16

 

Joanna’s reedy servant girl was even more surprised to see Meloku the second time. Infrared showed the girl’s pulse jumping a measure. Had she been carrying anything, she would have dropped it.

She must have thought that the bear had gone into hibernation.

“The queen,” Meloku said, when the girl would be able to hear past her heartbeat.

The girl nodded.

A pair of guards blocked the queen’s bedroom door. They stood aside without a word when they saw “Veroncia.” The girl gingerly tapped a knock. Meloku, without waiting for an answer, pushed it open.

To Meloku’s relief, Queen Joanna was alone. No ladies-in-waiting, no courtiers. Good. Dawn was not far away. Meloku did not have the patience to be trapped here another full day. She and Joanna would have to be alone for this.

Joanna had risen early for Sunday Mass. Though a sovereign of her stature should have been attended by her ladies, Joanna had, as was her wont, chased them out. She was a solitary creature. She did not cope well with others. Or, most of the time, with herself. Joanna sat atop her bed, scowling. The instant she saw Meloku, her expression melted to guileless neutrality.

Meloku had caught Joanna halfway through the process of binding her hair with a pearl-studded veil. Her hair was already so tight that skin on her forehead paled. All of this would be easier done, and likely less painfully, with help.

Meloku turned to dismiss the servant girl, but the girl was already bounding down the hall. Meloku shook her head, closed the door.

She turned to Joanna and waited for her to say something. Joanna waited just as patiently for the same. Meloku kept hoping, every time, that it would be different.

She gave in first. Joanna could have sat and stared for hours. “What do you think of me?”

Joanna opened her mouth. Then she stopped. The thought couldn’t form, let alone finish. It was not that Joanna felt either ill of her or well disposed. It was that Joanna could not think either of those things. Meloku was a hole in her imagination.

Meloku sat on one of the stools Joanna’s ladies would have used. “You ought to hate me, you know.”

Joanna looked at her as though she had not heard. It was quite possible that, if asked, she would not have remembered hearing it.

Meloku’s nun’s habit had voluminous outer sleeves. She reached inside one, and retrieved a black capsule. She turned it over in her hands.

“Would you like to hate me?” she asked.

Joanna’s brow folded. She looked as though she had bitten into a sour apple. But the question had gotten her mind churning. Meloku saw the churning stop. Joanna asked, “Do you want me to hate you?”

A meaningless question. Had Meloku said “yes,” Joanna might have pretended to hate. She couldn’t have felt it.

Meloku pressed her thumb to the capsule’s top. It clicked and split open. She plucked from the cushioned interior a thorny seed. Its spines softened at the touch of her palm.

In the glint of firelight, it luminesced an oily violet. Held from a different angle, the reflection turned green, and then bile black. It tickled her palm. The spines, as they brushed her skin, were constantly tasting her. Tearing away microscopic skin samples. Reading her DNA. Checking her identity.

Thirty years ago, the creature who had exiled Ways and Means to this plane had also burnt out her neural demiorganics. She’d had to get them replaced. This seed was a modified version of those given to Unity citizens as children. It could grow a complete set of demiorganics in weeks.

One of these had rebuilt her own demiorganics after she had been robbed of them. It had even repaired the burnt neural tissue. As a precaution against the creature returning, Ways and Means had given all of its agents these seeds.

It had been made for adults who had had demiorganics, whose neural pathways were already accustomed to alien thoughts merging with their own. She had no idea what it would do to someone who had never had demiorganics. That information had not been given to her.

She told Joanna, “I did not like you when I met you. Hated you, actually. I thought you were callow, callous, as ignorant as the rest of your people. When I did this to you, I thought I would be doing you and your plane a favor.”

Some of that old disdain crept back when she thought about who Joanna used to be. Even if Joanna hadn’t committed the murder for which she had been on trial when Meloku had met her, she was still a killer. She was a queen. All power on this plane devolved to death and killing.

