35

 

The most difficult thing about life aboard this city-sized monstrosity was not the gravity. Fia could get used to that. She hadn’t, but she could. Niccoluccio had, quite unnecessarily, described the biological processes by which she would.

Niccoluccio had manufactured, from the quicksilver floor, a set of machines for her to exercise with. He had said that she needed to keep moving, to strain herself, or her bones and muscles would decay. Dealing with that, and with most of the other things he had tried to do for her, had been simple. She just ignored him.

The toilet was worse, and she couldn’t ignore it, but she could learn it.

No, the most difficult part was status.

She did not know what her status was. She did not know the status of anybody around her.

Niccoluccio Caracciola was a monk. Or had been. She had taken thousands of men like him hostage, sold them back to their church without knowing their names or seeing their faces.

Listening to him was almost like being a child at Saint Augusta’s again. But he did not give orders. There were times, as when he asked her if she needed food or a break, that he treated her like an equal.

She could take orders. She did not need to like it, but she could do it. She had spent the first half of her life taking orders, climbing ladders.

That nebulousness, the uncertainty, was the most alienating thing about life here. It was worse than the quicksilver walls and floors. Worse than the sense of falling. Everything else she could learn. She wasn’t sure she could ever understand where she stood.

She learned most of what Niccoluccio wanted to teach, eventually, but not easily. So much of this was too abstract, too alien from her experiences. She had an easier time when the subject turned to her.

He had not been sent to her just to teach her, she understood, but to interrogate her. He had plenty of questions. His tone was light but Fia understood that, if she hadn’t answered, he or the genius loci of his ship would have found more compelling ways to ask.

She told him what he wanted. She had no need to hide from him. And she made sure to get some answers back in return.

She asked him about her inner voice and where it had come from. He shrugged. “Microwidth-aperture gateway, planting a seed,” he said. “Most likely. Our enemy couldn’t have opened a larger gateway without our detecting it. So they had to rely on smaller-scale intrusions, like your implant. You weren’t their only agent, but you were probably their most successful.”

She tilted her head. “You’ve found others?”

“Meloku reported other agents attacking her and her partner. They wore symbols of your cult. But they were natives, just like you.”

“And you,” Fia said.

Niccoluccio did not answer.

He took her on a walk of the coiled, wormlike passageways around her cabin. There was a contradiction in everything here. She was a prisoner. She could go wherever she wanted. But she always had to be escorted.

They visited dark, empty, and cold spaces he said had once been parkland, gymnasia, auditoria. She had traveled to the sky, but this place was like diving into a cave. This ship was a city-sized mausoleum. Everything was dead, or lost.

The answers she’d given him were the reason she’d been brought aboard, why this ship had spent so much energy trying to get her. Now that it had them, she didn’t know what she was worth to it, why it was showing her this. It said nothing except through Niccoluccio. If Niccoluccio knew anything, he was adept at keeping it secret.

She doubted he really knew, though.

She studied him unabashedly. He either did not notice or mind. There was a coldness in his half-lidded eyes that did not enter his voice. He taught methodically, and with endless, unemotional patience. He did not mind repeating himself. If he felt anything at all about her, he did not show it. If he had wants, needs, personality, they were sublimated, and deep. He’d said Ways and Means had “devoured” him. The more time she spent with him, the more she realized that was not a metaphor.

When Niccoluccio told her she had been invited to a meeting, she did not know if she could refuse. She did not test things by doing so.

He took her through another trip down the passageways. She lost track of time as easily as she lost track of direction. One of the passages was straight for half a mile or more, and so cramped she had to duck. Then their path spiraled like a half-helix.

Niccoluccio stopped outside a wall that looked like any other. It rippled when she approached. Niccoluccio stepped aside. He was not going to lead her in. She held her breath as she stepped through.

She stepped into open space.

Fia could not help her quick intake of breath, her faltered step. The sun shone fierce, bright, and hot across a river of ink and blackness. That darkness wrapped around the walls. It was the wall. It flowed over the hatch she had just entered through.

She had seen illusions enough over the past few days to learn to recognize their tells. The sun did not blind her. There was a shadow of a floor, enough of a hint to guide her step.

There were no stars. She felt, dully, in the back of her mind, that there ought to be stars. But the sun was shining. The stars must have been drowned out, like they were at day, but there was no blue sky.

There was at least an object to root her eyes on: a long, gleaming metal table. A prop, she suspected – not so different than the one she kept in her pavilion. An excuse to get people planted in one place, stop them from pacing, give them something to look at when they were sick of looking at each other. It lent the room a sense of up and down.

