The aftermath took weeks to resolve. Tembi spent most of it next to Moto’s bedside, as she had been ordered to stay on Found until the inquisition was over. Uneasy and unwelcome at Lancaster, she had learned the hospital was the only place the channelsluts couldn’t bother her if she wanted to get out of her house.
Her house. Which Matindi had so carefully cleaned before she was murdered, and all of her second mother’s work undone by a battalion of terrified Chameleon children—
No. She couldn’t go home. She slept in her bed and showered when she remembered those were options, and the rest of the time was spent in the hospital or in Matindi’s gardens. There was newfound joy in gardens and in gardening, her hands in the rich soil summoning an elusive peace hiding deep in her soul, but even Matindi had needed to go inside and enjoy regular breaks from her plants.
What was she supposed to do?
“You will stay on Found and be the very picture of obedience,” Domino had told her, when Tembi had tried to object to home imprisonment. “You owe Lancaster.”
Did she, though? Did she really?
For the time being, she thought she did. She had yanked a whole playground of horrors into the light, and there was no hiding the truth of it. The Sagittarius Armed Forces had tried. They truly had. At first, they said Camp Investment was private property and no one could trespass. Well, that didn’t work, especially when the Earth Assembly needed to send in security teams to ensure the facility didn’t pose any health risks besides the…well, besides the whopping huge mass graves. Then, the Blackwings tried to limit access to certain areas of the compound. This failed for the same reasons. And once the research facilities had been cracked open and the vids and gramms taken by the security teams started to sneak out across the channels, it was a deluge, a flood, a mighty crashing tsunami of invasive channelsluts breaking down the walls, pushing cameras and diagnostic ’bots into every tiny port and uncovering all of the filthy secrets that Tembi had managed to avoid on her brief self-guided tour.
The Blackwings then tried to say that Camp Investment was an aberration, that they had had no idea the conditions were so poor in this new third-gen facility of their own design and ownership. That lasted just as long as it took the channelsluts to break into the other Hawk-class facilities and report back that conditions were as bad there, and much worse in some of the older camps. (Nobody ask the channelsluts why they couldn’t have flown a couple of ’bots over these facilities long before now, since those infamous mass graves had always been outrageously infamous.) Finally, once everything seemed to be calming down, the bookkeepers appeared and used the Blackwings’ financial records to lay bare a whole new set of horrors.
Tembi kept her mouth shut throughout it all. Better for her to be called a hero or a villain, to be torn apart time and again by people who had never met her, who had never even learned how to pronounce her name, than for them to learn the truth.
She had to tell someone, though, and so, once they finally had time to sneak away to the place with all the fish, she had told Bayle, still whispering despite being the only humans around for hundreds of millions of kilometers, that the Deep had been the one who had made the decision to take Camp Investment to Earth Plaza.
“No,” Bayle had whispered back, blue eyes wide in fright.
“It wasn’t me. I didn’t ask it to do that! I swear,” Tembi had said, and had then started to name things she held as sacred to force her friend to believe her. Bayle had silenced Tembi before she could finish the first words, and had pulled her into a hug and let Tembi weep.
If the truth ever came out…
It couldn’t come out. The Blackwings hadn’t been defeated, but their reputation had suffered mightily thanks to the Deep. And while Kalais had been shouting about how the Deep had supported the Sabenta’s cause for years, the very idea that the Deep would do something so dramatic, so irresponsible, so wholly reckless on its own—
No. It couldn’t come out.
There had been a public statement about her involvement. She admitted guilt, top to bottom. The Council and the channelsluts had kept asking why, so she had given them the Chameleons, and enough of their bodies had been unearthed from the graves to prove her words true. Paisano was trotted out and became a celebrity in his own right, a king in exile. Chameleons from across the galaxy began to find their way to him, as did offers of safety and new permanent homes. Paisano and the Chameleons, at least, were well on the way to a happy ending of their own.