“I didn’t take the time to understand what you had done or why you might have done it. You were the product of your place – just as I was the product of mine. Had I met myself under the same circumstances, I would have hated myself, too. Do you remember where I told you I was from?”

“The planarship Ways and Means,” Joanna said, at once.

Just words to her. Meloku said, “Remember that name. Ways and Means and its other agents here would never want you to have what I’m holding. It would put you on a closer-to-even footing with them. I think they’re as afraid of that as they are of the monster that exiled us here.” Thirty years ago, when her demiorganics had been destroyed, she had lost most of her advantages over the natives. She’d been terrified of them.

Meloku should not have held the seed for so long. Her palm itched. The seed was tearing off more and more skin, searching for the person it had been programmed to find. Meloku passed it to her other hand. Ways and Means had given her the seed preset for her DNA. Meloku was still an active agent, though, and had an array of black software at her disposal. She reset the seed to recognize Queen Joanna.

“I would like nothing more than for you to hate me. I’m a connoisseur of hate. I’ve traveled to so many places, and hated so many people. I never stayed in one of those places this long. This past thirty years, I’ve had the chance to study us as closely as I have any other people. And I think I hate us more than I’ve ever hated any of them.”

Joanna tilted her head. She said nothing.

Meloku said, “I’m not going to tolerate things like this any more. So I have something to give you. You won’t be the same person you were thirty years ago.” Some damage couldn’t be undone. “You will not live like other people here do, or think like them. You will still be different. Disabled in some ways. Enabled in others. And I won’t be allowed to come back here.”

Joanna said, “I understand.”

Meloku did not hide her surprise. For a moment, hope made her breath catch.

It lasted only until she looked at Joanna. There was no comprehension there. She was watching Meloku closely – trying to figure out what Meloku wanted. Meloku must have inadvertently given away, through her tone or her words, how badly she wanted Joanna to understand.

Joanna could not disobey her compulsion to appease her.

“Right,” Meloku said, under her breath.

She did not want to, but she knew she needed to hold on to the horror of this moment. Joanna could not even consent to this.

Joanna blinked, watching and waiting for Meloku’s next move.

Better to get this over with. She should have just done it as soon as she’d come in. She had made this decision long ago.

Meloku commanded, “Hold out your hand.”

Joanna did so.

The moment the seed touched Joanna’s palm, its spines lost their definition. They melted. The seed turned from round to oblong to a flat disc, like a puddle of liquid color. It sluiced through Joanna’s palm as though the skin weren’t there.

Blood welled from the hundred pinprick wounds the seed had left behind.

Joanna gasped. She snapped her hand back. For a second, in her shock of pain, the real her was in control again.

Meloku’s own demiorganics protected her from chemical addiction like the one she’d forced on Joanna. If she was captured by a force that tried to inflict the same on her, her demiorganics could route her neural impulses manually. Demiorganics could break down chemical barriers like the ones that had destroyed Joanna.

Demiorganics were the only solution Meloku had not yet tried. Even after so many years, they could suss out her old pathways, reboot her, brute-force the dopamine trap.

Even then, Joanna would never be her old self. She would be a new person. But that new person would be in control.

“I’m sorry,” Meloku said. “I really would tranq you for this, but it will have an easier time integrating with your nervous system if you’re conscious.” The demiorganic seed had not been engineered to have such niceties as pain mitigation.

Joanna touched a finger to the blood, smeared it. Meloku waited. She did not have to wait.

Joanna jerked backward and screamed. She swatted her elbow to try to stop the fire spreading up her arm. She would not be lucid for long.

By the time Joanna’s guards burst her door, Meloku had moved her to the bed, set her lying face up. Joanna shivered wildly. She stared at Meloku. Her bloodied hand gripped the other woman’s wrist, but Meloku doubted she could see, or feel.

