Ashes of Victory: The Expansion Series, #4

By Caitlin Demaris McKenna

Betrayed. Abandoned. And sent to a city at war.

 

Shomoro paid the price for defying the High Council. With her status revoked, the surarchy she once served has summoned her to explain her fifteen-year absence. Now she must find exonerating evidence, or face the surarchy empty handed.

 

It won't be easy. Her best lead is in Diego Two, a city afire with civil unrest after the Djandjer-Pralsh's failed revolution.

 

But the greatest threat is still to come: embittered by the deaths of his comrades, Gau has enlisted the warlike Urd in his scheme for revenge.

 

And what he brings to Diego Two will be a disaster no one can prepare for…

 

ASHES OF VICTORY is a thrilling science fiction adventure where the fires of defeat loom over every triumph. Get ASHES OF VICTORY today!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Caitlin Demaris McKenna
• Release date: Mar 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781777199548

Caitlin Demaris McKenna

Caitlin Demaris McKenna is a freelance editor and writes about future technologies and faraway worlds. She has visited three continents, and lived in Vancouver and New York. She grew up in the Minnesota woods, where on clear winter nights, she would look up at the stars and wonder.

Book preview

1

Gray concrete turned to blue jungle and then to bluish gray mountains outside the window of the Urd shuttle. Gau focused on the landscape passing by at subsonic speeds, rather than the violently red and yellow interior of the craft. The decor was calibrated to be comforting to Urd, who had evolved as savanna predators on Urdek, hiding in tall yellow grass waiting for prey. Looking at the bright slashes of red and yellow slightly nauseated him.

Or maybe the root of his nausea was something else, something much closer than the painted wall of the shuttle he leaned against. If this meeting didn’t prove fruitful he would be out of ideas for the first time in a long while.

Landing in seven gralsshs, an Urd voice barked over the comm. Gau mentally translated the Urd unit of time. Ten minutes. If he squinted, he could see the walled compound that was their destination squatting in a forested valley between two bare spines of mountain.

Gau moved to a seat in the passenger cabin and strapped himself in. The seat was designed for Urd, but fortunately their body plans were similar enough; he settled his long lower body onto the elongated padded portion meant for an Urd’s torso and tail. He’d just finished buckling the wide safety strap over his lower back when Meersh entered the cabin.

Seven gralsshs, the Urd repeated in English before strapping himself into the couch beside Gau’s. I suggest you use the time to remind yourself of the proper obeisances due Rah-leader. We are fortunate that in her infinite graciousness she agreed to this meeting.

With an outsider—not even an Urd, Gau filled in. He heard the unspoken warning in Meersh’s admonition: Don’t waste her time.

I won’t do anything to compromise your position. Gau half raised one arm in a shadow of the seph’s salute.

Meersh turned his blunt head away to mutter under his breath. Gau caught the end of it: … last time.

There was only one thing that could refer to. Last time was different, Gau said. He’d had a different plan then, and Rreluush-Tren had been incidental to it. Remarkable for providing his first follower in Arkk, but not somewhere he’d expected to see again. Making Meersh into an unwilling point of contact had been mere insurance.

The Urd turned his golden-yellow eyes back on Gau. His black slitted pupils were dilated in what Gau guessed, from the breathless quality of Meersh’s voice, was a mix of apprehension and expectation. I hope so, Meersh said.

The roar of engines as the shuttle descended cut off whatever Gau might have said to that. The reverberation of struts against concrete signaled its touchdown in the courtyard. He followed Meersh out of the tiny shuttle onto the broad landing pad.

The mountain estate had only one airfield. The meeting place had been chosen more for its distance from the Terran centers of influence on Rreluush-Tren than its amenities. High concrete walls enclosed the landing pad in a square of dirt with a fringe of blue-green grass around the perimeter. A froth of blue jungle peeked above the walls on three sides. The fourth wall contained a low, slot-like door he assumed led to the residence proper.

