Though his mind and mood sped through an astonishing array of transmogrifications, the perfect-grutchin idea somehow remained fixed firmly in the faltering brain of Master Kae Kwaad. Nen Yim and all of her apprentices were pulled even from standard maintenance and set to the task of weeding through grutchin germ plasm in search of “perfect” structures, incubating larvae and discarding those that displayed any slight deviation of form or color that Kae Kwaad detected. During this time, the master became ever more offensive, at one point demanding that Nen Yim work in a state of complete undress. At another, he forced Suung to get down on hands and knees and act as his stool, a task fit only for a slave.
Nen Yim considered the inventory of toxins that one might accidentally ingest or accidents that might befall one in the business of shaping. Her plans began to form themselves.
Ona Shai gripped her hands into fists behind her back and shot Nen Yim a deep glare.
“The capillaries of the maw luur are belching half-digested wastes in the Toohi sector,” the prefect complained. “Many Shamed Ones have sickened from the fumes and cannot perform their tasks to full efficiency. A few have died.”
“That is regrettable,” Nen Yim replied. “However, I am uncertain why you discuss it with me.”
“Because your master will not admit me or speak to me via villip,” the prefect snarled.
“I am his adept. I can do nothing without his leave.”
“When you were the head shaper, things got done,” Ona Shai said. “Since this master has arrived, conditions have only gotten worse.”
“If I agreed with that, I wouldn’t be at liberty to say so,” Nen Yim told her.
“I don’t ask you to gossip with me as if we were a pair of slaves,” the prefect snapped. “I’m asking you to intercede, to place my words in the master’s ear. To release you, at least—or even Suung Aruh—to tend to this problem with the maw luur.”
“I will certainly mention your concern.”
Ona Shai nodded tersely and turned her back on Nen Yim. She could see the ridged muscles of the prefect’s back, as tight as the tendon-rigging of a landing sail. She also noticed that she had recently sacrificed three fingers to the gods.
“This ship must last another year, at least, Adept. If it does, some of our habitants may survive to be offloaded onto a new worldship.”
“I will speak to the master,” Nen Yim replied. “I can do no more.”
Ona Shai dropped her head. “Disgraced we may be, Nen Yim,” she murmured. “But the gods cannot intend for us to die out here, so near the glory of conquest, able to see our new worlds but not to ever touch them. Death is nothing, but the ignominy …”
“I shall speak to him,” Nen Yim repeated.
Her path back to the shapers’ quarters was a crowded one. The Toohi sector was not the only dispossessed part of the ship; the Phuur arm had become unlivably cold toward the tip. With nowhere else to go, Shamed Ones and slave refugees crowded the halls. Their rustle of conversation quieted where she passed, but behind her it began again, with an angrier note to it. Once or twice, she was certain she heard the word Jeedai, and felt a quiver run along her spine.
Tsavong Lah had killed nearly every slave and Shamed One who had been at Yavin 4, yet still somehow the legend of the Jeedai had spread even here.
Was this yet another thing she would take the blame for?
She found Kae Kwaad where she often did, clucking over the grutchin larvae, his useless hands drawn up onto his knees. He did not even glance at Nen Yim as she entered.
“I’ve spoken to the prefect,” she said. “Ona Shai urges that we turn at least some attention to the functioning of the ship. Toohi sector is now experiencing noxious fumes.”
“That’s interesting,” Kae Kwaad said thoughtfully. He pointed at one of the larvae, indistinguishable from the rest. “This one will have to be destroyed. Its color is off.”
“Indeed,” Nen Yim said.
“See to it,” Kae Kwaad said. “I must rest now.”
“You should speak to the prefect,” Nen Yim pressed.
“What would a master shaper have to say to the likes of her?” Kwaad sneered. “You have spoken to her. It is enough.”
Nen Yim watched him go, then despondently turned her attention to the larva. She was carrying it toward the orifice, to feed it to the maw luur, when she suddenly understood that she was no longer considering the death of Kae Kwaad, but was committed to it. Not only that, but she had chosen the method of his death.