Meloku backed out of their way. She could not stay to guarantee the results. Joanna’s guards and courtiers would not take long to decide that the visiting nun had poisoned the queen of Naples. They could not miss the blood for long.

Outside, the corridor’s foggy windows revealed a lightening dawn. Meloku had delayed too long. Even with stealth fields, her shuttle would be visible in outline against the sky. Ways and Means had forbidden low-altitude shuttle traffic at this time of day. But Meloku had no choice. The same black software that had allowed her to reprogram the demiorganic seed had tamed the shuttle’s NAI, overridden its safeguards. She called it.

A pulse scan found the path to the nearest balcony. She stepped out and waited. A dark gray shadow blotted the sky. The stealth fields tried their best, blurring its edges, making the shuttle seem hazy. She did not have to use any of her augmented senses to trace its spidery shape.

She hitched her costume’s skirt past her knees, climbed over the railing and onto the boarding ramp. She did not look down. At this time of day, the people below would be able to see her and her shuttle if they looked up. The thrusters roared in her ears as she crossed the shuttle’s sound dampening fields. If anyone below called out, she could not hear them.

She did not expect it would be long before Joanna’s guards beat down Veroncia’s door. Before the end of the day, all of Naples would know that the Queen was ill, one of the hermit nuns had gone missing, and that a shadow like a dragon had fled the Queen’s palace. Veroncia would become a Satanic figure.

It did not matter. Meloku would not – could not – come back to see Joanna again.

The shuttle vaulted into the sky as soon as the boarding ramp closed.

Her demiorganics tried to keep her balance, but she stumbled into the ventral corridor’s bulkhead. She fought her way into the control cabin, climbed into an acceleration couch.

She thought about going to Habidah and Kacienta. They would not believe what she had done. They would not trust her. They would be right not to do so. She had been too complicit. She was not on their side. She would still tolerate a lot that they wouldn’t.

And they were academics. They could catalog what was happening, but when it came to doing something about it, they were useless.

A chill shook her. She could not countenance more of this happening. Meloku pulled herself into the control cabin, collapsed in an acceleration couch. She removed her headdress, tossed it aside. Her gray field jacket was draped over the cushions behind her. She fought to tug it on against the acceleration. It did not help her shivering. There was a tightness in her chest that would not go away.

The compound-eyed monitors all around painted her a landscape of clouds. The shuttle banked high into them, gaining altitude as fast as its sound dampening fields allowed.

Her demiorganics dampened her nerves and paced her breathing, but neither were the problem. She’d spent a long time imagining taking that final step to free Joanna. Now that she had done it, she felt as though the shuttle was plummeting.

When Ways and Means found out about this, she was not going to be able to talk her way clear of the consequences.

The shuttle speared through a lazily drifting gloss of cirrus. She leveled its flight. It arced northeast, following the Italian coast. At least they were high enough now not to be visible from the ground.

Ways and Means must have been tracking her flight. It had chosen not to say anything. Or maybe the report had already been logged in the satellites, and was queued to be sent along. If it looked closely enough, it would find what she had done to Joanna.

The best way to protect Joanna now was through misdirection, distraction – to make an even bigger statement that Ways and Means couldn’t pretend to ignore.

Meloku had a good idea where to do it.

The land turned gray and misty. A halo of reflected sunlight followed the shadow of her shuttle. The coastline threaded the horizon far to the west, visible only in hazy outline. The day wore deeper.

Meloku leaned into her couch, closed her eyes, laced the shuttle’s sensors through her demiorganics. They gave her a taste of the condensing humidity, the airborne microflora, the frost on the hull.

After only a short search, she found what she was looking for.

Not far from Siena, she saw a hot mass of infrared bodies. Marching bodies. Hundreds of them, plus even more animals. Sheep and goats and cattle wisped behind the army like smoke from a fire, the prizes of war. They outnumbered the people vastly. An army’s treasure train – the same one that had led her all this way, weeks ago.