Drawing his cloak tight against the chilly breeze, Gau followed Meersh to a second Urd who waited at the door. She was half as big again as Meersh but dressed as plainly, in a simple leather vest that encased her torso and left her limbs and tail bare. An insignia Gau didn’t recognize was embossed into the leather of one shoulder.

She bobbed her torso at them in a perfunctory bow. Welcome to Hunter’s Fastness. I am Ehrliss, she said in English, with an accent that went hard on the gutturals. Her dark amber eyes narrowed as they met Gau’s. He felt as though a laser scan swept him. Rah-leader awaits you inside. Follow me.

After Meersh’s constant admonitions on the trip over, Ehrliss’s lack of ceremony caught Gau off guard. He hoped Rah shared Ehrliss’s directness; maybe the two of them could conduct negotiations without too much bowing and scraping.

The low concrete facade of the estate opened up into an airy mall of blue-green grass arranged around a rectangular pool that held watery reflections of the mountains.

Apart from a covered veranda that ran the perimeter, there were no large permanent structures. The shadows of smaller rooms led off the veranda; Gau wondered if these might be storerooms or utility rooms. Most of the estate’s life was clearly conducted in the central open portion: parts of the grassy sward had been excavated into sculpted amphitheaters filled with long padded seats like those on the shuttle. A covered area contained a firepit and stone counters, and another held nests filled with soft-looking grass. A sleeping quarters, perhaps. Each domestic area was ringed with poles wrapped in canvas. Gau guessed these were tents that could be deployed to keep off rain, though everything was currently open to the yellow sky.

Everything was exposed from all sides. It was as far from the protection of an Osk burrow as Gau could imagine. He kept expecting something to move in his peripheral vision and had to resist the impulse to scan the open plain. His skin crawled with agoraphobia at the thought of sleeping out in the open.

Where will Meersh and I be staying? he asked Ehrliss’s back.

I will show you to your accommodations after the meeting, she said without breaking stride. My servants have prepared something that should be suitable for an Osk.

I’m sure it will be, Gau said. It would be, as long as he had a roof over his head.

Ehrliss led them to an enclosed tent at the far end of the mall. She bade them wait and disappeared inside. There was a quiet exchange of Urdeki inside the tent. Ehrliss emerged and bowed toward the tent flap. From within came a single English word.

Enter.

Meersh went first, crawling on his belly so that the tent flap was barely disturbed by his passage. Gau followed, keeping his eyes politely averted. His first impression of Rah-leader was of her talons, capped in gold. Meersh tugged on his leg, teeth bared in a grimace. His intent filtered through to Gau. Meersh wanted him to kneel in the dirt, or even better, lie on his belly.

Meersh had gone over this with him. Rah was the utmost leader of the Urd, She Whose Territory Is the World. She deserved proper obeisance. Gau had agreed easily at the time; if it made her more receptive to his proposal, he could bow and scrape to an alien leader for a few seconds.

But now his legs had gone rigid, refusing to bend. He’d spent most of his life abasing himself to Lorsk, until he’d made the choice that had undone everything. He came to Rah as an equal, with something she would want. If that wasn’t good enough—

Meersh started to hiss something, but a cool voice cut over him. It’s all right, Administrator. Our guest need not kneel. To Meersh, or them both, she added, You may rise.

Gau took it as permission to lift his gaze. The leader of the Urd across two planets was a bit smaller than her vassal Ehrliss. She stood in front of a curved desk, an activated console embedded in its surface. Her leather vest was almost identical to Ehrliss’s, but no insignia rode its shoulder; the only indication of Rah’s status were the golden caps that covered her talons, and a second smaller set on her clawed hands.

I read the report from our esteemed administrator with interest. Rah nodded at Meersh, who ducked his head at the attention. I will be even more interested to see what evidence you have to support it. Her tone was neutral, betraying neither credulity nor disbelief at his claim that the Universal Church was constructing a secret fleet of warships in the deep reaches of space.

But first, perhaps you can answer another question—why have you come to me with this, Gau Shesharrim?