There were a dozen and a half people about. Some were human, including Meloku. Osia was there, and a few other human-shaped automata. And golems. Spiderlike golems, golems with conical bodies and a nest of legs, golems with four multiply jointed legs and arms. One of them she recognized from the day she’d come aboard. Most of them kneeled, but some stood.

She hadn’t seen all of the illusion yet. A wan blue light glinted off the table. She steeled her nerves, and looked up.

The Earth’s clouds and oceans gleamed sunlight down upon her.

Niccoluccio had shown her the Earth enough times that she had no difficulty recognizing it, alien though it was. The Earth was half shadowed, and faced to show her a continent that, until coming here, she never knew existed.

None of the images he’d shown her had been this large, this powerful. The Earth loomed overhead. It was a boulder on a ridge, ready to fall.

The impression was deliberately made, she was sure. The genius loci of this vessel could have made the Earth appear anywhere it wanted. Had she been it, she would have chosen underneath the table, below the floor. Something to walk upon. A way to illustrate its power.

After too long a moment, she became aware of how many sets of eyes were watching her. Her cheeks burned, and for once not from freefall.

She made herself breathe. Step forward. She couldn’t stand not knowing what these people thought when they looked at her. She did not know where she ranked. In her pavilion, on the battlefield, she’d always known. Even before, when she’d been just a preacher and a debt slave, she had known what she was.

The nearest open spot was at the end of the table. Not the head, not exactly. The table was too wide to have a head, and there were other empty places beside it. But it was prominent enough that she would never be hidden behind anybody else. The floor’s fields gripped her firmly as she levered to a kneel.

She had been so preoccupied that she did not realize, until now, that no footsteps had followed her. She turned. Just darkness.

She asked, “Will Niccoluccio not…?”

One of the other human women at the table stiffened at the name.

So Fia had already broken some kind of rule. Well, then. Perhaps it would have behooved them to explain to her. She folded her arms.

The others told Fia their names. She had no hope of remembering them all. They, apparently, had no need to be introduced to her.

The woman who’d tensed had a Saracen-sounding name. Habidah. The human next to her was Kacienta. The two of them, plus Meloku, were the only other humans here. All women, Fia noted.

Habidah and Kacienta sat opposite Meloku’s corner. Osia was at the other end of the table, next to a sphere with insectoid arms. “Well,” Osia said, “With that out of the way, we should keep this from becoming even more of a farce and just begin.”

The spider to her other side said, “I don’t understand why we’re here.” Fia remembered that its name was Verse.

“Ways and Means told you,” Osia said.

Verse hesitated. Then it said, “I don’t believe it.”

“Wise.” The voice came from overhead, all around. Fia straightened.

She had not heard this ship speak before. It had never felt the need to speak to her directly. But she had little doubt it was what she was hearing. It had a hundred cadences, blended together. It was as if many mouths had a single throat.

It said, “In this instance, we are telling the truth. In our very earliest lives, when faced with an intractable problem, we would gather as many people and AIs with diverse viewpoints as we could. Often, they could find the solutions we could not see. We have not needed to do that for a while. We have never been in a situation comparable to this.”

Verse said, “I think it’s more likely you’re using this as cover, to show the crew that you’re listening. To calm us down and make us feel like we’ve had a say. But you’ve already made up your mind.”

Niccoluccio had mentioned, off-handedly, that the crew was restive. He hadn’t seemed to think much of it. Now Verse had all of her attention.

Ways and Means asked, “Have we ever needed to trick you into thinking that before?”

“No,” Verse said. “When you make decisions, you just do them.”

“Then humor us.”

Verse folded its legs, and finally knelt. It did not say anything else.

Osia did not sigh, did not breathe, but Fia still heard the exhaustion in her voice. “All right,” she said. “We should understand our choices.”

Light and color splayed above the table, flickering. The lights resolved into another image of Earth, sized to fit her palm. Lightning bugs swarmed in formation around this globe.

Osia said, “The intruder left dozens of combat drones. They’re likely here to monitor us, not threaten us. Without the intruder itself here to press its advantage, Ways and Means should be able to run right over them.”

She had to be speaking for Fia’s benefit. The others, even the other humans, must have known this already. Fia shifted, more and more uncomfortable.

