“Who is this?” Valans snapped, speaking Mdo-sa. “Who is this man? I am not—”
“He is one of us,” Ulannad barked. “He is not a threat.”
“Not a threat?” I spoke in the same language, the sounds of Glastya Row suddenly reassuringly crude, reassuringly heavy on my lips. “Not a threat? I will rip your fucking heart out and feedit to the black…What are you doing?”
“I am giving Valans the Tryphon,” Ulannad replied primly. “I am returning his property.”
I reached out to snatch the box from the Lordat’s hand, but he drew it quickly away, stepping back towards the altar, his other hand reaching for something inside his robe.
“Lordat,” hissed Valans. “I am not—”
“It’s fine,” snapped Ulannad, a little too loud, eyes fixed on me, and he was afraid – finally, he was afraid, despite himself. So much for the chanting of the dark. “It’s fine. Maw, there are things happening here that you don’t understand. A deal has been reached, an exchange, there are—”
“No! It’s not…” I tried to find the word, had to switch to Adjumiri, no words in Mdo-sa to express it, no way to say ter name and do it right, didn’t think they understood but had to scream it anyway, had to try and make someone, anyone understand. “Te died for this!” I snarled. “Te died for it and I left ter, I left ter and I didn’t go back I didn’t even go back so if you think that you can just take it and give it to some… some Manager…” Back to Mdo-sa, Adjumiri unable to express the true meaning of this word, “Manager”, all the weight and hate it needed. “I will kill you first. Do you believe me? I want you to believe me, Lordat of the Light.”
Ulannad knew enough to be afraid, and did not move.
It was therefore Valans who cracked, his ignorance greater than his fear. He lunged for the white box in Ulannad’s hand, left arm sweeping up from his hip as he did, a glint of something metal in it. Ulannad sprang back instinctively, but Valans’ hand caught the edge of the box and for a moment the two men struggled, grunting inelegantly like children with a toy. Then Ulannad brought his elbow across and into the other man’s chin, a clack of teeth and jaw. Fingers spasmed open even as the old scientist huffed in wordless pain, and a springshot ejector fell from his left palm, a cobbled fusion of medical device and toy, a poisoned dart primed in its end. I grabbed it off the floor as Ulannad shoved Valansback and drew the box closer to his chest, both men panting with unexpected exertion, and in the moment of tension as everyone waited for someone to do something else, Ulannad growled: “You don’t understand what’s—”
His statement was cut short by a buzzing by my right ear.
I didn’t recognise the design of grenade hovering softly at head-height, but most military devices have common themes. Compact, unflashy, discreet – Corpsec must have smuggled the components for it onto the station one bit at a time, assembling it on site to avoid the Spindle’s security scans. I saw it, and for a brief moment wondered if I was going to die. I had never had my head severed from my body before, never had my brain exploded, for all of the various ways in which I have been killed. Views were divided among experts as to whether the disintegration of my brain matter would prove terminal – such a hypothesis was difficult to test more than once.
As it turned out, the grenade was merely a neuro-stun, which sent the room blindly to the ground.
Chapter 41
Three people lie on the floor of the chapel, while around them chaos rages.
Valans.
He burbles: “It’s not what it seems! It’s a trick! They lured me here – they lured me, it’s a trick, it’s…”
Ulannad. He is face-down, hands tied behind his back like the rest of us, his head turned towards me as I try to blink the static from my eyes, the pain from my skull. He seems very calm, even smiles. I suddenly wish I’d had a chance to ask him: what was your story? How did you come to be here? You seem comfortable with pain, with terror – would it be too much to speak on that?
I am feeling curious, somewhere beneath the pain.
Nothing new there.
But also angry.
Angry to be on the floor, bound.
Angry at the whining of Valans’ voice, at the ringing in my ears, at the feet stomping around by my head, at the weight of someone’s boot on my back. Glastya Row, a boot on my back, it rained the day we were sent to Hasha-to, the judge said that I had not mounted an adequate defence, and I replied that I had not been given the opportunity, and she said that wasn’t how things workedin Heom and I had only myself to blame, and thus my world had ended, and thus Mawukana na-Vdnaze had died.
Angry at Ulannad. At Hulder and Cuxil and the whole stinking, bloody thing.
Dysregulated. Angry enough to want to reach to that place inside, the little part of me that was recorded in error, because there is something in the dark, something fascinated and eager, that has never really understood this reality, never really been able to comprehend what it sees.
Here it is.
Here it is.
The part of me that sits in the place where the Lux would say I should feel a soul.
The thing that everyone tells me is wrong, incorrect, and it feels… like they are mistaken.
The light is dim, and I do not know how many I will kill before someone remembers who I am, expects me to be kind, if anyone here really does, right now, I do not care, and so…