Farther ahead, there were even more people. The numbers rose into the thousands. The only animals among them were horses. Two armies strung out in lines, threading together. She had found the Company of the Star.

Meloku circled, watching. Rain clouds lined the western horizon. The papal army and condottieri forces of John Hawkwood swept in from the north.

Meloku took a risk and dropped altitude. Her stomach plunged. She was not near enough to the ground to be visible to the naked eye.

Still no call from Ways and Means.

The shuttle’s sensors picked out at least three satellites above. There were far more in the geosynchronous bands, but these three were the ones that would be watching her. They must have noticed her. Her craft would have been the only spaceplane moving on this side of the dawn terminator.

From this altitude, her sensors could not only distinguish individuals, but the minuscule emissions of electronics. There were electronic signatures all over the battlefield. On both sides of it. That surprised Meloku. Before her next breath, she realized it shouldn’t have. She had only ever seen the devices in Hawkwood’s camp, but she hadn’t looked closely at the Company of the Star. It had been a discrepancy in her observations about the latter that had gotten her attention to begin with.

Ways and Means was manipulating both sides in this fight. Steering them both into each other. It didn’t make sense. Not yet. She didn’t have enough information.

Whereas the bugs in Hawkwood’s camp had been spread around, those in the Company of the Star were concentrated. And moving with a cluster of riders. Leadership, presumably. Though there were plenty of women in the company, the woman at the front could only be the famous Fiametta of Treviso.

The armies crashed into each other. Artillery smoke licked the battlefield. Some of the infrared shadows no longer moved. People were dying. And she still had no idea what she was going to do.

When she’d come here, part of her had fantasized about dropping the shuttle in, switching off the stealth fields. Without its camouflage, her shuttle looked something between a spined fish, a beetle, and a hawk. She would be a distraction, maybe scare the armies away, but they would be back.

She’d studied plenty of this plane’s wars over the past thirty years. But battles had never interested her. They were never the most consequential things about war. She had little mastery of equestrian and primitive-arm tactics. But, even at this distance and even to her, it was obvious that one side badly outmatched the other. Something had disrupted Hawkwood’s rear lines, but the terrain favored his numbers. Fiametta of Treviso’s maneuvers meant little. Hawkwood was mongoose-quick. He had wrapped his lines around hers before she seemed to have realized what was happening.

It almost did not matter what games Ways and Means was playing with this one battle. Ways and Means had been at this long beforehand. She doubted the bugs and other devices below had been installed recently, either. It had had a hand in all the suffering, all the slaughter and famine, that these groups were responsible for.

On her next pass over the battlefield, she banked hard westward, above the boiling line of clouds. Then she dove into them.

The shuttle was unarmed. It had been in Ways and Means’ diplomatic service, and many planes would not have let it approach if it had been visibly armed. But neither Ways and Means nor any other amalgamate had ever sent a vehicle to another plane without a trick or two at the ready.

Most terrestrial shuttles had aneutronic fusion engines, but not this one. It was versatile. It was made to be as comfortable in deep space as in a terrestrial atmosphere, liquid methane oceans, or a gas giant. There was no versatility like power, which gave it a perfect excuse to pack an antimatter reactor.

Its reactor was tucked deep in its hull, a black sphere as small as her chest. It was heavily radiation shielded. That was the trick. Its shielding could be voluntarily weakened to allow certain emissions through.

She could time her power output to spike at the same moment. She could produce, on command, a powerful electromagnetic pulse.

That pulse would wipe out electronics in almost any radius she chose. The shuttle’s most critical systems, and their backups, were hardened against it. Electronics of the type she had spotted below would not be. Her shuttle’s stealth fields would not survive it, either.

Hence she had steered into the cloud bank.

She did not hesitate, or think about what it would do to her. She did not want to give Ways and Means any more time to realize what she was doing, or exercise its options to stop her.

She just gave her shuttle the order to do it.