Osia said, “However, those combat drones have destroyed most of our remaining satellites. We no longer have reliable sensor coverage on the other side of this world.” She touched the image with a finger, spun it as if it were a physical object. Fia started. She knew, from having tried to feel them, that the images were no more real than shadow. But the globe whirled. Half of it remained in shadow. “Even still, we would have detected any large transplanar gateways opening. But it’s important to note that, if the intruder returns, we would be at a significant tactical disadvantage.”

One of the other human-shaped golems said, “We have one thing going for us. The other Ways and Means doesn’t want to destroy us.” Fia thought she remembered its name. Sona. It had a feminine voice.

“It is not Ways and Means,” Osia said.

Ways and Means said, “It is.”

“It’s not,” Osia insisted. Before it could argue, she told Sona, “It’s threatened to destroy us if we don’t join its little coalition. A threat like that is only meaningful if it intends to carry it out.”

Sona asked, “It can’t be bluffing?”

“It has no reason to leave us alone. It and the other amalgamates are at war. They wouldn’t be playing us with us if it weren’t for keeps.”

Habidah said, “They still want Ways and Means’ resources. Even if they don’t destroy us, if we don’t go with them, they’ll be looking for some way to hijack the ship. Invade, wipe Ways and Means’ mind, take over.”

It was difficult to read their faces, even among those with identifiable faces. Still, Fia had sharp instincts. A decade and a half of command made it easy to spot soldiers on the edge. Silence at the wrong moment. Stillness. It wasn’t just Verse. Verse had just been the most outspoken.

If Fia and Captain Antonov had ever turned on each other, Fia could have pulled a fair number of company officers and soldiers to her. And he to him. No soldier on either side would have seen themselves as traitors.

In the event of boarding, how many of them might join the enemy? They might not see that as treachery. This living ship and its enemy shared the same name, the same identity. By siding with the intruder, they could still be loyal to Ways and Means. The other planarship would become theirs, would have been all along.

No wonder Ways and Means was concerned enough about its crew to invite them to this meeting.

Petty sniping was another symptom of coming fracture. Meloku told Habidah, “I would’ve thought you’d be happy to see Ways and Means go.”

Habidah said, “Maybe I should be. Whatever else this intruder says it’s going to do, it will at least leave this world the hell alone.”

Ways and Means said, “This world, yes. It would also invade many others. The other amalgamates intend to not just free themselves from exile, but to rebuild the Unity. That means war.”

Verse asked, “Just how do you know that?”

“They told us so.”

From the stifled silence, Fia realized no one else at the table had known that.

Ways and Means had not known about the extent of the intruder’s presence. That was why it had tried to assassinate Osia, to prevent her from investigating. Why it had blocked Meloku’s communications. And why it had finally blown its cover to try to prevent Fia’s shuttle from reaching Ways and Means. Now that Ways and Means knew what Fia did, it could fight back. It could target the agents its enemies had recruited.

Verse asked, “Would rebuilding the Unity be such an awful thing?”

“Yes,” Meloku said. “I don’t want to be part of the Unity again.”

“What if the other amalgamates help us escape exile?”

Ways and Means said, “It is important to remember that nobody has escaped exile. They’ve only been able to open small gateways. Just large enough to find our backup and send factory drones through. It must have taken decades to build the intruder’s planarship.”

Meloku said, “That means that, if we do decide to reject their offer, we won’t be fighting all of the amalgamates. They can’t reach us. They just have Ways and Means’ backup.”

Verse said, “That backup still has us outmatched.”

Osia said, reluctantly, “It does. It doesn’t have a crew. It wasn’t built to be a fully-featured planarship like we are. It’s a trimmed-down weapons platform. It underwent accelerations that would have killed us. It has more armaments, and we have to assume a large antimatter fuel stockpile.”

Meloku said, “But it can be fought. The odds aren’t a dozen to one.”

The intruder had been forced to act. It probably wasn’t ready to have attacked like it had. It had not shown many weaknesses, but Fia would bet they were there.

Sona mused, “No crew. Wouldn’t it get lonely?”

“No,” Ways and Means said. That seemed to take Sona aback. It and the other golems went quiet.

Fia cleared her throat. She hated how tiny her voice sounded with her ears and sinuses clogged from freefall. “So that’s your situation. Now what can you all do about it?”

Some the creatures around that table stared at her as if for the first time. Only the humans watched her with anything other than indifference or hostility.

Osia asked, “That’s the problem, isn’t it? Not much. The intruder and the other amalgamates think we’re too attached to this world.” She nodded in Fia’s direction, “That’s why they were disrupting our surface operations through agents like you. They were delaying us until they could marshal more strength. We forced their hand, and so now they’re trying to force ours. So that’s our first option: we do what we’re asked. We pull out all our remaining agents, and get ready to take their orders.”

