THE BIRDS TORE through the forest. They did not call or cry, but their wings beat furiously like dry leaves tossed in a hurricane. Viv curled herself over Xiara, covered her with her arms, and she was vaguely aware of Gray shifting form before the birds struck. Talons and beaks drew bright, painful scratches across her arms and shoulders and back. Nails caught and pulled her short hair. For that first gross minute she only heard wingbeats, and the creak of tendons against the wind.
The worst, for Viv, was the smell of them, acrid oil and down and that weird tang of old paper. That smell, that taste, that was the birds inside her. Airborne bits of them filtered into her as she breathed.
Then it was over. The birds swept past, and Viv and the others were running, over the bridge and up a corkscrew ramp as the forest around them moved, vines uncoiling like snakes from tree branches to slither toward them. She took stock as they sprinted through the wood: Zanj in the front, unharmed; Gray in the rear, shifting back from the shell he’d grown to shelter them into his customary, more mobile form. Hong bore a host of minor scrapes, and one deep cut on his arm. And Xiara—
“Don’t do that again,” Xiara called back over her shoulder.
“What?”
“Protect me,” she said. “How am I supposed to save you, if you keep saving me first?”
Viv did not answer her except with a grin. That grin made all the difference when the column of birds circled back—Gray’s shell saved them long enough to reach the lee of an enormous mandalon tree—and it made all the difference when vines fell from above and snared Viv’s neck before Hong’s clubs burned through them. Because if Xiara could grin, and take umbrage at being saved, they were still fine. Even if all Pasquarai was out to kill them.
A second wave of birds struck them from the side. Something wren-sized slammed into Viv’s temple. Small nails scraped her cheek; she caught the wren’s tiny body and threw it off the platform into space; it whirled and whirled, wings flaring in a mass of other wings, and she did not see if it caught its balance before it struck ground.
She looked up then, and out into the canopy. There were more birds coming, and other things, too. Jagged-jawed centipedes the length of her arm. Red scurrying carpets that must be ants, spanning gaps from tree to tree with bridges of their writhing bodies. And behind them all, Pasquarans in black uniform swinging from branch to branch, slung with weaponry, their movements in perfect time. Viv did not need to stare into their eyes to know they’d have the same glassy look as the birds’. Nobody home. Busy signal. This body is otherwise engaged, please try again later.
How would it feel to be used like that? Would you rail, would you scream? Poor officious eager Yish had seemed happy with his lot, excited to share Pasquarai with guests. He might call it an honor to be taken up like a tool and used, he might even enjoy being held by some mind he believed greater and more noble than his own, take more shelter in it the greater the atrocity he was driven to commit—free to enjoy the visceral thrill of flesh gobbed on his hands while feeling a just and proper revulsion at his deeds. He had no choice. This was not his will. He merely acted out the grim, irresistible judgment of Another.
Viv did not know these people. She tried to imagine her friends, her lovers, this blank-eyed, this willingly surrendered. In some cases, she did not have to imagine. She had lost cousins and coworkers to the last round of hysteria back home, people she’d known and even almost trusted, who refused to see what was coming until far, far too late. After the dust cleared, after things bottomed out, a few repented. Most slept on, and refused to talk about what they’d been, what they’d become. So things got worse.
She had a sudden terrified vision of what that would look like after a thousand years, or three thousand, a culture grown like a kitten in a bottle, its claws curling back into its flesh, its bones warped so it could not stand. And then she turned right, and saw Zanj under wire tension, firm, and understood her rage.
“Can you fight off a forest?”
Zanj tightened her fists. Her tail twitched. She looked so ready to try. “Not without tipping my hand. I don’t want whoever’s running this show to recognize me yet.”
“We need to get out of here.” Blood trickled down her scalp.
“Stay behind me,” Zanj growled, and jumped.
“I’D IMAGINED SOMETHING more subtle,” Viv said after their hijacked flatbed speeder broke through the forest canopy.
Zanj ignored her and gunned the engines. Viv’s seat belt slipped out of her hands—good thing she didn’t need one in the chase that followed, as they smashed through vines and foliage and veered at high g to avoid the interdictor guns of the speeders that erupted from the trees below.
Viv, under pressure, tended to resort to sarcasm.
