By now Hirianthial had woken in so many cells that he was utterly unsurprised to find himself in another, and this, somehow, made him want to laugh. Pushing himself upright, he assessed his condition: undamaged, other than a few desultory bruises and scrapes… novel, given his usual state in captivity. Unarmed, naturally. Not hungry or thirsty, so he hadn’t been here long. And surrounded in smooth metal with a halo field for a fourth wall, without so much as a bunk or a drain. An Alliance facility, then, and not meant for long term captivity. Through the floor he could feel… not a vibration or a hum, but something like to them, which suggested engines, and so a ship. Somehow, Soly and hers had run into an enemy ship.
Reese’s words came back to him, about their having to stop meeting in prisons, that cells didn’t suit him. He murmured agreement as if she could hear him, setting a palm on the wall and then passing it over the cool metal, uncertain what he was seeking but prodded to the act all the same—there. Bryer was on the other side of the wall.
How many customs did he contemplate breaking? And yet he did, and without regret or guilt. Why was that? Some memory—not his—of the mindtouch between welcoming souls not being hardship—Urise’s? He could almost hear the priest now: Must all touch be coercion?
He knew better. Hirianthial closed his eyes and reached. /Bryer./
A sense of assent, wordless.
/You’re hale?/
An affirmative.
/Do you know aught of where we are?/
Exasperation? Nothing so extreme. More like a feeling of friction in the Phoenix’s emotions, tagged with the thought that he was the only one capable of finding out, so why was he asking Bryer?
/I will return./ He withdrew from that contact and rose, pacing the cell. Sascha was on the other side, with someone unfamiliar… Narain? They had been put in the same cell? /Sascha./
A start of surprise so sudden it felt like a jab with a practice sword. Hirianthial touched his side where he’d taken one such hit too many and smiled a little. /Sascha, it’s Hirianthial./
/It is you! How… you… oh, don’t look over there—/
Over there were memories that involved Narain. /You don’t appear to be doing anything worthy of embarrassment,/ he commented, amused.
/We’re not now. We might have been before… you… wait, you’re talking to me./
/This does seem to be the only way to do so. Narain is with you? Does he know anything?/
/I’ll ask./
Hirianthial leaned a shoulder against the wall, eyes closed. Sascha’s mental presence felt furry to him, comfortable and blood-warm and a little tingly; he registered the latter on his tongue, like peppers, or mint, or champagne. Very different from Bryer, who had been cool and diffuse, like fog. He was still sorting the impressions when the tigraine returned.
/Um, can you hear me?/
/Here, arii./
/Right. Narain says we ran into… I don’t know if I believe this, but battlehells, here we are… a Fleet battlecruiser. A stolen Fleet battlecruiser, Dusted, in orbit above Ontine. And they scooped us up because, you know, battlecruiser./
/I don’t, actually?/
A hint of a different voice, very distant. Sascha said, /They’re about four times—ten times? Make up your mind, sweets—fine. The Fleet Intelligence ship holds fifteen people. This one has a crew of four hundred, usually. They’re way, way bigger than us./
/A Fleet battlecruiser,/ Hirianthial repeated. He frowned. /Does Narain know what pirates are doing with one?/
/He says there have been rumors that pirates were trying to get hold of Fleet ships, but not that any of them had succeeded./
/Well, now they know./ Hirianthial looked out into the hall. /Four hundred people, he says./
Another pause. /He says there might not be four hundred pirates. That you can drive this ship with twenty-five people and fight it with fifty. You just get into big trouble if someone actually hits back./
A different voice now, thin and distant and also, somehow furry… but lusher and cooler than Sascha’s, and overlaying a mind of astonishing clarity and depth. /Most of a cruiser’s complement is redundancy, and science-based./
/Narain,/ Hirianthial said.
/At your service, alet./
Sascha now. /Can you tell how many people are on this ship? I mean… can you… feel it?/ A hint of embarrassment, as if he felt guilt for asking.
