ZANJ BURNED IN the air, massive, slick, and deadly, radiating war. Her fur sparked and glistened, and her tail lashed, whiplike. The scar that twisted her face burned, too, a rot-bog green that pulled the corners of her eye and mouth. Her fingers dripped ichor and light.
Viv, still collapsed around her dislocated thumb, stopped laughing. Zanj had almost killed her before, had promised to kill her often. She wreaked gleeful destruction through waves of Pride. But after those first few attempts at murder, she’d bent her power to their journey: to escape, to survival, to helping Viv. This Zanj was different.
This was Zanj as she had been before three thousand years of torture inside a star: Zanj, pirate queen, ruthless and unruled, Zanj whose mention scared kings and gods to silence, Zanj the stealer of suns, Zanj who would drive a fleet of her friends to destruction to burn the sky free of Empresses. Zanj, whom the years had marked only by her scar and her crown.
And Viv had thought she knew her.
“Let it go,” Zanj said.
“Of course, Sister.” Yannis, grown immense, hissed like sand down a dune face and released the Star. She bowed low. If Zanj’s arrival worried her, the only sign she gave was an exaggerated formality. “Zanj.”
“Sister Heyshir.”
“Yannis,” she said. “Please. We did not lie about that: we left our old names on the battlefield. Not even our children know them. And is Nioh…?”
“Alive,” she said. “She will heal in time. Yannis.” Zanj tasted the name as she advanced. “A galaxy of names to choose from, and that’s what you went with?”
“It’s a good, simple name. We need no more in Refuge.” This politeness from a giant snake woman made Viv laugh, but her laugh did not draw a glance from Zanj. Zanj, she realized then, had not looked at her since breaking into Groundswell’s core. “I am glad to see you awake, Sister. I had thought you lost.”
“Not glad enough,” Zanj said, “to introduce yourself to me when I arrived in Refuge, or to explain your con. You did not respect me enough to respect my traveling companions.”
“Those mayflies? Do you truly care about them?”
“Of course not.”
Some people—including Viv, especially if drunk—joke about not caring for people, about screwing over friends. Some people—including Viv, drunk or not—joke about these things because jokes hide truths, invert them, preening gilt and flash to protect a vulnerable underbelly. We joke about what we cannot allow ourselves to be.
Zanj was not joking now. Her voice bore no hint of comradeship or concern. It was light, and mocking-friendly, the same tone with which she’d shrugged off any of Viv’s questions she deemed foolish: What do you need? Are you hurt? How can I help?
“Do your children matter?” Zanj asked in the same light, scornful tone. “Do you care about them?”
“Of course,” Yannis said. “In a so-many-greats-grandmotherly kind of way. They keep me occupied, and their brains are useful platforms for our decryption apparatus. Not necessary now, of course! Thanks to this one here. A master key for the Empress’s chains—a valuable tool.” She reached for Zanj, but Zanj slipped away on the air. “I’ve freed your weapon, dear Sister.”
“Out of the goodness of your heart, I am sure.”
She laughed an avalanche. “Of course not! You were gone. And when you returned, you were not what you are now. I watched you—saw you work with those mayflies, indulge them, and never offer them a hint of yourself. If that was you after all. I half anticipated some Imperial trick—She had you as Her plaything for three thousand years. She might have petaled you like a flower, unstitched your mind and bent it to Her fancy and sent a thousand little Zanjlings out into the world to do Her bidding. It hurt to look at you, and see what you’d become. But now—Sister! There’s so much we can do together.”
Zanj raised one eyebrow. “You’ve spent three thousand years playing farmer. Do you really think I’d be interested?”
“Means to an end,” Yannis said. “Means to an end. We have our base. We have a fleet out there, wrecked but recoverable. We have you. And this puppet—” She kicked at Viv, scornful, but her foot was the size of a small bus. Viv tried to roll out of the way but when Yannis’s foot struck her she flew and landed, and lost the world for a reeling, gut-churning moment. She couldn’t breathe—no, she could. She could force herself up. She wasn’t dying. She almost vomited—forced it, choked it down, which was worse. She would die here, after all this. Trampled to death by a giant while Zanj hovered overhead, uncaring.
Wearing a crown that bound her to obey.
Hong had warned her: Give Zanj the chance and she will leave, and never come back. She doesn’t need you. She doesn’t care about you.
The crown shimmered gray on Zanj’s brow.
“Careful,” Zanj said as if discussing a quite abstract position, as if Viv didn’t lie gasping on the fucking ground beneath her, as if she really was a puppet, a tool, a toy. “You’ll break her.”
“Those tiny fleshy hands can snap the Empress’s chains. I almost didn’t believe, but I’ve seen it now. We could seal off a small corner of the Cloud and rule supreme, free of Her gaze. Whole systems, Zanj, not just Refuge.”
“She’s trouble,” Zanj said. “No soul. Just a hunk of meat you have to move around.”
“Meat’s useful. Meat can be forced the old-fashioned way. No need for encryption, for name-games. Just hurt her until she does what you want. And then we will be queens.”
Zanj thought. Viv watched her, aching, sick, small, scared.
Zanj did not think for very long. “Sounds good,” she said. “First, though, I think you have something of mine.”
“Naturally.” Yannis bowed, stepped aside, and offered her the Star. “Take up your weapon, Sister. Let us rule.”