Grutchins were used to breach the hulls of infidel ships and contained an acid powerful enough to eat through metal alloys. A single bite from one would be sufficient to end the life of her miserable master.
So instead of destroying the pupa, she worked her own shaping on it. She removed neurons from the tiny brain of the grutchin, and with the protocol of Qah imprinted a simple series of reflexes keyed to the scent signature of Kae Kwaad, which she obtained from skin cells shed in his quarters. As a failsafe, she made the triggering of the reflexes dependent on a word she herself would utter.
When the grutchins had matured, she would speak the name Mezhan, and Kae Kwaad would die, her new master slain symbolically by her old.
When she was finished, Nen Yim slept, and for the first time since Kae Kwaad had come aboard the Baanu Miir, her sleep was peaceful and dreamless.
A ket later, the pupae began to molt.
When he saw the small but adult beasts, Kae Kwaad began to shriek incoherently and sank into what appeared to be a deep depression. Calmly, Nen Yim bore his ranting and whims, waiting until the end of the day, when the initiates had been dismissed.
“I want all of the initiates killed,” Kae Kwaad said quietly. “They are plotting against me.”
“I am sure they are not,” Nen Yim told him. “They have worked diligently. It is only their training that is at fault, and I am to blame for that.”
Why was she trying to reason with him, even now? She eyed the grutchins, an arm’s length away. She and Kae Kwaad were alone now. She need only speak the word.
She had taken the breath for it when he spoke again.
“No, Nen Tsup, seductive Nen Tsup, perhaps I am to blame. It is my hands, you see. They are not as steady as once they were.” She noticed that he spoke with a sort of glacial slowness, and his eyes had a peculiar look to them. “My thoughts are drops of blood,” he whispered. “Pooling at my feet. My every thought is a sacrifice.”
Nen Yim hesitated. It was as if, far in the distance, she saw a door dilate open, with strange light beyond. She kept the word in her throat and moved nearer, near enough that their bodies were touching. His glazed eyes met hers, and she endured as he caressed her with those stunted hands.
How is it you were not sacrificed to the gods, Kae Kwaad? she wondered. How is it you live to shame your domain and species?
For an instant his eyes changed, sparked, as if he knew what she was thinking, as if they were in on the same joke and only pretending to act their roles.
It was gone very quickly.
“Master,” she asked, “why is it you do not replace your hands?”
He looked down at them. “My hands. Yes, they should be replaced. But it is denied me. Only another master can access that protocol, and none will do it. They are all against me, you know.”
“I know,” she whispered, leaning her mouth near his ear. “And yet,” she said, lowering her voice even farther, “you are a master. You could do it yourself.”
“I haven’t the hands to make hands.”
“But I do, Master Kae Kwaad. I do.”
“And you would have to learn the protocol,” Kae Kwaad replied. “And you are forbidden it.”
Now her lips were touching his ear. “I might do much that is forbidden, Master,” she said.
He turned to look at her. She saw nothing behind his eyes, now, and it suddenly occurred to her that he might be worse than mad; he might be using one of the ancient, forbidden toxins that induced stupor. Such a self-indulgence … would be exactly like this being, she finished.
He hit her, then, a backhand that shattered one of her teeth and sent her spinning to the ground with the taste of blood in her mouth. She lay there, expecting him to follow the attack, ready to speak the word. This was her last chance; if she hesitated longer, he would have the grutchins destroyed because he thought them somehow imperfect.
He kept looking at her with that same vague expression, as if he had never moved his hand, never touched her.
“Fetch the Qang qahsa villip,” he said quietly. “I shall give you access. You shall shape me new hands. The perfect grutchin will not escape us.”
A trembling, diminutive triumph quivered in Nen Yim’s breast. She nurtured it with caution. Much could still go wrong, but she had found a chance, at least, to save the worldship. Though she wished she could bathe her body in acid to erase Kae Kwaad’s touch, he had agreed to give her the thing she needed most.
As she went to find the villip, she promised herself that whatever else happened, whether she saved the ship or failed, whether she was executed for heresy or not, this wretched, pathetic thing whose touch had polluted her would die before she did.