At least Tembi had finally gotten some answers from Domino.
Matthew had come to that meeting with her. He had lost weight since Matindi’s death, with new lines burned into the edges of his eternally young face. The painted branches on his cheek were bare of all greenery. Exhaustion lay thick over him and his shoulders were bowed, even as he stared at Domino with fresh loathing. “You sent the Blackwings to Lunair,” he said to her as soon as they appeared in her office.
“No.” Domino didn’t try to dissemble. “But I received word they would soon raid the colony, and I attempted to pull Tembi and Bayle from danger without becoming involved. Had I known Matindi was there, I would have called her away, too.”
“We don’t believe you.” Tembi echoed her second father. “Cooper said he needed my help disarming a bomb right before the raid began. That hadn’t happened in months. It wasn’t coincidence.”
Domino spread her hands, all grace. “I was not the one who made that call,” she replied. “I believe someone in the Blackwing Army built that gateway to the Rails, and made sure it would be used to distract you, and to ensure you would be off-planet before the raid began. Your involvement would complicate an already serious situation. My research team is delving into the data that the Sabenta spy gave you. I’m sure they will tell us that weaponizing the Rails may be the most likely way to murder a Witch. Perhaps a smaller version of that gateway is how Matindi was killed.
“However…” she paused, knitting her hands together in her lap. As she did, the room took on an icy cast, all warmth slipping away. She locked eyes with Tembi, and the now-familiar sensation of Domino sliding into her thoughts took root. “However, we are not here to talk about my motives. Tembi, why did you do it?”
“I didn’t.” She sat in the chair across from Domino and folded over herself into a small, anxious ball. She had been sitting on this for days—only Bayle and Kalais knew the truth—and it hurt to keep it to herself. “The Deep did.”
Matthew inhaled sharply. “Tembi—”
“She’s not lying, Matthew.” Domino had leaned forward, still staring intently at Tembi. “Or, she believes she is telling the truth, and Tembi’s thoughts are always among the least complicated I’ve ever experienced. She is as straightforward as a song.”
“Oh, sweet gods,” said Matthew. “Tell us the story again, and this time, don’t leave anything out.”
So she did, starting from the time when the ships had landed at Camp Investment. When she reached the part where Winter was weeping silently in the conference room, with General Baldwin’s strange weapon pointed at her, Domino told Tembi to stop.
“What happened to this woman, Winter?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I lost her on Earth.” Tembi glanced towards the windows, where Camp Investment was tucked away behind the silken curtains. “She’s here somewhere.”
“Likely rounded up with the rest of those who escaped,” Domino murmured to herself, jotting down a note on a nearby tablet. “And it was at that moment the Deep chose to jump the camp to Earth?”
Tembi nodded.
“And you’re certain you didn’t make the request, or suggest anything that could be interpreted in that manner?”
“It never even occurred to me,” she said truthfully.
Matthew looked at Domino, who nodded. “I can be misled,” she told him. “I can be lied to. In this instance, Tembi is doing neither by intention.”
He shook his head. “Oh, kiddo. You let this land on you and it wasn’t your fault?”
She grinned sadly at him. “The Deep doesn’t make mistakes,” she said, echoing her old lessons from Lancaster’s early training. “Only Witches make mistakes.”
Domino suddenly sunk in her chair, her queenly posture sagging, and she pressed her face into her hands. “We can’t help you.”
“I’m not asking you to.” Tembi and Bayle had already gone over the options, all of which were middling-bad to terrible. “It’s been a little less than three thousand years since the Turtle Incident. Lancaster is due to make an example of a misbehaving Witch.”