That said, her lack of seat belt turned out to be an asset when hoverbelt-clad security personnel leapt aboard from a flanking speeder to rush the controls. They moved with lurching puppet-speed, their guns and eyes level, and Viv appreciated the freedom to dodge and duck and fight back without having to unhook herself first.
Gray spread his arms gelatinous and wide, snared three of the cops, and dumped them overboard. Hong fought two, his face smooth save for a half twist of smile. Viv kneed one of them in the crotch, which worked well enough. Xiara caught the back of his uniform and threw him off the speeder.
“Shouldn’t we lie low?” Viv shouted to Zanj. “Plan our attack?”
“No.” Zanj did not turn from the controls. “This ends now.”
Birds billowed from the forest, cries and calls and trills merging to a wail, and Zanj pulled their speeder into a sheer climb. Viv caught the back of a chair to keep from falling. Branches curled between them and the sky, but Zanj struck the trees with the Star and they careened through.
Viv’s grip slipped, she tumbled, and Gray caught her. They broke free into the ring-split sky—where four massive goose-winged craft circled, each emblazoned with a sunburst shield insignia. They looked official and violent even before they opened fire.
“The longer we stay,” Zanj explained as she cursed and veered and dodged, “the more time this place has to get us. Now it doesn’t know who we are, or what we can do. But it’s learning.” A shot from one of the goosewings caught their speeder in the side. The lurch would have tumbled them all down into the trees had Gray not spread himself into a net to keep them on board. Zanj tried to level the speeder, but the best she could do was keep it listing to the left, trailing smoke. It flew straight—more or less. Zanj swore. A goosewing drew behind them, gained altitude; its belly guns swiveled into firing position.
Hong stood, one leg wrapped through his safety belt, his clubs drawn, and waited. His robe flapped in the wind, his expression serene, head cocked as if listening. Before the goosewing’s guns spoke, his arms began to move.
His clubs met the guns’ plasma in midair, and when the blinding flash cleared, Viv saw—only saw, seconds would pass before she could hear again—two goosewings dropping toward the canopy, gushing smoke and trailing fireworks displays of sparks. Hong blinked, serenity broken to surprise, his face caked with charcoal, his robes flared out at jagged angles from his body, his clubs crackling with current—but whole.
“Yish said—”
“Whoever’s running this show,” Zanj growled with an angry jerk of her head toward the spire drawing ever closer, “she’s not me.” Zanj hauled back on the controls, but still their speeder lost altitude. She yanked the stick one last time, then punched the control panel, which shattered.
“I don’t see how that was supposed to improve our situation,” Viv said.
“Hold on.” She unbuckled herself, judged distance to the nearest goosewing, and jumped.
She landed out of sight, leaving Viv to ponder the smashed controls, the rapidly approaching tree line, and her own surging white-knuckled indignation, for which she was, on a detached level, grateful, since it drowned out the terror. She tugged on the stick, which responded even less to her than it had to Zanj, looked up again, and saw bodies rain from the goosewing onto which Zanj had vaulted; it surged forward, swept beneath their own damaged craft, and, on its bridge, at the stick, Zanj raised one hand, inviting: jump!
Arriving on the goosewing’s deck—Gray threw Viv across the gap, with her grudging permission, and Hong caught her—did little to improve matters, unfortunately, as deadly metal rocs screamed across the sky toward them. Military craft. And, though the Zanjspire towered mountainous high, they were still miles away from its root.
“The imposter,” Zanj shouted over her shoulder, over the wind, over the sound of blaster fire, “threw my friends in jail because they stood up to her! Does that sound like something I’d do?”
“Yes,” Viv admitted.
“Definitely,” Gray said.
Hong nodded.
“If you were in a bad mood,” Xiara said. “Or a good one. Or just a mood, generally.”
“I hate you all.” It was the most lighthearted Zanj had sounded since landing. The rocs fired; Zanj danced left, danced right, but even their misses singed the air, and left Viv coughing. “Okay. Dammit. Hold on, I’ll nab one of those birds.”
“Don’t.” Xiara opened the wheels of her eyes, and spread silver traces across her skin. One hand crooked clawlike and with a snarl she lifted it, fast, as if upending a table. As one, the rocs veered at right angles into the sky and scattered, spinning frantic for control. She slumped back into the chair, exhausted; Hong, impressed, offered her a hand of congratulation, which she clutched as if it were the only thing keeping her in her seat.