He wasn’t surprised she knew his name; he’d given Meersh more than enough to put the pieces together, and despite his self-effacing performance, Meersh was not a stupid Urd.

What do you mean—Empress? He added the honorific after Meersh nudged him.

She waved that away. Rah-leader. ‘Empress’ is some ridiculous construct thought up by Terrans with no concept of pack hierarchy.

Gau had no concept of pack hierarchy either, but he jabbed his snout as though he did.

Rah-leader tilted her head and examined him. He felt abruptly as though he should look for some tall grass to hide in. You have always attacked from the shadows. Bided your time, gathered allies as accustomed to living in hiding as yourself. You struck and then disappeared again. She enumerated his history on her gold-capped claws. Your assassinations on Olios 3. The attack on the Embassy building in Neo-Chicago. And now this latest attack on the Church. She spread those clawed hands in question. Why stand up from the grass and show yourself to a ruler, a Terran ally at that?

He suppressed a snort. As though the Urd were Terran allies except when it suited them. But his amusement was short-lived—the answers that came to mind killed it in the shell.

Because I’m desperate. Because I have no one else to give this to. Because…

Because the Djandjer-Pralsh failed, he said. With a movement slow enough to not alarm either Urd—he’d been scanned for weapons of course, but that still left his bone blades—Gau removed the data sliver from his cloak pocket.

This is all that’s left of our campaign against the Universal Church. Twenty-five years of living in hiding and attacking from the shadows. Twenty-five years of my life. His voice shook with an unfeigned anger. Let her hear it and know he was serious. And none of it mattered. But it might have, a traitorous voice whispered. It would have, if only Lorsk hadn’t said the one thing beyond tolerating.

Gau blinked away the voice. That path was closed now. I’m no longer interested in chipping away at the Church while they blast holes in my people. Their whole edifice needs to burn. He placed the data sliver on the desk before the Urd leader. I believe this will show you why.

She took the sliver from the desk and slid it into the console. Gau found his lips twitching upward at her apparent trust that the device wasn’t a carrier for some kind of cyberweapon, until she said, This will take a few moments. The console is scanning your device in a gated environment before it attempts to read it.

As the machine scrubbed his data sliver for malware, Rah ushered them out of the tent. Shall we take refreshment while we wait? Ehrliss will bring out the console once it’s finished downloading.

Meersh stumbled over his talons making way as Rah exited without waiting for Gau’s answer. Her assumption of his obedience was the first sign of her leaderly status that he’d noticed. This wasn’t the only odd thing about her behavior in the meeting, either. Gau mulled this as he followed the two Urd to the kitchen area with the firepit and counters.

There was no sign of Ehrliss or any other Urd in the kitchen. Small mugs of water and less-identifiable liquids had already been set out for them, along with plates piled with raw, purplish-red meat.

Mindful of etiquette, Gau sat on one of the low stone benches only once Rah had seated herself and accepted water and meat from Meersh. But he was too curious to keep from saying, You seem to be taking all this in stride, Rah-leader. Aren’t you at least surprised at the news about the Djandjer-Pralsh?

She plucked a cutlet from her plate with a capped claw and swallowed it whole. No.

The newsfeeds reached Rreluush-Tren, then? That was one of the benefits of access to the Expansion’s Relativity Defiant hyperwave network.

Rah sipped at a dark liquid Gau hadn’t dared try. What there was of it. I saw the Djandjer-Pralsh’s final broadcast, in which they vowed to tear down the Church’s rotten bulk. Came close to making a good start with the Father. But then their feed went dark, and no one’s heard from them since. It isn’t difficult to see a bad ending in that, even before you confirmed it.

Gau had been about to try his own cutlet, but his hand stilled halfway to his mouth. There’s been nothing more? No further news? No … no survivors?

Rah shrugged. Nothing definite, other than yourself.

His stomach soured, destroying any appetite he might have had. He forced himself to eat the unidentified meat anyway, mechanically chewing the rubbery cutlet. He didn’t want to be seen rejecting her vassal’s hospitality.