And so, as Lancaster’s elder Witches went through the motions of defending her before they reached the inevitable conclusion, Tembi performed her duties as best she could. She avoided the channels, but the stories still reached her. How she had moved a thousand buildings and a million people—living, dying, and dead!—to the Plaza. How she had put the innermost workings of the Blackwings’ processing camps on display. How Camp Investment, removed from its moorings and repositioned beneath the eyes of the galaxy, had been subject to scrutiny, followed by outrage and a great shift in public opinion against the Blackwings. It was one thing to know that people were being interred and murdered in prison camps. It was another thing entirely to see this laid out before the eyes of the galaxy, with the greedy channel crews and their spokesluts dripping hot juicy access all over the Plaza.
Very hard for Lancaster to claim it wasn’t involved in the war. Not unless it sacrificed one of its own, this young Witch with more power than she should have had. Mistakes had been made, yes, but this time, the Witch didn’t kill anyone!
It didn’t hurt. Not as much as Tembi thought it would. During her brief stay in Camp Investment, she had already decided she needed to leave Lancaster. If this was the last thing she could do to help Matthew, then it’s what she’d do. Besides, excommunication from Lancaster didn’t mean she would never be with the Deep again, after all, and even if she never made another credit, her investments were chunky enough so she’d never hurt for money. The opportunity to change how the other Witches saw the Deep? She’d never forgive herself for sossing that up. And she’d miss the Library, of course, and swimming with Bayle in one of the campus’s many ponds. The holiday parties where Lancaster Tower was lit in crystal, where Witches often drank enough for the Deep to sweep into the unoccupied space between their ears and use them to speak and walk around, and then swooped out of them in a great rush which left them as sober as—
Tembi snapped upright so quickly that her tablet fell from her lap, beeping at her in protest as it clattered on the floor. She barely noticed, her attention fixed on Moto.
The Deep’s party trick of dropping into a drunk Witch’s body for a few moments and then leaving a fully sober and embarrassed Witch as it jumped out… Could it work? Probably not. Alcohol and whatever was in Moto’s system were both sedatives, but cats and chickens were both animals and she had seen the one happily eat the other.
But when the Deep had spoken through her at Camp Investment, it had rocked Tembi to her soul, had made the world as bright as fire. Could the presence of the Deep burn the impurities out of Moto? There was no reason in the world—any world—not to try.
She leaned forward, close enough to whisper without the chance of being overheard. “Deep?”
Nothing.
“Deep?” She tried again, louder, this time holding the mental image of a Witch in their holiday finest and speaking in a voice so rich and melodious that it seemed impossible that it could come from an ordinary human throat. “Deep? Can you talk to me?”
::TEMBI?::
The Deep spoke, not through Moto, but through the reflections of every surface in the small room. Around her, Tembi could hear the hospital wing’s equipment flare to life in response, even as the workers and patients stayed unaware.
“Through Moto,” she whispered, eyes shut tight, willing the Deep to understand. “Talk to me through Moto!”
A pause. Then, Moto’s chest fluttered with a deep breath, and he sat up.
::DARK:: he said in a voice that was Moto’s own, but also not.
“Open your eyes,” she said, and he did, looking around the room as if he had never before seen the inside of a hospital. He saw Tembi and his head tilted towards her like a small but curious predator.
::YOU ARE SMALL:: he said, as he poked her on the cheek painted in golden birds.
“I know, buddy,” she said, grinning. “Thanks for talking to me. You can leave Moto’s body now.”
::SAD:: the Deep replied, and Tembi barely had time to wonder if her otherworldly friend wanted her to know that Moto felt sad, if being inside Moto made it feel sad, or if humans as a species were simply pathetic before Moto toppled forward onto the hospital bed.
Face-down in the sheets, Moto groaned and slowly dragged one arm forward to push himself upright, and Tembi began to laugh.
“Did it work?” she said, as she helped him up. “Are you you?”
He blinked at her, dark eyes wet from the light. “Tembs?”
“Don’t jump,” she told him, as she wrapped both hands around his nearest arm. “Promise me you won’t jump, okay?”
“I…” He scrubbed the sleeve of his hospital robes against his face, stopping with a jolt and staring at the fabric before he tried it again, more carefully. “How long have I been asleep?”