Could he? He drew in a breath and reached—
—and found himself on the floor and did not remember sitting so abruptly. His tailbone hurt. /Only vaguely,/ he answered when he was sure of himself. He recalled the ballroom at the opening of the court and the way that group of over three hundred had felt to him, their weight, their presence. /There are not four hundred, though. Or if there are, they are dispersed./
Narain again, with that cool swiftness of thought. /If we can get to a computer, we can find out. But someone’s got to let us out first./
/I had noted the lack of guards at the door…?/ Hirianthial glanced again at the halo field barring his exit.
/Fleet doesn’t post them. There will be a station at the end of the hall, and that’ll be the only exit. The person there will have surveillance on all the occupied cells and can control their disposition./
A person in a station. That he could do. Hirianthial sought the flicker of an unfamiliar mind, passing Solysyrril and her people until he sensed the enemy. And… then what? If he put the man to sleep, or killed him, they would not be freed. Does everyone need killing? A good question. Not relevant, however. He hovered over the ugly tent of the pirate’s mind. Not greasy, the way the Rekesh of Keryale’s had been, nor cold and stark like Surapinet’s, the drug lord. A man with an unexamined mind, thoughts edged with occasional cruelty and a great deal of boredom. Just a man.
Ask him for help, came the voice from memory.
Help! A pirate!
Killing is a far greater intimacy, but you court that quickly enough, my son.
Hirianthial half-opened his eyes, lost the sense of the distant mind and made an irritated noise. Urise had said nothing about his teaching surfacing in the form of phantom conversations, but then again… would he have? He could well imagine the priest’s amusement. You would not have believed me.
No, he admitted, he wouldn’t have. He closed his eyes and concentrated, and this time… he asked for help. Slipped into the unfamiliar mind and was polite. Turn off the force-fields, he suggested. There is no one there to guard. Nothing on those monitors you see. No reason to keep them up.
The pirate resisted him, not because he felt attacked, but because he was puzzled by this contradiction between his thoughts and reality. Hirianthial leaned on him, made the reality he was crafting more real than the one the pirate was living… succeeded.
The halo fields died as he opened his eyes, just enough to watch. Then he sank back into the trance and suggested the helpful pirate sleep. A great deal. And soared free of the claustrophobic smallness of the man’s mind as it passed out of consciousness.
He was once again sitting. And now very hungry, in a way that also made him aware that he wasn’t quite healed yet from Baniel’s attentions. His ribs ached, and he passed a hand over them once, sighing. And then he smiled, imagining Reese’s reaction. ‘Fine, you opened your own cell this time, but you haven’t rescued yourself yet.’ “At work on it, my Lady,” he murmured, and then Sascha peeked in.
“You did it!”
“I did. Where is your roommate?”
“He went to get the others. They’re all heading straight for that station so they can mess with the computers.” Sascha padded in and crouched in front of him, tail curled behind him for balance. “You look a little peaked.”
“I have been better,” Hirianthial admitted, and then smiled. “You have seen me worse, though.”
“I have!” Sascha’s brows lifted. His expression matched his aura, not awed, but something like. And glad, too, strangely. “And… you think this is funny?”
“Funny…” He trailed off, then shook his head, hair brushing his neck. “No, that would be pressing the matter. But I am…” What was he? Not amused. Not buoyant. Not pleased. A little of all of those things, but they were expressions of a single feeling. “I am done with cells, arii. And I am done with letting other people put me in them. And for some reason, this strikes me as something to celebrate.”
“That you’re through being a victim?” Sascha grinned like sunrise. “Okay, sure. I see that. Hells, I’m glad to see it. Do you need help getting up?”
“Let me try first.” He pushed himself up and paused, assessing himself. Tired, hungry and sore, but serviceable. He needed Urise’s trick of not needing to eat or rest to power these abilities, but the memories associated with that knowledge overwhelmed him, thousands over thousands of them, confusing and vast. It would have to wait. “I appear to be steady. Let us go to our allies.”
