Standing and watching the curls of Q-space writhe, absently petting the Derloen ghost that was winding around her arm and moving slowly back and forth, Niko found herself relaxing.
They had passed through the Gate. The glitch, the interjection of the annoying Jezli Farren and her enigmatic companion, was now past. They could get on with pressing matters. They could get on with finding Petalia. She took a deep breath and stepped back from the window.
“Captain,” the ship said.
Something about its tone made her go from her former somewhat relaxed state to high alert. There were implications in that tone, implications that the ship had done something that it was not entirely convinced she would approve of.
“What did you do?” she demanded.
There was a pause that was perceptible to even her human senses as the ship crunched through thousands of possible things to say, trying to figure out and evaluate her most likely reaction to each of them.
It said, finally, choosing at random, “Jezli Farren was a good conversationalist.”
“Did she tell you something that you want to ask me about?”
“No…”
“Then why are you telling me this?”
“I thought you would agree.”
Niko fingered the ridges of her eyebrow, trying to rub away the tension coiling there in promise of a headache. “And if I did agree with you that she was, what would you say then?”
“I would say that you would be happy!”
“And then you would tell me why you thought that I would be happy, perhaps?”
The ship paused, again considering so many possible options and uncertain at all of them. It finally decided on the direct approach.
“I would say that it is good she is aboard and can talk to you.”
That was not at all what Niko had expected. “She talked you into letting her stow away? With Roxana, I presume?”
“She didn’t talk me into anything,” the ship said, insulted at the implication that it was weak-willed and easily persuaded. “She mentioned it as a possibility, and I evaluated it and offered an invitation.”
“And you did this because…”
“This is my new hobby. It is an art form practiced by the Myaji, called hourisigah. It is the creation of dramatic changes in one’s life surroundings.”
“I see,” Niko said. “We’re going to have to talk about this new hobby later.” She was already in motion, already halfway out the door.
The ship’s voice accompanied her. “Where are you going?”
“To talk to Dabry,” she said through clenched teeth.
Dabry had been brewing tea. Gio had somehow managed to get two new aromatics at the last station, ones he’d never tried before, and he was wasting no time in experimenting with them.
The trick he’d learned was to wait till the bubbles were the size of a tree-spider’s eyes, but not let them get much larger than that. He poured the water over the fuzzy, pale lavender leaves at the bottoms of the two cups in front of him and leaned forward to sniff at each as he set the metal water-heating pot down.
He settled back to let each steep before he sniffed again. His uncle had taught him to make tea, and that was a pleasant memory. He was already thinking of a tea infusion based on that old flavor—mix that with a starch and a sweet and what would that be like? It would need a bit of crumbliness to it, and if you caramelized the edges … He abandoned himself to the happy reverie that so many of his recipes emerged in.
Footsteps along the corridor. He could tell the ship was making them ring just a little bit louder than they might have normally in order to give him some warning. That meant that, whatever the conversation was with Niko—and those were definitely her steps approaching in an authoritative staccato—it was something that the ship felt he needed to prepare himself for.
He eyed the cups of tea with regret, wondering how to keep them from oversteeping into the zone of an infusion. Before he could reach a decision, Niko was there.
“Has the Thing told you yet what it’s done?” she asked.
He said, “Something it’s done recently?”
“Something it did just before we passed through the Gate,” she growled.
He was worried, but it would do no one any good to show that. There were so many things that a bioship could choose to do. They were unpredictable, and you heard stories sometimes of them going very badly awry. He hadn’t pointed that out to Niko. She’d have heard the same stories; she would have felt the same worries tugging at her.
“It has smuggled Jezli Farren and her companion aboard, aiding and abetting their escape,” Niko said through gritted teeth.
Well, that was a shock and a surprise and an irritation and more than a trace of concern that the ship was acting so … independently lately.
But under that, a worm of amusement was wriggling in his gut at the expression on Niko’s face, and more than a bit of anticipation at watching her grapple with Jezli’s presence again. Something about the other woman set Niko off-balance in a way that Dabry totally approved of. It was good for Niko not to have her way in everything.
He said, therefore, “Ah, then I should probably make sure that the next meal is adjusted upward to accommodate two more people. I’ve noticed that Roxana consumes a good bit, but luckily, she seems remarkably unparticular in her tastes.”
Niko stared at him. “Your first thought is how we are going to feed them?”
He shrugged. “I have many thoughts, but food is always among them. I suspect you’re not about to jettison them into space, and you’re not the sort to starve people, so feeding them is a concern, yes. And we always have a meal after transit, to catch up.”