“You can feel that?”
“Not happy about it,” he said, grinning at his lie. It was the old Moto grin, half-wicked, half-kind, and she nearly broke out in tears from relief. “I’ve been out for a while, haven’t I?”
“Promise me you won’t jump first.”
“That long?”
“Promise me!”
He submitted, his ears moving forward in acquiescence. “I promise. Can I use the bathroom?”
“Yeah,” she said, “but I’m going with you while you do.”
“Hey!”
They compromised with her sitting outside the door to the hospital room’s small toilet closet, talking loudly to him and also reminding the Deep every other minute that Moto can’t jump yet! The story of why he was in a hospital was a long one. About a third of the way through, Moto exited the bathroom and joined Tembi on the floor, his hands entwined with hers. When she reached the part she couldn’t tell—the part she still needed to tell, needed to force out of her, the necessary catharsis of purging that moment when Matindi shattered into sharp pieces—Moto pulled her against him and let her cry herself out. He smelled of medical cleansers and, beneath that, of home.
“Is that the end?” he asked quietly.
Tembi shook her head and let her head rest against his chest as she told him about Camp Investment in a whisper low enough to reach his ears alone. When she finally finished, she let him process in silence, listening to him breathe.
After several minutes, he said, “Earth.”
“Yeah.”
“In the Plaza?!”
“Yeah.”
Moto exhaled slowly, and then asked in a low voice, “You’re sure you didn’t ask the Deep to move the entire compound? Not even by accident?”
“I’m sure,” she sighed. “The Deep made the decision, not me.”
“That doesn’t sound right.” He shifted his weight and gently moved Tembi into the crook of his arm, and then stood with ease. “It doesn’t understand politics. There’s no way it would have understood the…the value of putting the camp on Earth!”
“Slow,” she reminded him as he began to stretch. “The ’bots kept you fresh, but you’ve been asleep.”
“For how long?” he asked her again, and she gritted her teeth and told him. “Eight months?!”
“You weren’t thinking clearly when you went into stasis,” she said. “We couldn’t wake you up. At first, we thought you’d been hit with a mindfuck, but then you just kept sleeping, and they couldn’t find a cause.”
Moto rubbed his face, pausing again halfway through to glance at his own hands. “That’s so strange,” he muttered, as he turned to examine his face in the mirror. “I think I was hit with a mindfuck,” he added, as he tugged at his cheeks. “I don’t remember a lot of the last few months. The ones where I was still awake, I mean, last year. I’m really sorry about that Crisp. It seemed like such a good idea at the time! Gods, it was so expensive, too.” Tembi hurled a pillow at him. Her friend caught it and tossed it back to her, still smiling. “Sorry I’ve put you through all of this, Tembs.”
“It’s fine,” she said with a shrug. “I’ll be excommunicated from Lancaster, but they can’t force the Deep to abandon me. That’s all that matters.”
He froze, staring at her. “What?”
“I mean…” He was staring at her, his ears frozen as if she had said something so unforgivable that he wouldn’t allow himself to hear it. “I mean, Moto, they can’t blame the Deep! Planting a death camp on the Earth Assembly’s pavilion is nearly as bad as the Turtle Incident. If I take the blame, say I told it to move the camp? Everybody will still trust the Deep.”
“Tembi, you sodding—” He stopped and rubbed at his eyes again. “You went to Domino with this, didn’t you, and she agreed to let you take the blame.” It wasn’t a question, so she didn’t bother to answer. “All right, we’ve got to fix this,” he muttered, as he began to search the room. A pile of folded robes in browns and reds appeared on the bed. “Thanks, Deep. Tembs, none of this was your fault. I’m not going to let you protect her. Not after what she did.”
She stood to face him. “What did she do?”
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” he said. “Not after Matindi—”
“What did she do?!”
“Domino helped the Blackwings build that gateway to the Rails.”