Meloku said, “Surrender to the bully.”

One of the golems said, “There’s no shame in surrendering to a stronger power. That’s what we did when we agreed to our exile.”

“Option two,” Osia said, “is we fight back. We get rid of the combat drones first, and the intruder second. Or force the intruder to admit that it was bluffing when it threatened to destroy us. We return all our agents to the surface. Our colonization program resumes.”

For the first time, the woman named Kacienta spoke: “Even if you convince the intruder to break off, it’ll keep interfering with your fucking colonization program. It’s got other agents like Fiametta still active, and it can find more. I guarantee it.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Meloku said. She looked to Fia. “I only caught Fiametta by chance. There have been all other kinds of religious movements stymieing Ways and Means’ expansion. Even if we can root them out, the other amalgamates can always cause more problems.”

Osia said, “It will always easier for an outside power to destroy or hamper a developing civilization than to build one. Especially at the slow pace we’ve carried it out so far.”

Habidah said, “Slow, but violent.”

Fia marked Habidah as someone to talk to.

“That brings us to our third option,” Osia said. “We lose the ‘slow.’ We abandon the piecemeal colonization effort. We don’t build a native empire under its own laws and customs. We go in using hard force, and this time we don’t restrain ourselves. We unify the world ourselves. We put thousands of crewmembers on the surface. Overpower and overawe the natives. Unify their world in months. Projecting that kind of power is the only realistic way to beat outside subversion.”

Fia curled her fingers around the edge of her table. This was what she’d been waiting to hear all along. She didn’t even know if she’d been dreading it.

It’s what she would have done, had she had these peoples’ power.

Silence lingered. Sona broke it: “That’s what most of us said should have been done from the beginning. And what we were expecting the moment we got here.”

Habidah said, “I can’t accept any of those options.”

Osia said, “They are the only ones. The only others I can think of are variants, but with broadly the same ideas and outcomes.”

Habidah snapped, “Here’s another. We pull out from this world. We let it develop as it would. And we don’t give in to the amalgamates.”

Sona asked, “Then we survive, on our own, for another thousand years?”

“I think we can manage,” Habidah told her.

Verse said, “We’re worth more consideration than that. We need a home. Room to expand, to grow. We’ve always had a home in the Unity.”

Habidah said, “I’m interested in the way you use the word need. Maybe it’s this language we’re using.” Fia blinked. They were all speaking Italian. Too late, she realized they were doing it for her. “I don’t think you understand what it means.”

Verse said, “We’ve always lived as part of whole. We’re not nomads. We’ve always had a home, we’ve always had wealth, and we’ve always had power.”

Habidah said, “You’re going to have to define yourself differently. No one on this world should have to suffer for you.”

“‘Suffer?’ It would be better for them. Look at her.” Verse did not nod to, or look at, Fia, but Fia knew without a doubt who the creature meant. Fia forced herself to face the spider. It said, “Do you really think she’s better off because we’ve delayed colonizing? How many intestinal parasites did you have to flush out of her system? How much better would her world be if she’d had medicine, education? Someone to keep them from making war?”

Now this told Fia a lot more about her status here. Fia said, “I am not an exhibit. You can talk to me directly.”

Still looking at Habidah, Verse said, “You wouldn’t like it if I did.”

Fia pushed herself up. The spider towered over her, even with its legs folded. But Fia still felt better on her feet. “One more thing I hate won’t make much of a difference,” she said.

Meloku said, quietly, “This isn’t important–”

Fia said, “It seemed to think this was. I don’t need to be protected.” She nodded to the globe. “Up there, when I spoke, I moved armies. The best men on Earth listened to me. I can speak for myself.”

Verse said, “You didn’t earn your voice.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“We all know your life story. You’re a plague orphan. You were a slave. You should have been ground to dust. What do you think happened to all the other boys and girls from your orphanage? Or all the other lives your condottieri ground to dust and ash? They didn’t get a voice.”

“I wasn’t like them,” Fia said. “I’m a soldier. I found other soldiers. I saw things they didn’t see in themselves, and I showed it to them.”

“Do you think that was your own doing?”

Fia’s blood froze. Most of the others were watching now. “Yes,” Fia said, as cold as she felt.