“Right.” Sascha paused, then added, “Ah, if we die before the day’s over—”
“We shan’t.”
Sascha cleared his throat, one ear sagging. “Right. But just in case we do, can I just say.… “
Hirianthial waited.
“…you can pet my mind anytime.”
“Sascha!”
The tigraine snickered. “Now I feel better. Come on, it’s down this way.”
Shaking his head to hide the smile, Hirianthial followed, and Kis’eh’t’s temple bell sang at the end of the hair-dangle.
Bryer was standing outside the guard station’s door, watching the corridor, and all the Fleet people were indeed inside, crushed together over a single console as Narain manipulated it. When he and Sascha entered, Tomas said, “That mind-reading thing is a lot more handy than you suggested it might be, Lord Hirianthial.”
“I am never sure how much it is capable of,” Hirianthial demurred. “So I thought it best not to overstate the ability.”
“As long as the surprises keep being good, you just keep on keeping on.”
“We can certainly use some good surprises,” Soly muttered, her tail flicking behind her in agitation.
“Is this a bad surprise, then?”
Soly looked up at him; she was leaning over Narain’s shoulder with one small hand on the console, and he had never seen her look so grim—or was that her aura he read? “Alet, these pirates have a Fleet battlecruiser.”
“So Narain told me. I presume this is not a vessel easily captured.”
“Easily—” She choked on the rest of the words, her ears slicked back. “No. No, it’s not, and Fleet keeps very careful tabs on all its ships. Particularly its capital ships. We’ve had evidence that the pirates were trying to capture something, but the only battlecruisers lost have been on the border with the Empire. Fighting them, not fighting pirates.”
“Ostensibly,” Hirianthial guessed.
“Ostensibly. It’s not a secret that the Empire’s been encouraging pirate activity on the border, but if they’re looking the other way while lawless men are stealing Fleet ships of this size… or even encouraging them.…”
“They want to split your attentions, no doubt.”
Soly sighed. “No doubt. Yes. But we have got to live through this, alet, because someone has to know.”
“Looks like we’ve got just over a hundred people aboard,” Narain interrupted. “Eighty of them are in engineering. Fifteen up on the bridge… the rest of them are moving around.”
“One hundred and eight?” Tomas said, squinting over the tigraine’s other shoulder.
“One hundred and eight to nine,” Sascha said. “That’s… uh… “
“Long odds,” Tomas said.
“Yeah.”
A pause as Narain worked the console, scowling at it, and everyone else frowned at one another.
“So what do we do?” Sascha asked finally. “Find the nearest Pad and escape?”
“If we do that, we’re leaving a manned floating fortress in orbit above the planet,” Soly said, tense. “A Dusted one. The scout that’s due here will show up and die: or worse, get captured itself. Plus, anything we do on the planet will be useless if they have this much backup available.”
“Can this thing go atmospheric?” Sascha asked.
“No. It doesn’t have to. Its weapons will.”
Another ugly pause.
“The only thing for it, then, is to take the ship,” Hirianthial said.
“Us. Against a hundred and eight pirates?” Sascha eyed him skeptically.
“Could be done,” Narain muttered. “Maybe.”
“It’s that group in Engineering I’m worried about,” Soly said. “We could take the bridge and lock them out of the computer, but if they’re physically there they can kill the power themselves.”
“Likely result in their deaths,” Bryer said from the door.
“They’re not going to kill themselves just to get to us.” Tomas nodded to the Phoenix. “He’s right on that. They can work past the computer lockout from Engineering, but it would take time.”
Softly, Lune said, “They have tools there. And suits.” When everyone glanced at her, she said, “They can walk on the hull, to reach the bridge. The tools are meant for such work. They could breach.”
“Hells,” Soly said. “What a mess.”