Niko huffed out impatience, but considered. “We might as well all talk over food,” she grumped. “But I refuse to reward them with special treats after they have stowed away. Make it minimal.”
Dabry murmured something agreeable and went off to assemble the meal without any consideration for what she’d said.
“Thing, bring them up to the meal chamber where we usually gather in a half hour,” she said. She was pleased to note the ship provided no commentary on the order.
Niko refused to eat from a table in whose middle two of the Derloen ghosts seemed to be coupling, or at least some activity that managed to combine spectral and lascivious all in one set of undulating motions.
“They can’t breed, can they?” she demanded of Lassite. “They’re ghosts.”
“It is rare but possible,” he said cautiously.
She pointed at the table. “Is that activity indicative that they are about to do so? If so, I would prefer that you move them to another area and give them—as well as us—more privacy. I do not believe that any of us needs to know the intricacies of ghostly lovemaking. At least anytime soon. Or that is my hope.”
Previously, when they had seen him interact with the ghosts, he had used the embroidered bag that had contained them, the one in which he had brought them aboard the ship. But he did not have it with him, and so he beckoned to the ghosts, which at first ignored him and continued nuzzling each other.
He beckoned again, the gesture larger and more expansive this time, and this time the ghosts looked at him, looked at each other, and then reluctantly, slowly, with a great deal more sliding against each other than might have been necessary, disentangled and made their way through the air toward him, coming to curl around his thin, scaly wrists. He wore his usual long black robe, and they moved in and out under the dark fabric as though it did not exist, gleaming and disappearing and gleaming again.
He murmured, “I will return in a moment,” and left the room, carrying the ghosts with him. The ship thought, with annoyance, that this was all a ridiculous pantomime, and that it didn’t understand why any of them bothered with it.
By the time Lassite returned, everyone had settled into their various seats. The addition of the new two people, particularly Roxana’s height and bulk, made the room feel more cramped than it had previously. She hunched in a corner, clearly trying to give everyone space, and had apologized to Niko for their presence when she had first entered the room.
Jezli sat beside her, legs crossed and hands looped around one knee, bright eyes moving from face to face as she observed everyone else in the room.
Niko regarded the varied array of pastries Dabry carried on a tray, then met his eyes with a look she tried to make piercing. It slid off him as easily as ever as he put the tray down and began passing out small square plates. Behind him, Minasit carried pitchers of hot caff and teas, and began pouring mugs for everyone.
Jezli pulled up a chair near the table and resettled herself in an even more relaxed slouch, long fingers wrapped around her mug, seeming unfazed by Niko’s anger.
“Why shouldn’t I throw you off my ship immediately?” Niko demanded of the pair. Atlanta’s eyes widened. She hadn’t been sure what the situation meant, but this seemed dire.
“Because I am told you are trying to avoid the clutches of Tubal Last,” Jezli said, opening her green eyes wide. “And I know a weapon that can thwart him.” She took a plate of pastries from Dabry, thanking him politely, and considered it.
“Why hasn’t he claimed it for himself yet?”
Jezli selected a pastry and held it in her long fingers, passing the plate back to Dabry. “For one, he doesn’t know of its existence. Roxana and I are the only ones who are aware of it, and we have no intention with dealing with someone who’s proven himself so treacherous. No sane dealer goes anywhere near him. For another, it’s someplace outside his reach.”
“Somewhere outside Tubal Last’s reach is surely outside of anyone else’s,” Dabry said.
Jezli looked smug. “Not out of mine.” She rewarded herself with a nibble of crust.
“Then where is this weapon and why don’t you have it yet?”
“I was on my way back to get it. It’s too dangerous for me to go alone, and moreover I needed something special to get in there in the first place.” She pointed with her free hand at Roxana. “I had to go collect her.”
Niko looked over at Roxana, who sat with her hands folded in her usual placid posture, her face mild and benign. “Because she’s strong.”
“Yes.”
“Robots and androids are strong.”
“Robots and androids are not paladins.”
“The paladin thing again.”
“Exactly,” Jezli said.
“But you’re not going to explain exactly how it works. You’re going to just sort of wave your hands and say woo-woo magic and we are supposed to believe it.” She rounded on Lassite as he opened his mouth. “Not a word.”