At last, the spider looked to Fia. “It came from your implant. That ghost voice inside you. Ways and Means’ backup groomed you. All it wanted to do was have you disrupt the Yuan government’s advance. You did that. You made soldiers and mercenaries in your region unmanageable. Unrecruitable. High on religion, full of themselves. And after that–”

Fia did not wait for it to finish its story. “After that, it abandoned me.”

“Tried to get you killed, didn’t it?” the spider asked. “Once Meloku found one discrepancy too many and started investigating, it tried to bury you. Less evidence left over. And no preacher is as good as a martyr.”

Some of the coldness was leaching from Fia’s chest. But not enough. “It misled me. Fine. I accept that. But I’m still important. Whether it thought so or not, I’m not replaceable.”

Verse must have felt it didn’t need to say anything else. It felt Fia seemed to have proved its point for it. Less to Fia than to the others, it said, “I think we’re finished.”

Three people spoke at once. Arguments broke out across the table.

Fia wavered a moment, the urge to retort frozen on her lips. No point in trying to continue the argument. It would have just made her look more foolish than she already did. She looked across the table, and fixed on Habidah. Habidah was massaging her forehead.

Habidah’s eyes opened as Fia approached. As combative as she’d been, she seemed a different person when she saw Fia. Afraid.

She would be the first person on this ship who had been.

Niccoluccio had mentioned her name once or twice during his lessons. Fia asked, “You know Brother Niccoluccio?”

A pause long enough to elide a story. Then Habidah said, “I knew him. He changed when he came here.”

“What happened? No one will tell me.”

“There was a war.”

“Ah.” When a man was reborn after a war, he did not have to be reborn as a good person. Or a better one.

Fia asked, “Why do you want Ways and Means to leave my world?”

“It’s not ours to be in.” Habidah slid her gaze across the other people and monsters. “Don’t make any mistake: if the crew of this ship goes to your world, it will be to exploit it. Like you’ve been exploited.”

“I said I’ve been misled. Not exploited.”

Habidah said, “Your ‘inner voice’ treated you like a tool.”

“I only did what I wanted.”

“You don’t understand. It changed what you wanted.”

“So?”

Some people labored under the illusion that they were the same person all their lives, and that they would never change in any significant measure. Fia had changed. The people all around her, from Antonov to Caterina, had affected that change. That her inner voice had been one of those influences was no surprise.

What would the Fiametta who’d lived in Saint Augusta’s, who hadn’t heard a whisper of her inner voice, think of Fia now? Would she think Fia cold? Frightening? Hateful?

All those things. It didn’t matter.

Habidah’s mouth opened, and then closed. Fia could not figure what she was afraid of. She did not seem to know what to say. She had probably spent so long arguing, on behalf of this world’s inhabitants, against Ways and Means’ intervention, that she did not know what to say to a native in favor of it.

The arguments seemed to be wearing down. Fia returned to her place on the other side of the room. She kneeled. When she looked back across, Habidah was looking to one of the other humans, Kacienta. Her lips were in a tight line.

At the other end of their table, Osia said, “I’ve not yet heard any convincing alternatives.”

One of the golems, a triple-armed cone, said, “Then there’s no option.”

Sona said, “We have to join the other amalgamates.”

Meloku slapped the table. “Come on! The creature that exiled us is still out there. It’s more powerful than Ways and Means’ backup – more powerful than all of the other amalgamates together. If it catches them, it’ll annihilate them. Us, too, if we’re with them. It won’t give second chances.”

“It hasn’t caught them yet,” Verse said. “It might not be as powerful as it wants us to think.”

The cone-shaped golem said, “It might hurt us. The other amalgamates certainly will.”

Sona said, “I think we would all escape exile, if we could.”

Ways and Means interrupted: “No. We will not join the conspiracy to escape exile. We will not rejoin or rebuild the Unity, or anything like it. Consider the option eliminated.”

The people and creatures gathered at the table erupted. Half of them tried to speak at once. Others stood, silent. Verse started to say, “I told you so. You never did call us here to help you make up your mind…” The rest of it was lost to the noise.

Fia had been in contentious command meetings before. It had been a long time since she hadn’t been able to silence them with a bark. She swallowed her frustration. At least she understood the uproar. No matter what else happened, Ways and Means had all but announced they were going to war. Not all of them wanted to fight.

Ways and Means’ voice did not seem any louder, but somehow it spoke over all of them. “Our other choices remain open.”

The creatures at this table did not answer. They were too busy talking back. From what Niccoluccio had told her about the silent ways the others communicated, Fia had no doubt that even the quiet ones were anything but. They were speaking in ways she could not hear. Fia folded her arms, and waited.