“What about our ship? It looks like it’s in one of the landing bays.” Narain brought up a diagnostic. “Not damaged either, beyond a few surface dings. Maybe we could haul it out of the ship and keep an eye out for walkers?”
“And what if they have a Pad in Engineering? They often do.” Soly frowned, tapping her fingers on the console.
“That clot in Engineering’s going to be trouble,” Tomas said. “This ship’s got guided entropy packets. I say we secure the bridge and then take out Engineering.”
Hirianthial had expected an electric silence in response to that comment, but instead Narain frowned. “Unless we’re careful, or lucky, or both, that’s going to kill the power to the ship. We won’t be able to use it.”
“No, but neither will they.”
Hirianthial said, “There is no way to render them unconscious?”
Soly shook her head. “Like gas them? The ship’s not set up for that. There’s no way to block the ventilation. Any sort of dangerous chemical leak like that is taken care of with a vacuum system: it sucks air out, it doesn’t trap it in place.”
Tomas said, “If it’s one hundred and eight to nine, we don’t have a lot of choices. We absolutely can’t leave this thing operational up here, and we can’t get a message out without alerting them—that’s game over for us, and not much better for Fleet, given how few ships they’ve got to send out this way. We either have to destroy a part of this ship, or destroy the whole thing, and I’d rather live.”
“Hard to argue that,” Narain muttered.
“Show me Engineering,” Hirianthial said, suddenly. “Is it a single room?”
Narain looked up, surprised, but Soly waved an encouraging hand at him. The pardine brought up a schematic, floating it over the console. “It’s got a lot of compartments, but the actual power plant needs a lot of room, so it’s got a big space in the center.”
That it did, though the power plant occupied the prominent central space. And yet… surely that would be close enough. His power seemed to flow outward in a circular radius—was it spherical? He shifted the schematic with his hand and saw that the compartment was several levels tall. The whispers in his mind gave no report on whether he could extend his influence upward as well as outward. He had to imagine he could—costs more—but yes, that it would be more effort. He closed his eyes, paying closer attention to the hissing memories he could sense but not experience. Was there a flaw in this plan? You will not be able to pay for it easily. Everything had a price. If he managed even twenty of the eighty, that was something, wasn’t it? But not enough.
“Lord Hirianthial?” Soly asked, cautious.
“If we could take Engineering, that would be a goodness,” he guessed.
“A lot better than gutting it, yes. If we could keep the ship intact then we’ll have one more to use against the ones your escaped pirate might be bringing back as reinforcements. We might not have enough people to fight this ship well, but the armament on it is overkill against the typical pirate.”
“Unless, of course, they’re bringing more battlecruisers,” Tomas said, quiet.
“Not something we can control,” Soly said. “But we can foresee it, yes. And having this one if they do will help. Especially if we can trick them into thinking we’re one of theirs for long enough to get them to turn their back on us.”
Sascha, who was watching Hirianthial, said, “You’re thinking of doing it on purpose, aren’t you.”
“Shouldn’t I?”
“Doing what on purpose?” Soly asked, ears switching forward.
Ignoring them, Sascha said, “I dunno, Boss. To hear Reese tell it, it lays you out flat.”
Jasper spoke for the first time. “There is a Medplex in this vessel. A significant one.”
Hirianthial glanced at him.
“I’m qualified to use it.”
“And you’re going to need it why?” Soly asked.
He told them.
To their credit, the Fleet personnel recovered more quickly than he anticipated. Tomas spoke first. “Sounds like it would be easier to take them on in smaller groups. That might work out better, actually, if you sneak in and take down a handful at a time.”
“Until you get to the main compartment,” Narain said, frowning.
“Not necessary,” Lune offered. “If all the groups are taken care of first. This sounds like less strain for the God’s gift.”