That was when the artillery opened fire.
The goosewing lasted longer than Viv expected, thanks to Zanj’s evasive action and to an uncharacteristically wild barrage from the ground guns. Perhaps the animating intelligence hadn’t expected them to get this far; perhaps it wasn’t used to artillery, or didn’t want to blast them out of the sky without learning where they’d come from, and how. But one volley caught the goosewing’s underside, and the control panel blared warnings, and Gray gathered them close and wrapped them in a bubble of his glittering substance, and when the speeder blew they soared out and down on wings he made to land, Graystuff flowing from their limbs, in a crater at the Zanjspire’s foot.
Zanj found her feet first, and Viv, to her own surprise, found hers second—Hong and Xiara struggled to rise, both exhausted by the battle, and Gray was still gathering himself into a pool at the crater’s deepest point, digesting soil and grass as he pulled himself together.
Viv’s ears rang, but she heard running feet, the grind of heavy machines, speeder-whine. Soldiers ringed them at the crater’s lip, weapons drawn, aimed, wary. Tails twitched. Even the artillery pieces and the gunships overhead seemed to edge back as Zanj’s glare raked them.
The scarred corner of Zanj’s mouth curled up in something that was not at all a smile. Her eyes glinted. “That’s it. We’re done playing.”
She drew the Star. The seeming she’d worn melted away, and she bloomed with silver edges, her teeth long and curved and glittering, revealed, hungry, furious.
She bent herself to kill.
The gunships veered away. The artillery powered down.
The soldiers fell—not dead, but to their knees.
Zanj blinked.
The ranks of kneeling soldiers rippled, and one armored Pasquaran emerged, with that slow, even puppet walk. She removed her helmet—and at the sight of the scarred, glass-eyed face beneath, Zanj’s mouth opened, soundless, as if ready to answer, though she could not speak. Her burning eyes widened: in confusion, yes, but recognition, too. “Avoun?”
“She’s here,” said the voice that wore the mask of the woman’s face. One of her fingers tapped her temple, a little too hard. “Still inside the skull, though you’ve confused her horribly. She’s General Avoun, now, of course, not the child whose life you saved so many years ago. A good soldier. You might have killed her, if not for me.”
“Let her go.” A growl rose in Zanj’s chest. “Let them all go.”
“Why?” A gentle, teasing voice, comfortable, slight and sly. “You’ve caused no end of trouble, running about, disturbing people who only want to live their lives, do their jobs, get laid, and sleep. If you’d announced yourself, we could have avoided all this mess. But here we are.” She gestured to the arrayed weaponry, to the crater. “I’ll have to paper over the excitement, and make them forget. All in a day’s work.”
“I’ll kill you,” Zanj said. “What you’ve done to my people, to my world—”
“Don’t be so hasty,” the voice replied. “You don’t understand. But you will.”
Zanj’s grip tightened on the Star.
The voice laughed, but the laugh was only sound. It did not reach the lines of Avoun’s face or the blank planes of her eyes. “Let’s not fight, Zanj. There’s no percentage in it. You could kill this little one, sure, and her friends, maybe thousands of your own people before they overwhelmed you. But you don’t want that, and neither do I. You’ve known Avoun since she was a pup. You’ve saved all of their lives at one time or another. I’m just trying to watch out for you, and for our children.” She lowered her arms. “Come to the throne. Let’s talk face-to-face. I’ll not touch you or your friends on the way. No tricks. Just a conversation.”
The silver edges blurred Zanj’s features, obscured her scars. Viv could read her only by rough signs, by set of mouth, by shape of eyes, by the coiling and uncoiling of her tail—but she knew Zanj well enough by now to trace some meaning even there.
Zanj held her weapon braced for war. But to Viv she looked cautious—almost, impossibly, afraid.
“Fight them,” the voice said, “or don’t. Either way you’ll end up face-to-face with me. But if you fight, you’ll have to kill our dear Avoun first. She’s loyal, you understand. She’d defend me to the death, of her own will. It would break her heart if you were the one to kill her. But who knows. She might think it was an honor to die at your hand. She always wanted to grow up to be like you.”
Viv waited. The soldiers knelt, their guns down, but not far away.
Zanj lowered the Star. “Let’s talk.”
The general’s mouth approached a smile. “Good,” she said. “Come on up, Sister. I’m waiting.”