As Aron was preparing to leave Erebos, strapping his precious hoard of Meldrae securely into the back seat of the red craft while the Nairene pilot impatiently drummed her fingers on the control panel, there was a flurry of action on the landing pad.
“Wait, wait!” called a voice.
Aron turned to see Ani’s gentle handmaiden running toward him, her red robes flapping like ragged wings. He couldn’t remember her name. She was a meek and retiring creature—kindly and polite enough, but she’d never said more than a few words to him, and was not the sort to make any lasting impression.
“Yes, er . . . ?” he said.
“Lista. I’m Lista,” she said, before adding “Sir!” as an afterthought.
“What can I do for you, Lista?”
“I’m coming with you,” she said, nodding emphatically.
“What? Why?” said Aron, but already Lista was clambering in through the rear door of the vessel, pushing his valuable cargo out of her way as she settled in. Clearly he had misjudged her.
“Because the Archmage said I must,” she replied once she’d made herself at home. “I’m to stay in the craft and you’re to bring me to Steven Kerr.”
“Oh, I am, am I?” said Aron. “Why did the Archmage not inform me of this herself?”
On receiving the revelation about Steven Kerr, Ani had seemed genuinely shaken. Their meeting had ended rather quickly after that, for she was clearly bewildered by his news, and she’d asked to be excused so that she could lie down. Of course, it had been more an instruction than a request, but he’d obliged anyway, and watched curiously as she left the room, Lista trotting anxiously behind her. Now this same Lista was staring at him in a manner that suggested any arguments about her presence would be most unwelcome.
“The Archmage only just decided,” she said. “She’s resting at the moment. You’re not going to make me fetch her, are you?”
“How do I know she sent you, though? You may mean the Kerr boy some harm. I can’t go trusting every Nairene that comes running along, making demands.”
Lista sighed. Out of the corner of his eye Aron was sure he saw the pilot, Sessily, grinning, but she turned her head away when he looked directly at her, concealing her expression from him.
“The Archmage anticipated you might say as much. She said you’d know I was genuinely sent by her if I told you the following: Nemo me impune lacessit. It means—”
“I know what it means,” said Aron. “ ‘No one who harms me will go unpunished.’ I suspect the Archmage should have it printed on her business cards.”
Aron still didn’t assent to Lista’s presence on the flight. This was a complicated business. The usual procedure was for the Nairene ship carrying Aron to rendezvous with a Military cruiser, returning him to his own kind before heading back through the wormhole. This was done for the protection of all: Aron might have trusted Ani, but he still believed that it was better if the Archmage knew as little about the Military’s operations as possible, and that included denying her and any of her Sisters access to Military vessels, for Military vessels contained Military secrets. Some of his superiors would press to have Aron thrown out of an airlock if it was found that he had allowed a Nairene access to any part of the fleet.
Aron stared at Lista. She continued to stare back at him. It struck him that she looked trustworthy, although he had no idea where he might have gotten that impression. Yes, said a voice in his head that sounded like an echo of his own, it might be a good idea to take her to see Steven Kerr after all. But just in case, maybe he could have her instruct Sessily to disable all controls once they had boosted through the wormhole, so that their ship would be entirely in the hands of the Military, and he could be certain that it was not engaged in any form of surveillance. It would make him feel better.
“All right,” said Aron. “You can come, but you’ll instruct Sessily to hand over control of this ship to my cruiser as soon as we leave the wormhole.”
“If it makes you feel better,” said Lista, which was odd, because that’s just what he’d been thinking . . .
Aron was starting to feel highly confused.
“Right,” he said.
With that, Lista turned to the pilot, who had made no protest during any of this.
“Let’s fly, Sessily,” she instructed.
“Yes, ma’am,” said the pilot.
Aron buckled himself in, still perplexed. He really had underestimated this Lista—she was obviously a force to be reckoned with.
But later, as Lista gagged and vomited repeatedly as they bumped and rocked their way through the nasty little wormhole, Aron couldn’t help feeling a little pleasure at her discomfort.
• • •
Once they had completed the boost, a large, battered-looking cruiser came into view. All identifying marks had been removed from its matte-black bodywork, and it floated menacingly like a shark in empty dark waters. As they approached, a bay opened beneath the bow of the cruiser, and their red ship was consumed by it. Perhaps it wasn’t a shark so much as a whale, drinking in a cloud of red plankton.
Lista looked up from her sick bag.
“Thank heavens,” she said, and again Aron felt that odd bafflement, for he only ever heard that expression from humans, or those Illyri who’d spent time on Earth. The handmaiden must have picked it up from the Archmage.
Docking locks secured the Nairene vessel, and the all clear sounded as the bay doors closed.