Hirianthial glanced at her sharply, but Soly was already nodding. “I can see that. I don’t like it, but I can see it.” She folded her arms, tapping her fingers on her upper arm. “All right. Here’s the plan. We’re going to head to the bridge with the intention of taking it. We’ll stop on the way at one of the upper level Pad stations to send Lord Hirianthial to Engineering. Narain, you go with him. I want you to do sensor duty. Find clots of people in Engineering and guide him to them. As much as possible, take care of the small groups first. If Lune’s right and that saves him from over-taxing himself, so much the better. If it turns out it doesn’t work that way, then at least you’ll have winnowed them down before you need to get out.” She studied their group. “I’m assuming your people want to stay with you, alet? So you three are together, and Narain. Lune, Tomas, Jasper and I will take and hold the bridge. You give us updates as you can. If things go bad, get out and we’ll lock the compartment down.”
“Splitting up is a good idea?” Sascha asked, hesitant.
“We can’t do this otherwise. If Engineering finds out we’ve locked them down before you’re done down there, you really are done. And if you fumble Engineering, they’re going to fortify the bridge against us.” Soly shook her head. “No, we’re going to have to do it at the same time, as much as possible. We all clear?”
When no one objected, she said. “Good. Let’s go raid an armory.”
There was surprisingly little chaos in the woods near Ontine where the former hostages were filing over the Pad on their way to Reese’s castle. Beronaeth was overseeing the operation alongside Malia and Taylor, who’d brought the Pad in accordance with the plan; they hadn’t wanted to risk losing it to the enemy by bringing it into Ontine, and definitely didn’t want Surela’s guards to know they’d used it to whisk the hostages away once they’d been smuggled out by the servants. Olthemiel and Belinor had stayed behind to point the hostages in the proper direction and clean up the evidence of their passage.
It was all going very well… except Reese wasn’t back yet.
“Where is she?” Irine paced, shoulders hunched and arms tucked close against the cold.
“She’ll be by, alet,” Malia said. “Give her time.”
“She and Val have been in there a long time already. We’re almost all back by now! How long can it possibly take to kill one person?”
“They might have needed to wait until the halls were clear to make their way to him.” The Tam-illee sounded unperturbed. “The priest was further into the palace than the hostages, Irine… no convenient windows or anything. Give them time. Trust them.”
Irine eyed her. “You wouldn’t say anything like that if you knew the things we’ve been through in the past year or so. Pirates, slavers, drug lords, firefights in space, firefights on the ground, firefights in palaces, broken arms, broken insteps, dead aliens…”
Malia’s ears sagged.
“I’m not exaggerating any of it.” Irine chafed her arms. “If we’re working up to this as a finale, then I think I have the right to be nervous.”
“It will be well,” Beronaeth said from his position alongside the Pad. “Everything has gone as planned thus far. You and the Captain killed the enemy aliens—”
“And he’s still back there too, and Belinor,” Irine said. “How long can it possibly take to get all the hostages out?”
“It takes the time it takes,” Beronaeth said. “Surela has few guards. They can’t be everywhere.”
But the night wore on, and the flood of hostages slowed to a trickle, until one of them said, “They caught us at the last. The seal-bearer remained behind and sent us on; we are your last group.”
Beronaeth was stiff. “And the Queen’s White Sword? And the acolyte accompanying him?”
“Still in Ontine, as far as I know.”
“Go on through, please.”
“Is that it?” Irine hissed once the last of the hostages had passed over the Pad. “Your captain’s missing, so’s mine, along with both our priests—” She remembered Val’s mouth forming a smile against her lips as they kissed. “They’re just… missing in action, and that’s fine?”
“Of course it’s not fine,” Malia said. “But we can’t charge in there after them.”
“Then what can we do?”
Beronaeth looked troubled. “We cannot go back in now. They would be expecting us.”
“But we can go back in at some point, right? And rescue them?” Irine looked from him to Malia, agitated. “Well? We rescued some of the hostages. But we can’t let them keep Reese! Do you know what Hirianthial will do if he comes back and finds her dead? You think Corel was bad the first time around? You just wait until you see Hirianthial mad. He set fire to a slaver’s house, and that was before he was a mind-mage. There’s not going to be anything left of that palace!”
