THE FALLEN STAR woke as Zanj drew near.
The luminous cascade beneath its skin built, blinding brilliant blue, and Zanj transformed as well. The gleaming silver weapon of her, the dancing murderer, the pirate queen, gained depth and shadow and the weight of long absence. She stretched out her hand, parting heavy curtains of time.
Viv, prone on the ship’s skin, breathing through the pain in her ribs and head and hand, watched Zanj reach for this weapon that would make her more fearsome still, a force to break planets and challenge an Empress, and she remembered the nothingness in Zanj’s gaze when she looked down at her, that slow opening and closing of her eyes—a blink of idle surprise a swatted gnat was not yet dead. Yannis, giant-sized, flicked her tongue, a serpent’s anticipation.
Hong had been right. She will not come back for you. She is ancient and powerful, and knows no kinship. She obeys her own whims and needs, no more. You may travel together, but she is not your friend. She wants freedom and revenge, and she will cast you aside the moment she can seize either.
And Viv remembered how Zanj looked in battle: the fierce inventive glee with which she stole, with which she killed, the ease and scorn she’d shown as she broke the Ornchief and scattered Pride drones, fighters, battleships, as she slew godlings on mindforge stations. Zanj lived in anarchy. With this weapon, with her old friends to hand, these women she’d fought and lost beside, what limits would she face? What chaos spread? Viv remembered Zanj’s touch on the scar at her wrist—and Zanj’s hand closing around her neck. That was the truth, the other a lie, and all between an act meant to lead them here, to the Fallen Star, to all she’d lost.
Thoughts happen in cascade, ripples back and forth across a pond, building, and new sensations are rocks thrown into this pond, sometimes boulders, sometimes bombs, creating their own waves and ripples. Each rock thrown changes the pond a little, so the next rock’s ripples build to waves.
Zanj reached for the Star. The crown lay iron gray upon her head.
Viv thought, No.
She might have said the word aloud. She did not know.
The crown burned black at once. Zanj roared, dulled, fell to the ship with a thud and a clatter of claws. Yannis knelt beside her, wide, panicked—“Zanj!” Zanj mewled, claws digging into her scalp, teeth bared, lips back, burnt and scarred and in pain, and Viv felt sick to see it. But she’d made the right call. She had.
Zanj’s scream echoed through the radio bands. The Fallen Star flushed red. Yannis grabbed the crown, tried to pull it off, but Zanj reared and kicked her away. Reeling, Yannis settled her gaze on Viv.
Perhaps there was some bond linking Viv to the crown, invisible to human eyes. Perhaps Yannis merely proceeded by elimination: she had not caused Zanj’s collapse, and neither had the Star, which left … Viv. And maybe Viv had spoken her command out loud.
Viv scrambled back, but Yannis’s massive hand swept out, caught her, lifted her up, squeezed. Bones ground bones. Viv’s own scream surprised her. “I don’t know what you have done to my sister,” Yannis said. Pressure built, and with it pain, all through Viv’s body, bones taxed to the verge of breaking, joints crammed against themselves, the burning black-dot panic of asphyxiation as she tried to breathe but could not, and the tingling throughout her limbs as her heart struggled to force blood against the pressure of that gigantic hand. “But be you ever so useful, I will crush you for it.” And as the black bloomed, she knew she was about to die.
“No.” Zanj rose, ragged, panting, free, from the ship—silvery-gray blood on her face, her nails. “Sister. Let me.”
Yannis, respectful, bowing, of course, dear Sister, opened her fist and let Viv slide into Zanj’s palm. Half-blind with agony, Viv used that moment’s freedom to draw a long, shuddering breath, filling her lungs, ignoring the razor blades someone had sewn between her ribs. She was about to die. Zanj would kill her. But Zanj’s crown remained stubbornly, furiously gray as she shrank, as she knelt and dropped Viv in a panting sprawl on the ship’s hull. Perhaps Viv was already dying, and the crown believed there was no more harm Zanj could do.
Zanj touched the Fallen Star.
Its lightning cascade burned gold all through. Fractal facets smoothed. The Star whirled inward, its light-devouring blackness gaining depth as the weapon concentrated itself into a staff of no color save at either end, where its facet edges broke light to rainbows. Zanj gripped the Star, hefted it, spun it experimentally in space, tossed it up and caught it once again, contemplating. The space around her seemed to sing. An earthquake twitch ran through the ship’s many limbs, as if the world itself would flee her.
Viv did not move.
Yannis knelt beside them, her teeth man-sized, her whisper deafening. “Kill her, Sister. She is yours.”
Zanj raised the Star. Viv watched the rainbows at its tip, and wondered if this, too, would hurt.
The Star swept down. It tore through Viv’s skinsuit—and left a trail of burnt air in its wake as it swung past, and around, and, growing through that arc, struck Yannis in the side of the head.
The thud of Yannis’s collapse was heavy and hard enough to send Viv flying, and land her in a different, no less painful, configuration.
When Zanj looked down at Viv, her face held a familiar rage. “What the fuck,” Zanj said, “was that for?”
“What?” Viv, still desperate for breath, still afraid to breathe because it hurt too much, felt as if she’d missed a page.
“What what? That nonsense with the crown! Telling me to stop!”
“You were on her side. You said you didn’t care about me. You were talking about how you’d torture me!”
“I said nothing like that. She did.”
“You blinked at me, and just walked past!”
“That was a wink! A just go with me here wink.”
“You wink with two eyes?”
“‘You wink with two eyes?’” she repeated, mocking, exasperated, and rolled hers. “I had to convince her I was on her side! She could have killed you—she almost did just now. That hurt, Los Angeles. We had a deal. Do they not have deals where you come from?”
“She was your friend.”
Yannis groaned and shifted, still unconscious. Zanj frowned. “Oh, she is. And she’s always been too smart for her own good, and she deserved that ten times over for trying to pull this mess. She’ll forgive me when she wakes up. Probably. Whether I’ll forgive you is another matter entirely. But we’ll settle that later.” She reached down, grabbed Viv’s hand, pulled her to her feet—in spite of Viv’s yelp of pain. “We have the Star. The Cloud started rolling in when you pulled off that chain. We need to get out of here before—”
And then the hull behind her burst open.