He closed his mouth. She turned back to Jezli. The rest of them watched in fascination. It was the first time seeing Niko in full temper for Atlanta and the Thing. The rest of them watched, knowing it for the rare occasion that it was. A smile tugged at the edge of Dabry’s lips, then flickered like a fish and vanished back under the surface as Niko turned on him.
“You see how ridiculous all … this is, don’t you?” She gestured at Jezli, who had taken advantage of the moment to stuff half the pastry in her mouth.
“She has shown some degree of control over Gate technology, Captain,” he said. “Hear her out, at least. Don’t discount something valuable because of the source.”
“That is hardly complimentary,” Jezli said through crumbs.
“It was not meant to be,” he told her, “but it is the truth.”
“All right,” Niko said. She fanned a hand through the air, gesturing at Jezli to continue. “Very well. Go on. Tell us now where this thing is that Tubal Last cannot get.”
Jezli said, “You understand that because of my profession, I often consult ancient texts and try to decipher them in order to find locations favored by the Forerunners. Sometimes I go after legends, artifacts that are spoken of, when I have found a particular location.”
“So you can go pillage them.”
“So I can relocate items to places where they may be studied. Or appreciated. Or both.”
“Places that pay well, perhaps?”
“One has expenses,” Jezli said, twitching a shoulder upward to convey nonchalance.
“What is this thing you would have us chase?”
“It’s called something that translates, roughly, as ‘Devil’s Gun,’” Jezli said. “A weapon that can be fired across galaxies at a specific target, which must be a person. No matter where they are, no matter how they have hidden themselves.”
“Why hasn’t something like that been taken up by some government or army?”
“Even if they knew of its existence, which took me a very long time to discover, it is kept in a very dangerous place, one that requires a paladin to enter.”
“Are you going to tell me what sort of hellhole planet you intend to drag us to?”
“Oh, not a planet,” Jezli said. “A space moth.”
Of the various artifacts left behind by the Forerunners, the most useful are the Gates, but the most mysterious are the space moths.
It is clear that they were once spaceships. Giant living creatures that moved between the stars, presumably using the same Gates that everyone else did. But in the here and now they were all dead, all simply remains, floating between the stars.
The ones near Gates had all been dismantled by now, but that had proven a hazardous business for anyone who engaged in it. Rumor held that a curse was laid upon each corpse, woven into the fabric of its bones and skin by those Forerunners, a curse of deadly wasting energies that settled upon any who disturbed the corpse of such a creature or attempted to profit by it in some way.
Nonetheless, many did—and still do, whenever a new wreck is discovered, as sometimes still happens, at the very edges of the Known Universe. The one that Jezli had discovered, or rather that her mentor had discovered years ago, lay in such a zone, protected by distance as well as a deadly asteroid belt.
“And protected lastly by a third phenomenon,” Jezli said. “The curse that is rumored lies particularly heavy on that vessel, so heavy that no one can walk unprotected aboard it and survive.”
“Then how can you hope to find anything aboard it?” Niko asked.
Jezli touched the heavy, odd necklace around her throat again. “My mentor discovered this elsewhere, in a Forerunner ruin.”
“And you stole it,” Niko observed.
Jezli raised an eyebrow. “How ready you are to presume the worst about me,” she said. “In truth, my mentor perished—in a quarrel over tenure at the university where they were employed—and I removed the artifact before it could be misused.”
Niko looked thoughtful. “And was another of the artifacts you removed something that allowed you to control the Gate?”
Jezli spread her hands in a helpless gesture that seemed to imply both yes and no. To Niko, that meant the former. She demanded, “What else did you abscond with? And why aren’t the real owners hard on your trail?”
“The real owner is the person who was originally aware of its existence, I’d say,” Jezli said. “If they are not aware that anything has been stolen from them, can you truly say that it has been stolen?”
“Yes?” Niko said. “The answer seems obvious to me.”
Jezli shrugged. “Apparently it is a case upon which we will have to agree to differ,” she said.
“Very well,” Niko said. “I will continue to agree with the laws of the Known Universe, however, which seems like an important clarification to me.”
Jezli shrugged again. “Those of us inclined to the philosophical like to argue such abstract and indefinable thoughts,” she said vaguely. Dabry was grinning outright.
Niko rolled her eyes. “We know nothing of moths, except that they are dangerous beyond all things,” she said.
Jezli said, “Roxana can testify that some go aboard a space moth and survive.”
“You survived a moth?” Niko said to Roxana. “How?”
“That is easy,” Lassite said, but he was frowning, as ever, in Jezli’s direction. “She is a paladin.”