Malia rubbed her knees, causing the data tablet on her lap to shift. “Irine, we haven’t heard anything from the Farthest Wing in a while. That means we’ve lost our window. The pirates are probably back.”
“Probably?”
“I can’t see anything in orbit without help from the outpost, and it’s not responding.” The Tam-illee grimaced. “Look, we don’t know who’s out there, what kind of sensors they’ve got, whether they can find us or not. We have to play this carefully—”
“We don’t have time!” Irine glanced at Beronaeth. “Well?”
“It would be a significant risk to return to the palace now,” he said. “Without intelligence, we have no idea how things fare inside, and this is a different situation now than the one we built our plan upon. We knew then how many men the usurper queen had, and how many pirates. Now we know neither of those things, nor the disposition of our people.”
“And how are we going to get that intelligence if we don’t go look?”
“We will have that intelligence,” the Sword said firmly, his accent growing heavier. She hoped that meant he was finally as agitated as she was. “But we must choose our methods with care. And right now, what we needs must do is retreat. They’ll be looking for us, and we must give them no clues as to where we have gone.”
Irine helped the Tams with the comm equipment, though the rolled-up Pad went to one of Beronaeth’s aides. There weren’t many of them left to head back through the woods toward their original campsite, but each of them had been given a different route to take, and instructions for the clueless, like her, on how to minimize her tracks in the snow, or erase them with fallen branches from evergreens. She had her own trail, and her own frond, and as the faint sounds of her compatriots faded into the trees, she glanced over her shoulder at Ontine.
Soldiers were expensive in a culture with little food. Malia had explained it; how there wasn’t an army on this world, because people who did nothing but learn how to fight well had to be fed and maintained by people who farmed and hunted and gathered, and there just wasn’t enough food to go around. Surela had been able to draw her own levy to Ontine, and perhaps that of her allies, but it didn’t amount to a lot of soldiers. And most of them had to be somewhere south of here, playing at war with Jisiensire.
Irine glanced at the trail she was supposed to follow… and turned her back on it. Hell if she’d let Reese die there alone. Or Val. A man shouldn’t die after only having had one kiss.
The cell they’d thrown Reese into had absolutely no furniture, no windows, and only one door, which meant (to her startlement) that when that door shut it was too dark to see. And it was made of stone and damned cold, and she couldn’t help the feeling that she’d been imprisoned in a closet. Weren’t cells supposed to have drains? Or places to chain people up? There should be bars, too, so that her keepers could torment her with verbal abuse. And there should be Blood-damned light so she could see it all and figure out how to use all the bits and pieces to come up with a plan to get out. That’s how it was supposed to go. It would have been easier than being shoved in a room alone with no idea who was out there or what they were going to do with her. It gave her no distraction from the catastrophe that got her put here in the first place, and from her fears for Irine and the others.
And Val—Reese paced, tried to control her breathing. He’d died so quickly…! She’d been staring into his eyes when the light had gone out of them.
What had gone wrong? Baniel shouldn’t have been able to control them the way he had. Val had been expecting some power, though Reese had never seen Hirianthial’s brother using it, but that much?
She couldn’t imagine Val making that big a mistake. He didn’t seem the mistake-making kind.
And now… now she was stuck here until someone opened that door and gave her the chance to escape. She absolutely had to escape because the alternative—letting Hirianthial walk into a trap to rescue her—was unthinkable.
Reese had thought she’d had some sense of what it felt to need rescue the way she’d always accused Hirianthial of needing. When Baniel had dragged her off the Ontine balcony, she’d found the powerlessness infuriating and the realization that she’d done exactly what he wanted her to even worse. But she’d never been in a cell before, at least, not by herself. She looked up at the ceiling, wishing she could see it, and shivered.