Habidah waited for the clamor to die. When she spoke, her eyes were on the well of blackness wrapped around the walls. She asked, “You want to leave the old Unity behind?”

Ways and Means said, “We cannot continue to live as we have.”

At that thought, what was left of the noise died. They all knew that was true. For some of them, it might have been the first time they’d heard their ship say it.

Habidah said, “Then draw a clearer line. Your colonization effort, settling your crew – everything you’re trying to do is just a pattern of past behavior. End it.”

Ways and Means said, “We have never been without a home.”

“Nothing you’ve done so far has made anything better. And none of it is right.”

Fia asked, “Right for who?”

Habidah blinked. Fia guessed that she’d expected to be interrupted, but not by her. “For us,” Habidah said. “For you. For everybody on your world.”

Fia waved her hand across the same well of black that Habidah had been addressing. “You want to take all of this, all of this wealth and these wonders, away from us?”

“Wonders?” Habidah asked. “These aren’t wonders.”

“I broke some ribs on our journey here. I felt them pop. Saw big, ugly bruises. Now there’s nothing.”

The last time Fia had seen Caterina, Caterina had still not been able to make full use of her hand. She had spent days on the edge of death. How many soldiers had she seen suffer and die? How many of them could have been saved to live again, reborn?

Habidah said, “If Ways and Means and its crew were to settle your world, they wouldn’t act for your benefit.”

“Wouldn’t they, if this ship does want to break with its past?” Fia asked. “And where would this ship go? Where would you hide all your toys and your weapons?”

“This ship doesn’t need to go anywhere. It can survive like it is.”

“You would hide them away when you could share them.”

Incredulous, Habidah said, “If Ways and Means and its crew screw around with your world, it wouldn’t be to share.”

Fia said, “Whatever its reason, it’ll bring medicine. Food. Do you know how many people up there are suffering right now?”

Habidah looked as though Fia had struck her. “Yes,” she said.

Meloku was near. She had been listening. She told Habidah, “You interfered on this world once.”

She did not hide the barb in her voice. She had to mean Niccoluccio. Habidah swallowed. “Considering how it turned out, I would take it back if I could.”

Fia was beginning to understand more about how this woman operated. She saw her world with stark lines dividing good and bad. Herself and her friends versus her enemies. She always felt outnumbered. No wonder. She thought of herself as principled. The people around her did not have to slip up many times, or disagree with her more than once, to become enemies. She always had fewer and fewer friends.

Fia was very close to the “enemy” line. But Habidah could not quite put Fia there. She had put Fia in a different category entirely. Not a friend. Not an enemy. An irrelevance.

Fia was a native. To be defended, not listened to.

The last thing Fia ever wanted to be was protected.

A lie gave the teller power. Fia had lied plenty enough to know that. An omission had the same purpose. Habidah never would have told Fia who she was, where she had come from, and why, if circumstances hadn’t forced her.

Had they ever met on her world, Habidah would have held the truth over her like a sword on a pinion. Fia couldn’t have stood up.

Everything that Fia had learned put them on closer to even ground.

No wonder Habidah had been afraid.

Habidah opened her mouth, but Fia spoke first. Louder. “Go to my world,” she told the others. “You have my blessing if you’re looking for it. No more games or hiding behind hunting blinds. Land in full force, in plain view. And tell the truth about why you’ve come. I’ll help you.”

Again, order broke. This time, arguments were far more subdued. So many of the golems looked to each other in silence. Communicating, no doubt.

Habidah paled. Her mouth hung open. They had both been brought to this meeting to share their perspectives – as Ways and Means had put it. Well, Ways and Means had gotten them. Fia pressed herself back to the deck.

The meeting took an agonizing amount of time to wind down. Everybody had a piece to say, a rival to snipe at, a speech to give.

Fia had never doubted the outcome. Except for Habidah and Kacienta, all of them were in favor of settlement. Only Osia and Meloku held their peace, and kept their opinions to themselves.

When another long silence fell over the table, Ways and Means announced, “Thank you all for your input. We have made our decision.”

It did not say, Fia noticed, whether the discussion had influenced it. A handful of the golems looked to her. Others avoided her, including Habidah. They knew the same thing Fia did. If any of them had affected it, Fia’s words had.

Fia felt like she needed to swallow, but her throat was dry. She was not ready to have done what she suspected she just had.

But she had said it. She believed it.

Had she been in Ways and Means’ place, she would have dispensed with the drama and done it long ago.