Like a signal flag for his thoughts, Ehrliss appeared in his peripheral vision, cradling the console. She set it on a counter at the very edge of the kitchen area and retreated, bowing to Rah-leader. Ehrliss scooted backward around the amphitheater seating area.

Ah, Rah remarked once Ehrliss was out of sight. Let’s see what we have. She turned the console so Gau could see it too, even though he knew what was on it, and opened the file.

Pages of schematics unfurled before them. Their complexity obscured their sheer scale, until Rah reached the three-dimensional holo-models that had been generated from those initial flat renders. She projected one into the air above the console, where it rotated slowly, the pale blue planes of the model wavering in the yellow midday light.

Each holo-model—there were twelve in all—represented a single spacecraft. The size would have been impossible to judge if not for the helpful scale measure included in each projection. From its blunt, conical nose to the massive maws of the multiple engines at its stern, each windowless hulk was approximately five kilometers long.

Rah was silent for several minutes as she paged between the schematics, holo-models, and the accompanying metadata. Most of the text was too technically dense for Gau to parse—though he’d recognized some of it as hyperstream coordinates for the shipyard where the fleet was under construction. It was in a part of the wormhole network with no other stream gates close by. An astrographic dead end.

Where did you get this data? Rah asked finally.

From a data center in one of the White Arrow bases we destroyed in Diego Two, he said.

She swiped through the metadata again, scanning only the English script this time. It doesn’t say anything about what the craft are to be used for.

Gau jabbed. That data must have been stored on a different server. I—we—were in a hurry at the time and couldn’t search everything.

She returned the focus to the rotating holo-model, stroking a claw along the bullet-shaped hull as though it were tangible. Those engines are huge. Far larger than they need to be to propel even such a large ship to cruise velocity. And this … She indicated the faint outline of a long rectangular hatch in the side, which Gau had also puzzled over. It seems some kind of arm or spar could be deployed here. She rotated the projection. There are two more ringing the hull. Like anchors or grapples. But what for?

I don’t know, Gau said. But I propose we find out. With your Empire’s intelligence network and connections to the Expansion’s resources, we can learn what the Church is up to out there, and who’s backing this project.

Rah scratched under her wattles. And what would your role be in this, Shesharrim? Your history suggests you’re not in the habit of giving without asking for something in return.

Her directness might have stung, but he actually found the naked transaction it promised refreshing. For once he wouldn’t have to dance around the truth or lie about his aims.

I’ve made clear what I want.

This data isn’t enough to destroy the Church, Rah said. She softened it by adding, Not by itself. But it offers a place to look for more. After your faction’s broadcast about the massacre, I’m not surprised there is more.

If he’d been expecting some dramatic moment where Rah swore to expose the truth, he would have been disappointed. But over the past few weeks, Gau had gotten used to expecting very little. Her expression of interest was enough.

My analysts will need time to review the technical data. She snapped the console shut, banishing the holo of the blunt starship. I will call on you again with my decision.

Gau bowed low as Meersh’s belly scraped beside him. Grass rustled under Rah’s talons as she walked away.

Ehrliss returned to collect them and show them their quarters. She gave them both a running commentary on the available facilities in Hunter’s Fastness as they walked down one of the covered verandas. She didn’t seem discomfited in her role as host. In fact, she seemed more friendly by a body length than most Urd he’d met—though Gau would be first to admit that that sample size was small.

You’ll be billeted in the visitors’ quarters, she was saying to Meersh, with a wave at the nesting area. Instead of stopping there, she led them to one of the closed doors in the perimeter wall. Opening it, Ehrliss revealed a small square room with grass laid over the stone floor and a small bathroom cubicle built into one wall. A slit window high up in the wall illuminated the room.

I must ask that you stay here, she said to Gau. It’s not much, but it’s private. And hidden from casual observers who might wonder what an Osk was doing on Rreluush-Tren, he surmised.

The arrangements more than suited Gau. He thanked Ehrliss, and she departed to do whatever the scion of an Urd house did when not carrying out the will of her leader.

