave of surprise and pain hit Vinnet from her stunned host. Ignore it! They didn’t have a choice; this robot wouldn’t stay immobilized forever.

She pushed herself to her feet as pain seared down her right shin and calf. It didn’t feel broken, and she’d certainly had worse cuts. We’ll be fine, Sarah. We must keep moving! She picked up the last couple feet of the dead instrument’s neck and crept toward the robot.

Even on its side, its articulated arm still quested about, seeking a stable enough hold on the floor to push itself upright. Batting its feeble grip aside, she reached toward the shaft at the base of the arm.

Are you asking for more?

Peace. After half a rotation of the shaft, the arm lost power. After two more twists, it came off in her hand. There: a weapon. She caught Maggie’s eye and nodded for her to follow. As she crossed to the far end of the practice hall, she dismantled the linkages in the robot arm; eventually, it would leave her with three knives and a telescoping pole.

“You’re bleeding,” Maggie whispered.

“We’ll be okay.”

“It’s leaving a trail. Stop.” Maggie caught up and crouched down to look at Sarah’s leg. She wrapped it in stiff, linen music sheets then slipped a hair tie over Sarah’s foot and into place around her shin. Dark curls from her unbound ponytail framed her face with pouf. “That will help.”

Vinnet nodded and urged her along. “Good thinking.” But unnecessary; she’d planned to let the Kemtewet’s other robots clean her trail.

They wound through a half-dozen other rooms and dispatched one more robot before arriving at Vinnet’s next checkpoint: the arena observation room, where they’d spent the afternoon.

“Here?” Maggie asked when the door closed behind them. “I stared around here for hours. There isn’t another way out.”

“Yet.” Vinnet drew two of the scavenged knives and left the other four tied into her shift. She headed for the window.

“I don’t think you’re going to break glass with those.”

“This isn’t glass; it’s sapphire. It’s much stronger.” Vinnet stopped next to the wide pane. On the far side, remnants of the execution still swarmed in the arena—stray flesh-eating beetles; scaled creatures munching them; and two large, black felines with matted manes. If they wanted to get through, they’d have to be fast and careful.

Vinnet stabbed between the base of the window and a vertical edge in the floor. She slid the knife along the seam.

“Then how are you going to get to the other side?” Maggie demanded.

Sarah’s thoughts echoed her.

“I have thought this through,” Vinnet answered them both. She sawed farther along the window’s base. “We have no good means of cracking sapphire.”

“If you’d gone back for one of the lasers…”

Vinnet furrowed Sarah’s brow at her. “What lasers?”

“On the droids.”

She had to wait for Sarah’s vocabulary to interpret “droids.” On the cleaning robots. She sawed harder at the seam. “Those didn’t have enough power to blind someone, let alone melt sapphire.”

“But if you focused it.”

“If you found a lens to focus it perfectly, it still wouldn’t output enough energy quickly enough to get us through.” She paused long enough to slide the second knife across the floor to Maggie. “Start on the other side.”

She’d gone another six feet when Sarah thought, You’re destroying the seal—then what?

Sealing is an ancillary function. This window is flush with the walls on the outside, and it covers a larger area than can be viewed from this side. She reached the corner and started sliding the knife down from the top. It was designed to withstand high forces—like an attacking animal—from the other side by overlapping the wall on that side. We’re destroying the mount.

“Can they find us in here?” Maggie had a quarter of the bottom left to go.

“Yes.” Not that Vinnet needed a reminder to hurry. If the Empress caught them… The star of the execution could easily have waited three years for his death, and she didn’t intend to follow in his footsteps. The last part of the side seal gave under her knife.

She pulled a drink table near the window to stand on, then stabbed into the top part of the seal and addressed both her host and Maggie. “When we get through, we will walk calmly toward the end of the arena to the right. Stay along the wall as long as you can stand, even though it will be easier to move toward the center of the arena than away.”

Maggie stabbed the seal on her side, then turned to watch Vinnet slicing across the window’s top. “What about the cats?”

“Try not to attract their attention.” Vinnet attacked the seal anew. That should be easy for Maggie with your blood already flowing.

Can we make it?

She and her past hosts had lived through worse, right? Vinnet tried to recall an example but didn’t want to spare the attention. Of course we can. Anything was possible, however problematic.

Let me do it.

Vinnet paused to consider. But I’m familiar with the animals and the technology.

And I’m familiar with my body. After four years of gymnastics, I know how to sprint. Or walk, like you said. I won’t wobble like you have today.

Vinnet eased Sarah’s fingers from the knife, ensuring it would stay lodged in the seal. She eyed the predators stalking each other on the far side of the sapphire. Synchronizing coordination in a new host did take time. If you’re certain…