It wasn’t until she sat down and scooted backward, hoping to set her back against a wall, that she felt the stickiness on the floor. Visceral memories assailed her—the heat of her own tears, the puddle under his head, the light spilling from the door at exactly that angle—
Baniel had thrown her into the cell he’d put Hirianthial.
Reese dropped her head on her knees and didn’t cry. But she did start shaking, and once she started it took a long time for her to stop.
How long she spent in the dark, fighting with her own terror, she didn’t know, but it was long enough that when the door finally did open, her cold-stiffened joints dumped her to the floor on her first attempt to lunge for the exit. Her second attempt brought her to the door where the guard smashed her down.
No one said a word. They just dropped a body in the room with her, and left a candle: no candle-holder, just the wax pillar, as thin around as her littlest finger. She couldn’t imagine it lasting long. The door shut on her and the newest inhabitant of her domain, and she stepped closer to see what unfortunate had joined her.
“You!”
Surela looked up and scrambled back until she reached a corner.
Reese stared at her, shocked… for all of a heartbeat, before anger in all its welcome familiarity crested and swept all the other emotions away. “You! You’re responsible for all this!”
Before Reese could work toward the fullness of her tirade, Surela surprised her by saying in accented but competent Universal, “I am. And here I reap the harvest of my error.”
“What?”
“And an error I have made. Does it please you to hear it, human?” Surela looked up at her with remorse that also seemed resentful. Reese congratulated her for pulling that combination off.
“My name isn’t ‘human,’” Reese said finally.
“I thought it would be kinder than ‘mortal.’”
“It’s not,” Reese said. “But at least it’s not a lie you’re telling yourself.”
Surela began to speak, then looked away. Bleakly, she said, “No. We are as mortal as you. And I will discover that soon enough.”
“What are you doing here, anyway?” Reese asked, folding her arms over her chest. “Did Baniel get bored of you? Decide he wanted the throne himself?”
“No,” Surela said. “I tried to arrest him, and he decided to take issue with it.”
Reese paused. “Wait. You? Decided to arrest him? Didn’t he put you in power?”
“He did, yes.” Surela shifted, then settled and began spreading her skirts around herself and neatening the folds. Her hands were trembling; Reese wasn’t glad to have noticed it, and the fear it betrayed. “But I discovered he was plotting to replace me with Athanesin who, I suppose, is more amenable to mortal technology and mortal ideas. Baniel also apparently intended to sell us all into mortal slavery. Though how he thinks Athanesin will agree to that, I have no notion.”
“Unless your Athanesin is more depraved than you thought, I doubt he will and I doubt Baniel cares,” Reese said, watching Surela warily. “This is a man who conspired to have his own brother given to Chatcaavan slavers.”
Surela shuddered. “His brother was a mind-mage.”
“He’s a man.” Reese welcomed the anger back. “A man worth a thousand of you.”
“He can kill people from a distance, without touch!”
“You killed actual people, and none of them were attacking you!”
That made Surela sway, touch her hands to her face. Surprised by the strength of the other woman’s reaction, Reese finished, a little less aggressively, “So tell me which of you is the real murderer.”
Surela turned into the wall and said nothing.
Reese sighed and retreated, sitting in her own corner. If the situation hadn’t been so harrowing, it would almost have been funny, ending up trapped in a room with the author of all this mess. Though she guessed she had to be fair. It was Baniel who was pulling all the strings. Surela was just one more tool, and she hadn’t known it until he’d tossed her in here with one of the ‘mortals’ Surela found so revolting. The mighty did fall, after all, and how they fell when they did.
After what felt like hours, Surela said, “I did not mean for any of this to happen.”
Reese discarded several possible responses to that, most of them bitter or cruel. What she chose instead was, “Don’t you people say that how you begin a thing dictates how it ends? So how are you surprised that something you started with betrayal ends with it?”
Surela looked up from her folded arms, eyes wide.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t think of that.”
“I….”
Reese sighed and hugged her knees. “Let me guess. The rules apply to everyone but the righteous.”