He had stepped halfway into the room before he realized Meersh was still hanging around the veranda. Are you lost? Gau asked.

The Urd ducked his head at Gau’s brusque tone, but didn’t take the hint. I am sorry, he said.

For what?

Meersh looked up at him, golden eyes wide with sincerity. For the loss of your pack.

He tensed from the shoulders down. What did you say?

The Djandjer-Pralsh, Meersh said. What a tragedy, to lose your whole—

He didn’t let Meersh finish. Gau lunged out of the doorway and pinned Meersh against the wall with his forearm. He unsheathed the blade, letting the edge just tickle the pulsating skin of the Urd’s throat. Meersh’s talons scrabbled against the concrete floor, his eyes wide. He was one and a half times the size of Gau, all wiry muscle, with venomous claws and talons, but Gau was too furious to care.

If I ever hear their name in your mouth again, he hissed, you’ll die.

The Urd almost nicked himself on Gau’s blade as Gau released him. The Osk slammed the door to his tiny room shut, leaving Meersh on the veranda, rubbing his throat and whimpering.

2

The plain sliding door in the low-ceilinged residential warren could have led to any apartment on Teluk. Mose’s own parents had lived in a warren very like this one. Yet as he waited in the curved hallway, his palms started to prickle with sweat; he smelled the salt of apprehension rising off himself and closed his eyes as he concentrated on stemming the nervous release of scent.

Shomoro had kept training him in controlling his nanoswarm when time permitted, which was less often now as their dawn and dusk active hours became increasingly devoted to mission prep. They’d only recently begun working on modulating his autonomous functions—the sensation of pain, breathing, heart rate, and the release of scents in response to stress and emotions. Some of it he’d done already in his seph training, but controlling scents was new.

It took a good few minutes to reduce his saline case of nerves. He used the time to calm himself in more familiar ways, employing a seph breathing exercise to bring his anxiety under control.

The soft whisper of the sliding door still startled him. Selnes emerged from the interior, letting the door shut behind her. She wore a gray robe and overcloak, not so different from the oilcloaks she’d favored when they used to go fishing together fifteen years and a lifetime ago—except for the Ril Surarchy seal pinned to the fabric gathered at one shoulder.

They’re ready for us, she said with a gentle touch on his arm. Are you?

Mose licked lips gone dry as he considered. He’d told his story—what he’d done, why he’d done it and had kept doing it—to so many. Told it to old friends and his family and a tribunal of councilors sitting in judgment. None of those times had been easy, but this time he dreaded it more. He’d even hoped, in a mean moment, that Selnes wouldn’t be able to find them, or that they would reside on Oskaran and not Teluk and he would be able to put off this meeting for a few more months or years.

She must have sensed at least a flicker of this in his silence. We don’t have to do it now, she said. Both of them are local, they’re not going anywhere.

Mose narrowed his eyes, covering a wince. Selnes had clearly meant to be reassuring, but all her offer to postpone things had done was remind him why he couldn’t put this off.

He cut the air. They don’t deserve that. They don’t deserve any of what I’m about to do to them. I’m ready.

Selnes bowed and led him into the apartment.

It was a modest three or four chambers molded out of creamy ceramic to look like an underground burrow, complete with high slit windows that let in the purpling Teluk evening. He noted shutters that could be closed against the brighter mornings and afternoons. Handmade weavings in traditional Osk styles, mostly geometric designs but with some figurative Seasonal motifs, adorned the walls of the hallway and the small sunken living room Selnes led him to.

The oskven of the pair was probably a generation older than Mose, with plentiful gray streaked through her dark brown mane. The younger oskvan sitting on the couch opposite her made his stomach turn over in a burst of false recognition. He was rangy, tall, and had a lighter brown mane the same color as his brother’s, though he wore it much shorter.

Selnes took one of the chairs in the room, gesturing for Mose to take the other. He lowered his belly to its seat shakily and listened to her make the introductions, although he already knew both of the other Osk’s names.

Selnes jabbed to him. This is Mose Attarrish. She turned to the brown-maned Osk. She is Gemesk Laskilish, with a jab to the older oskven, and Res Yureshenka.