“Steven should be waiting in the control room,” Aron told Lista. She wiped her mouth, looking distinctly pale.
“You can come inside if you wish,” urged Aron, “and freshen up.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You can hardly have me running around inside a Military cruiser, can you? Just send Steven to me and I’ll let him know what Ani says,” replied Lista, then, remembering her manners, she added a reluctant “please.”
She really was quite above herself, Aron decided as he left the craft. He glanced back just before the door closed: Lista was looking at her reflection in the shiny glass of the shuttle, smoothing her hair with her hands like a teenager awaiting the arrival of her date. For a moment, she reminded him a little of Ani.
• • •
When Aron returned with Steven Kerr, Sessily was waiting outside the shuttle, leaning against her craft like an outsized teenager spoiling for a fight. A scattering of human men gathered on the edges of the bay stared at her, and she glared back, her hand hovering near a pulser strapped to her waist.
“It’s okay,” said the Earth boy in Illyri, “they won’t bother you,” but Sessily ignored him. She’d never actually spoken to a human before, and it didn’t appear as if she’d missed much; this one’s attempt at the Illyri tongue was rough and unpleasing to her ear. Sessily simply activated the shuttle door, barely looking at him.
As Steven disappeared inside and the door slid shut on his back, Aron could have sworn that he heard the young man whoop.
• • •
“Ani!” said Steven as his eyes began to focus in the gloom, for there it was: that unmistakable silver hair, glowing like a band of cirrus over the moon. He’d fancied he’d been in love with her once, a long time ago, but then it was easy to imagine as much of someone who’d saved your life, especially when they were beautiful, and even more so when they spoke to you as if you mattered at a time when everyone else still treated you like a child. “I never expected you! I thought Aron said a handmaiden . . .”
But then he stopped. His old friend—now fully grown, and clearly significantly taller than him, even seated—was pointing a pulser at him. She watched him carefully, and the eye of the Sisterhood regarded him too from a tattoo on her cheek, peering like a face from behind a wall of ornate foliage.
“What the hell are you doing, Ani?” he asked.
Momentarily her lip seemed to quiver, or perhaps that was just a shadow thrown by the tiny lights blinking on the control panel.
“Who are you?” she said finally. “What are you? Steven Kerr is dead.”
“No,” said Steven, “but if you use that pulser, then he very soon will be.”
Ani tutted.
“Tell me something only Steven Kerr and I would know,” said Ani. Her voice was rigid, her jaw firm.
“Jeez, talk about pressure,” said Steven, feeling a mustache of sweat forming on his upper lip. “Do you have to keep pointing that thing at me?”
“Yes,” said Ani.
“Right . . .”
Steven thought quickly.
“In the van,” he started, and Ani immediately interrupted.
“What van?”
“The van we rode in together, to get away from Edinburgh. White transit van.”
“Yes?”
“Well, er, I remember you didn’t pee once all the way to Inverness.”
“How could I?” snapped Ani. “You were right there!”
“Exactly,” said Steven. “I was right there, but I could manage quite discreetly with a bottle, if you recall.”
“Go on,” said Ani.
“I remember we were in a tiny hidden compartment, and we were thrown about all the way. And you hardly touched your juice—I’m guessing because of the toilet situation—but we ate those horrible hard scones and some squashed bananas, and then you told me about what happened to the Mechs.”
At this, she remained silent, so he thought it best to continue: “And then there was the time we played piggy-in-the-middle with a bar of soap in the lake. You were the piggy . . .”
And to Steven’s surprise, the imposing female pointing a gun at his guts started to laugh. At the same time a tear slid down her cheek, so that it was almost as if her own eye and the tattooed eye were weeping together.
“I thought you were all dead,” Ani said, slipping the pulser discreetly into her pocket.
Steven shook his head.
“And I thought you’d gone to the dark side, until Aron explained how much you’ve helped.”
They smiled at each other. All pretense of formality and distance fell away, and Ani reached for him and hugged him tightly to her. With his face in her hair Steven felt like he was fifteen again, full of hope that all could still be made right in the universe, and he found that his cheeks were wet too. They cried together for a while, close and comfortable as brother and sister.
Ani composed herself first.
“What about Syl?” she said. “Is it possible that she could be alive too?”
“I don’t know,” Steven replied. “I hope so. She was with my brother, but I haven’t seen them for almost two years.”
“Two years?”
“Well, in fairness that would only be two days where I left them, so I’m not really worried—not yet.”
“I don’t understand. What happened, Steven?”
And so he told her about what had happened beyond the Derith wormhole, and his trip to Krasis, and his time on Earth, and then his reconnection with the Military and their ongoing attempts to sabotage Corps operations—or as much as he dared to share with her.
For this was no longer his friend from Earth.
This was the Archmage.