Surela was silent. Then said, low, “You have a tongue like a whip.”
“Yeah. I’ve been told.” She thought of Hirianthial and the twins and tried not to notice the prickle in her eyes. She’d see them again. She had to.
Surela wasn’t done. “I regret putting us in this situation.”
“Do you really?”
“As much as I regret admitting it to a human.”
That… she laughed. She didn’t expect to. “Yes. I bet you do.”
“Do you know… what they plan…?”
“For us?” Reese shrugged. “Your guess is better than mine; you were the one out there most recently.”
“So they have not come for you.”
“No.” Reese thought of Baniel’s words and shivered. “No, I think they’re going to keep me here until all this is resolved, either way.”
Surela glanced at her sharply. “You know something…?”
Reese said, “Even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. Being cellmates with you doesn’t make you my ally, Eldritch.” At Surela’s flinch, she said, “Doesn’t feel any better from the other end, does it.”
“I….”
When the other woman trailed off, Reese said, “But we can agree to try to fight our way out if they open the door again, can’t we?”
Shoulders tightening, Surela said, “Yes.”
“Good. That’s one thing, then. But I’ll make this clear now: when Liolesa gets back and beheads you, or whatever barbaric thing you people do here to execute criminals, I’m going to be in the front row. For what you did to Hirianthial, and to her, and most of all this world.”
“What do you care what happens to this world?” Surela muttered.
“If you think I want to see anyone given over to slavers….” Reese shook her head. “Maybe you can afford to live in your little bubble where terrible things happen to other people and that’s not your business. The rest of us don’t work that way. We’re a community. We protect one another from people who prey on us. We’ve got one another’s backs. Because anything else leaves us all easy pickings for pirates and murderers and criminals.”
“So you do this out of selfishness,” Surela said.
“We do it because we’ve seen what’s left of the people taken by slavers,” Reese replied, voice hard. “And we wouldn’t wish it on anyone. And that includes terminally stupid, stuck up bigots like you and all your people, and by that I mean your people, Surela. Because people like Liolesa and Araelis aren’t stupid enough to think the slavers are going to come for only their enemies. They’ve spent their lives defending you along with all the more worthy and grateful people, because they knew that they couldn’t keep half the world safe. It’s everyone or no one.”
“It was never my plan to involve aliens,” Surela whispered.
“Except as tools to your own end,” Reese said. “Even now, you’re trying to talk yourself into believing in a universe where you had some noble reason for what you did. Just admit it, Surela. You were selfish and willfully ignorant, and you brought the doom the Eldritch have been trying to hold off for centuries before you were even born right on their heads. You invited it in the bleeding door! And here you are in a cell for it. Did you really expect any differently?” Reese hugged herself against the cold and rubbed her running nose against her shoulder.
“All I wanted for us,” Surela said, voice trembling, “was for us to be left alone.”
“And I’m sure you expected to be, because you are born to wealth and privilege and it never occurred to you that being left alone is something only the powerful can have, because it takes power to defend yourself against all the people who want a piece of you, no matter how trivial that piece. The rest of us know that freedom has to be paid for in fresh blood, eternally, over and over.” Her anger ran out, left her feeling hollow and tired. “I just wish you’d known that before you started all this… but I guess everyone has to learn that the hard way.”
Surela said nothing for so long Reese assumed their conversation was over. She was glad; her sides ached as if she’d run a race, and she felt heartsore, and she missed her crew terribly. Allacazam would have been a great comfort right about now. Hirianthial, she was sorry to admit, even more so.
But Surela did speak. “Tongue like a whip.”
“You’d better hope that’s the sharpest thing you get hit with. I wouldn’t get your hopes up though.” Reese thought of Hirianthial. “I’ve seen what pirates like to do with Eldritch.”
Surela shuddered. “I know,” she whispered. At Reese’s sharp glance, the woman finished, “I saw what they did to my liege-woman.”
There seemed no good answer to that, so Reese said nothing.