Gemesk (Vorl’s mother, his mind added unhappily) leaned forward. Selnes Gereshtilisk told us you were a fellow seph to Vorl. And that you have something to tell us about him.

He jabbed, but found himself unable to start. Selnes had told him what she would say to prep them. The Teluk High Council had approved the release of certain details of Mose’s captivity—namely, anything that didn’t reveal state secrets related to Teluk’s nanotech research or the current Relativity Defiant intelligence network they were constructing. He could talk about the nano that had cemented the Project’s control over him, but not how it worked or how he’d been freed of it.

Mose barely understood that himself. He’d been functionally dead for the most classified parts, when Shomoro had reprogrammed and rebooted his swarm. Giving away the Council’s secrets wasn’t why he hesitated. It was that he had no idea how to talk to the family of one of his victims.

A tense snort disrupted his paralysis. Res Yureshenka crossed his arms over his narrow torso and turned his snout away. What’s there to tell? My brother’s dead.

Mose blew air in a long, controlled sigh, willing his diaphragm to unclench. It was a rough opening, but he wasn’t likely to get a better one. Sadly, that’s true, he said. But he didn’t die in the Za Incident.

The Terran term left him unthinkingly, still nearer to the surface of his mind than the Osk name for the tragedy. Wincing internally, Mose corrected himself. I mean, in the fall of Za.

Both Osk fixed their full attention on him for the first time. Their sharp, probing scents invaded his nostrils.

Selnes told you I was a prisoner of war until recently? He made it a question, wary of assuming, and waited until they’d both jabbed.

The Expansion used me to track down other sephs. Those who survived the fall of Za. He bit his cheek, unhappy with his own euphemistic phrasing. Yet at the same time, the words felt almost too hot to handle as they fell from his mouth. I found Vorl Yureshenka on Skraal about a year after.

In fits and starts, his gaze moving between the wooden floor and the faces of Vorl’s mother and brother, Mose told the story. The hole inside him, the largest and oldest and least healed, quivered at its edges as he spoke, and the scar Vorl had carved into his flesh twinged with phantom pain.

When he finished, the room was so quiet Mose swore he could hear the blood in his capillaries ebb and flow. Maybe he could; it wasn’t beyond his ability to tune inward that far now. And it was vastly preferable to focus on that than the expressions on Gemesk’s and Res’s faces.

I am deeply sorry for taking Vorl from you. They were the words he’d planned to say, but it felt as though someone else were saying them. Someone who could still speak normally, who hadn’t just admitted to murder. I will face the Surarchy for this crime and the others like it, and accept their judgment. But I didn’t want that trial to be how you found out.

I don’t understand, Gemesk said in a whisper-thin voice. Did Vorl do something wrong?

Strange how even after fifteen years some wounds were so close to the surface, the scar tissue suddenly ephemeral. Mose had to catch his breath before he could answer her. No. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was tracking another seph—someone who told me to my face that he betrayed Za. I stayed alive so I could bring him to justice.

Who? she asked in that same bewildered tone. Mose glanced at Selnes, who jabbed for him to go ahead. This wasn’t one of the things that needed to remain classified. It was already part of the case she was helping him craft for the Surarchy.

Gau Shesharrim, he said.

Gemesk’s gaze searched the wall hangings; Mose sensed she was looking far beyond them. I don’t know that name. Vorl must have mentioned it, but he worked with many sephs in Za. Her gaze found him again, and the grief he’d been expecting wasn’t there—the years had drained it away. Her eyes were a lakebed that held the memory of water.

My Vorl has been gone for fifteen years, she said. I don’t pretend to understand how this sits with the covenant, but at least I know how he died. At least it was a seph who killed him, and not the Terrans’ disgusting weapon.

Mose couldn’t hold her gaze any longer. He lowered his head, but raised it again at a sudden acrid sharpness that set his nerves tingling with threat.