“The safeguards inside the moths do not react to those shielded by my aura,” Roxana said.
“Why?”
“I believe because the paladins and the moths were created by the same beings.”
“Why don’t most people know this?”
“Have you ever met one of my kind before?” Roxana said curiously. “The Known Universe is large, and much less explored than its name predicts.”
Niko scowled ferociously at her. She was most perturbed by the fact that she liked the paladin. But there was something about Roxana that was rock-solid and reliable and somehow compelled one to trust her. Much as Niko had automatically not trusted her companion.
“She is offering to take you to the space moth so you can collect a weapon that you can use against Tubal Last,” Roxana said. “Do you accept that offer or not?” At Jezli’s noise of indignant protest, she shrugged. “Abstract and indefinable arguments tire me,” she said.
“You have no sense of theater,” Jezli said. She turned back to Niko and drew herself up a little taller. “I am offering to”—she swept a hand through the air with a flourish—“allow you to accompany me into the heart of the moth, where you will find you can pluck forth a weapon that will allow you to strike down Tubal Last.”
“Now you’re just being unnecessarily wordy,” Roxana said.
“Let me be precise, then,” Jezli said agreeably. “I know a way to get into the moth, and at its heart lies the weapon. You cannot get it unless you travel with a paladin—and that is why I have written a small monograph on the subject of my theory that the paladins themselves are an…”
“Wordy,” Roxana murmured.
Jezli cast her eyes upward but stopped detailing her monograph. “I did not publish it yet because—”
“Because no paladin wishes to pillage those ancient relics, as a rule,” Roxana said. “We hold them sacrosanct. But this is part of something else for me, and so I agreed.”
“Something else?” Niko questioned.
“Nothing of concern to you personally, Captain,” Roxana said. For the first time, there seemed the faintest edge of falseness to her words as her eyes went to Atlanta, as though unable to help looking in that direction.
Niko’s own eyes narrowed, but she did not press further.
After they had listened to all the details as explained by Jezli with a few interjections on the part of Roxana, Niko said to Dabry, “We need to confer.”
To Jezli and Roxana, she said, “The ship has prepared quarters for you already, no doubt. I will ask that you allow yourselves to be taken there. Additional food and drink will be brought to you, should you wish it, and you will perhaps take advantage of this quiet time to rest and refresh yourselves after all your adventures.”
When she and Dabry were alone in the lounge, she said to him, “It seems to me that it boils down to this: Do we trust her? Because it is just as possible that she is a trap set in our way by Tubal Last.”
“If so, he has been playing this game with much subtlety sifted into it for almost a decade,” Dabry said. “Remember that she and Gio first encountered each other years ago.”
“But he is a man capable of such plans,” she said. “We have seen him lay long-term traps before, like the book that was intended to bring me to the pirate haven.”
“But you did not come swiftly enough for his liking, and so he sent Lolola.”
Niko shook her head. “No, I think she came on her own. Remember, we never saw her again.”
“Either way, he likes to gloat. Likes to trick and think himself smarter than others. But he is not all that he sees himself to be.”
“Maybe.”
“To use a paladin as a pawn is something that I would not put past him, but I would put it past a paladin to allow themselves to be used in that way,” he said.
“Did you rehearse that or did it just come to you?” she asked, then waved a hand before he could answer. “I do not like or trust Jezli, but it also seems to me we should ride luck when it comes our way or we will never secure an advantage over Last. We are too far behind.”
“It is a desperate measure.”
She turned to him. “Think about it. If he stays alive and comes after us, it is only a matter of time before he catches up. A scavenger beetle cannot live in the air ducts forever. Sooner or later, it must come out.”
“Are you really comparing us to a scavenger beetle?”
“I am being serious.”
Her tone made him pause. Despair and resolution mingled in it. It was the attitude he had seen her take before when she thought that death was certain. She would press on despite it, but she would take no comfort in thinking there would be some respite on the other side.
That determined pessimism was what had drawn him to her in the first place. That pragmatic “the universe may screw me but I’m going to kick it in the teeth a few times before I go down” stance was something that had always resonated with him and kept him from apathy in the face of a similar despair.
He said, “Then we will go to the space moth with them?”
His tone made her pause in turn. She said, with suspicion, “You’re excited about this.”
“Think about it, Niko,” he said. “This is an adventure. This is something that we will remember all our lives. Another clue to the mysterious Forerunners!”
“If we make it out,” she grumbled.
He shrugged. “As you say, let us ride our luck.”