VIV DIDN’T HAVE a “give up” setting. This was one of many reasons she’d made her first fortune, and her second; it was also why she had a hard time finding a consistent board game play group. She had zero chill. She fought when there was hope; she fought when hope was gone. What did surrender ever get anyone? A life spared by another’s sufferance wasn’t worth the work of breathing through. The world was out to get her anyway—far more than it was out to get most of her friends and colleagues. If you didn’t fight, you let it win. If you fought, you might lose, but better to go down aflame and cackling on a ship you’d sailed yourself.
So she fought her chains in the Empress’s throne room, the Star useless in her hand, as the quicksilver blob approached. She seethed with rage. Diamond bonds cut her skin. Her jaw ached. If she could not free herself, if she could not curse, she would die trying.
The Gray flowed toward her and settled, its feet not quite where the floor should be. She glared into the flat, eyeless face, and wondered who this was—a cousin, niece or nephew, a grandmother, Graymother herself, one of the singers in that great chorus above Cape Ann? Did it stand featureless before her now to protect itself from the Empress’s notice, or because the Empress would rather not think about these servant weapons she deployed, so long as they solved her problems?
The Gray stepped closer. She opened her lips and tried to spit. Most of it ran down her chin. Some made it, and crackled and sparked against the silver. The Gray raised a pseudopod arm to its face, and extruded a straightened finger. Was it flicking her off? No—the finger settled where it might have had lips. As if quieting her down.
The Gray reached for her. She cursed it in mumble, pulled away as far as her bonds allowed. But as it reached for her, it refined, bubbled with context. A face surfaced from that mirror pool. Wide, eager red eyes, pale skin. A face she had first seen as a child’s, now planed, nearly a man’s.
Not the Gray. Her Gray.
His hand settled on the diamond bands around her face, and left a silver stain that zipped down facets, across joints, prickling her body like hot needles as it broke her bonds molecule by molecule. Her jaw slacked—which meant her jaw had room to slack. She breathed out awe, relief, fear, saying nothing, watching him.
He did not open his mouth, but a drop of his body, too small to feel, must have trickled into her ear. She heard his voice. “I’ll keep Her busy. Get Zanj. And run.”
She might have spoken then, tried to tell him no, ruined everything. But he was already rising from his crouch, grown large in limb and long in claw and red in tooth, his body a tornado of knives and fire, a roar of hunger and rage that shivered the throne room as it crested and crashed onto the Empress.
Viv didn’t wait to watch what happened next. She lunged across the cracking crystal floor toward Zanj.
The battle did not care whether she was watching, though. She heard, distinct through the chaos, her own voice, a contemptuous “What?” Her green fire, tattered and reflected by whirling Gray, burst through the room, searing the air in Viv’s lungs.
Gray was saving them. Saving her. Or at least, giving them a chance. At the cost of everything. Like before. She hadn’t asked him to this time. She wouldn’t have dared to ask.
He hadn’t told her to wait for him, to join him, to save him. Just to free Zanj, and run. That bastard. Her stomach turned. He didn’t mean to get away.
Half-blind from the battle’s heat, she struck a wall wrapped in cloth: Zanj. Zanj didn’t seem to feel the impact. She hung limp in her restraints, eyes rolled back, breathing hard and shallow and fast. Blood ran down her face. The crown burned black as the singularity beneath them. “Zanj!” She twitched. Could she hear? Or was that pain? Didn’t matter. Viv clawed at the green light that fixed her in place, and it parted like wet paper. Of course. It recognized her. Like all the chains and all the walls and all the ships had recognized her.
Zanj sagged onto Viv, and Viv sank beneath her hot weight. Her spittle flicked Viv’s face. Cradling Zanj’s skull, Viv lowered her to the floor. The crown pulsed black; Zanj curled in agony, struck Viv in the side. Viv heard a crack, and her breath left her. She tried to get her hands around the crown, but Zanj pulled her head out of reach. Zanj flailing in pain could be as deadly as Zanj armed and free. “Stop hurting her!” She’d never tried to order the crown itself before—but god, if her commands had any value, let them be good for something now. “Stop.” All her anger and fear broke into a plea.
The crown paled. Zanj gasped; her eyes spasmed, settled.
An enormous hammer struck the floor, which cracked, deep white fissures spreading in spiderweb beneath them. Two whirlwinds of light, one silver, one green, consumed the center of the throne room—the green, enormous and growing by the instant, had thrown the silver down, and pummeled it now, tearing shreds of mass away. Gray roared, tried to fight back, but his desperate clawing strikes skittered off Imperial jade.
“Zanj!” Zanj’s claw twitched, but her eyes did not open. Viv set the Star on her palm, closed her fingers around it. Still she did not move.
Another blow rocked the throne room. An arch collapsed, raining diamond. Cracks in the floor widened, spread. Viv felt a draft: wind drawn down, down and out. Gray’s roar broke to a modem wail. She glanced over her shoulder—the whirlwinds had condensed to forms, and the Empress stood ten feet tall in midair, crushing Gray’s lean, starved body in her massive arms. He clawed for her eyes, and she squeezed tighter.
“Wake the fuck up, Zanj. We have to get out of here.” The command burned her crown black. Zanj’s eyes flew open, and focused, and her teeth bared, and in a blur she held Viv by the throat.
Her face was sweat and blood and rage and scar. The crown seared black against her brow. Her eyes were wide and crazed and Viv suddenly wondered if Zanj was not seeing her, Viv, but the Empress she had twice tried and failed to kill. Viv tried to speak, to explain, but she could not breathe.
The modem scream rose, twisted—and, with a sickening crack, stopped.
Zanj’s grip loosened.
The Empress let Gray fall. He hit the ground heavy, his eyes staring red. His skin trickled. Lightning darted along his limbs, trying to heal, to re-form. She set her immense claws on his chest, and he began to burn.
He shriveled from the edges out, the millions of mites that made him up squealing, popping, and sizzling as they failed to vent waste heat. The Empress watched him die, locked him in place.
“Zanj.” She could barely speak. “Please.”
And, with a snarl, Zanj threw Viv aside. She stood as much as her ruined body would allow, raised the Star, and slammed it into the throne room floor.
Which shattered.
Viv tumbled in shards and thinning air. Cold stung her eyes; she should cover them, protect herself, but what would that accomplish, really? The Empress burned green in the void where her throne room had been, far above already and receding; they fell toward blackness beneath, toward the bent light around the hole that was Viv’s world, singularity now and forever, herself eating herself, and out there in the storm of cutting mirrors, Zanj tumbled, flew, caught a handful of silver from the heart of a shape of flame-licked char, then somersaulted back, nearer, ever nearer, eyes burning white, breaking the mirrors all about them, real and furious, and her face was the last thing Viv saw before the black.