The scent was boiling off Res. The oskvan had been quiet while his mother talked—processing the news, Mose had assumed. Now he realized the younger Osk had been silently seething with rage.

Res Yureshenka stood from the couch.

So that’s it? You come here to tell me you killed my brother because he got in your way. Am I supposed to thank you now?

No— Mose began, but Res cut him off.

I should kill you.

Mose went still with readiness but remained in his seat as Res approached. Res’s shadow fell over him.

Selnes sprang up, her closed lips taut and white, and grabbed Res’s arm. Stop. One word only, but it carried the authority of the Surarchy she represented. And it was enough to make Res stop, though not back down. He pulled his arm from her grasp. Selnes let it go but remained close, ready to intervene.

Why are you helping him? Res asked, teeth bared in a snarl. I thought the Surarchy is supposed to kill traitors.

Her eyes widened. Not without a fair hearing.

Mose had not moved during this exchange. He looked up at Res, the other Osk’s snarling face framed by a mane that was the light brown he remembered, but cut to a civilian’s length. You’re not going to kill me, Res.

The younger Osk’s mane bristled, but he didn’t advance. He was a civilian, and Mose was a seph, and both of them understood the gulf of ability that represented. Mose was the only one in the room who was effectively a living weapon. The covenant depended in part on both sides studiously ignoring that fact. Civvies were sacrosanct, totally off limits in the world of conflict which soldiers and sephs inhabited. They were not to be touched.

Which meant if Res attacked him now, Mose would have no choice but to let himself be hurt, perhaps seriously. Killed even, if it came to that.

He could see from the dimming fire in Res’s eyes that he understood this all too well. If he killed Mose, it wouldn’t be avenging Vorl. It would just be another act of murder.

Res was first to break the tableau. He stalked to one of the weavings decorating the wall. It was one of the traditional tri-Season motifs Mose had noted on the way in: a circle divided into three parts, one wedge showing cracked earth, a second roiling waves, and the third red tongues of fire.

Res stood before the hanging, his back to them. Then he unsheathed a blade and cut a long gash down the hanging. There was the dry rip of cloth, and Gemesk cried out, Your weaving—

Her son tore the ruined hanging down and hurled it at Mose, who caught the bundle in his arms in reflex.

I made that for Vorl. Res’s voice sounded oddly dead, empty of everything but contempt. To celebrate his return from Za. Take it. It’s worth as much as you, now.

3

Shomoro let Pri into her surfaceside apartment a little after dusk. They would only have half an hour before they had to attend another Council planning meeting. Pri had pushed for longer, but had to concede there weren’t many gaps in their schedule when the two of them could meet. This scrap of time was the longest they’d been able to set aside.

Shomoro lingered by the door, a half-cooled cup of spiceleaf tea in her hand. She’d been studying the still-blank walls while she waited for her friend, wondering if it would be worth the time and effort to mount a new rack for her swords. The apartment was another Council holding, fully furnished, with a pleasant view of a winding upper Terrace street. But it was new and sterile. Her old apartment had been declared a total loss after the Project’s machine had demolished the interior trying to kill her and Mose.

The swords would look good on the wall above her nest—and be within easy reach. But it seemed pointless to undertake the project now. In a few days her team would be leaving for Aival. Anything beyond that horizon was impossible to see, like trying to penetrate the glare off the limb of a planet seen from orbit.

Pri rang the buzzer twice before Shomoro admitted she was stalling and let the Drevl Char inside. Pri shuffled into the apartment on an umbrella of twelve jointed legs, dipping her teardrop-shaped head to Shomoro in greeting. She accepted a cup of water, one of the few things Shomoro’s console could make that was biocompatible with Pri’s physiology.

<> Pri sent in her voiceless voice.

It’s no different than my old apartment. Shomoro took the couch across from Pri, who by nature did not sit. That almost makes it harder to get used to. I keep expecting to see gouges on the walls and destroyed furniture. She drained the last of her tea, swirling the pungent alkaloids on her tongue.

<>

She swallowed her mouthful of tea. The aftertaste seemed more bitter than it should be; Shomoro wondered if the food console’s settings needed adjusting. It shouldn’t matter where we do it, she said. The whole point is to get me accustomed to the material in circumstances I can’t control.

There came a wheezing sigh as Pri cycled air through the rebreather plugged into her spiracles. The device that converted Teluk’s atmosphere to the methane Pri could breathe occasionally made such creaks and hisses of its own accord. Still, Shomoro couldn’t shake the feeling the sigh had been directed at her. Pri’s thought-tone was gentle as she laid a tendril over Shomoro’s arm, another gesturing toward the couch.

<>

After a moment’s deliberation, Shomoro lay on her back on the largest couch in the room, tucking her legs in and crossing her arms over her chest. Pri moved to her head. Though Pri could have achieved mental contact without touch, she placed two sets of tendrils on either side of Shomoro’s head. The dry, slightly warm contact was calming.

Will this … Shomoro began. Pri’s four eyes had slid closed in the beginnings of concentration, but now her main eyes opened, waiting for the question.

Will this hurt? Shomoro asked.

A pulse of reassurance, like a familiar scent, caressed her mind. <> Pri said. <>

All right. Shomoro jabbed for her to begin and quickly shut her eyes, as though the source of her apprehension were out there instead of inside. In that far-down place where her memories didn’t reach.

But the two of them were going to fix that.

Shomoro’s first hint that she was no longer entirely in the present came in a sensation of floating gently downward. Gradually, the pure darkness behind her closed eyes lightened, a gray hypnagogic static painting itself on her eyelids, eventually coalescing into a narrow, white-tiled room.

Nothing moved in the frame of her vision. Across from her was a closed metal door. As Pri promised, there was no pain. She had to concentrate to perceive the outlines of her body at all, and when she did, she became aware of a bizarre doubling effect: On one layer of consciousness, she lay on the couch, Pri’s tendrils bracketing her head as her breaths passed smoothly in and out of her.

On the lower layer, the layer that was the domain of the white-tiled room, her body huddled against one wall, leashed there by a collar around her neck. The Shomoro of this room breathed a ragged staccato that indicated an altered autonomic response. This could be the product of several things: pain, shock, distress. But she intuited—no, she remembered—this was something specific. She knew her altered breathing was the product of a certain class of drugs she’d never identified, but whose effects she was rapidly recalling.

I remember this, she thought, more to herself than Pri. Not necessarily this particular instance, but the general pattern—the sessions where she was not interrogated but given a drug that annihilated her proprioception and replaced it with something alien.

Her remembered body was growing indistinct: her six limbs felt wobbly, as though they might drop off painlessly like withered leaves from a stem. Then their presence began to fade in and out entirely.

Shomoro counted her breaths—her real breaths, not the ragged gasps of the memory. About fifteen minutes by her count had passed when Berkyavik entered the room.

She heard his voice first, that unmistakable, falsely warm tenor she wouldn’t forget until the day she died. He spoke somewhere to her left.

It’s been about fifteen minutes, he said. How do you feel?

The drug seemed to hold her under; she didn’t recoil so much as shrink away as he walked into view. He wore a dark suit that made his colorless eyes and hair seem even more washed out, except for the expression in his eyes—they sparked with interest as he watched her.

In the present, her breath caught. Shomoro felt pressure in her jaw and realized she was clenching her teeth to hold back a hiss.

Pri’s invisible presence was in the memory instantly. <>

I’m fine. I want to see where this goes. Shomoro returned her locus of awareness to her present breath, on filling and then emptying her lungs. Her jaw still felt tight, but her teeth no longer pressed together.

Some combination of her words and the signals Pri was receiving from her nervous system must have satisfied the Drevl Char, because she continued to let the memory play out.

The past Shomoro was mumbling something. Berkyavik crouched before her, putting a hand to his ear. Say again, Shomoro? I didn’t catch that.

Through gummy lips, she said, My body. It’s not there.

We’ve taken away your internal sensations temporarily, Berkyavik said, in the same tone he might say he’d held on to a