The song of crossing the sands, sung to honour the return of would-be marriage kinn from the deserts, where for ten days and ten nights they were set to wander, to learn each other’s hearts and test the strength of their bonds.
The song of the moon pearl, which grew in the belly of a certain mollusc off the edge of a certain island, and in whose translucent form it was said, at a certain time, beneath a certain light, visions of the future would unfold. Samples of the mollusc have been saved, kept in a laboratory, but no one has quite found the right conditions to reseed it, and no one is sure they ever will.
The song of the motherships, sung for the going-out and the coming-back. It was written in the final days of the planet, and will never be sung again.
Agran stands silent.
Agran has perhaps learned more silence than her kindlers wish she would.
Theodosius Rhode turns from her, to inspect the three of us. Hís eyes pass over me, linger a moment, but if hé knows me asanything more than an intelligence report, I cannot tell. At last, hís gaze settles on Valans. Behind hím, Riv watches, flanked by security, her face empty and cold.
Theodosius walks towards hís scientist, hís most valued engineer, makes no move to unbind him.
“Well,” hé tuts at last. “You have chosen poorly.”
“They have the interface – the Tryphon, the one fromSeaburn,” whimpers the scientist. “I verified it, came here to retrieve it, to end it…”
“Ah yes. This old thing.” Theodosius reaches past the old man, picks up the interface, turns it this way and that. It is tiny in hís oversized hands. “This has been bothering us for a while now. Minds reaching across the dark, calling out to our Pilots, whispering to them, asking them questions, so many questions. Where are you now? What can you see? Tell us, tell us, tell us where you are. We didn’t think that the spies of the Accord would be so bold as to hook the minds of their people to our arcspace interfaces, but then I suppose that is what they use you for.”
Hís eyes flickered to me as he spoke these words, one grey, one gold, though hís body stayed turned to Valans. I stared back, wasn’t sure if I could look away, saw hím smile, shake hís head a little. The Executor was used to quiet disappointments from lesser people.
“I did it for you,” whined Valans. “I knew I could make it right, I risked everything to—”
“If you were able to make it right, you would never have had to come here!” roared Theodosius. Behind hím, even Agran flinched, shoulders drawing back, breaths swallowed in. Valans had tears in his eyes, was a curled-up bend of spine and neck beneath the Executor’s rage. Theodosius glowered down at the bundled-up scientist, sighed, tutted, shook hís head. “Agran Hulathind Daj Kiddanasithwa, I do apologise for all of this. It would appear one of my entourage has made a bit of a fuss. He will be reprimanded. We will be taking him to my corvette now; please feel free torevoke his visa.”
Valans crying out, but no, but listen, but I…
Theodosius has already lost interest in him. Already wiped him from hís awareness.
Turns fully, looks me up, looks me down one more time, and I cannot tell what hé makes of all that hé sees. Turns again, looks at Ulannad, hís fingers still tracing the curve of the Tryphon in hís hand. Then, without a change in expression or flicker of concern, hís fist closes. I watch the thin, worn metal of the interface crumple slowly in hís grasp, case crack, tiny tendrils spilling from its belly like guts from a hunted rodent. Watch it fall to the floor, a meaningless hunk of junk, barely worth the scrap.
“Well,” hé murmured. “Well. Hasn’t this all been interesting.”
So saying, hé turned, nodded once at a Corpsec guard, who stepped forward and calmly, without hesitation, shot Ulannad in the head.
I watched the Lordat’s neck snap back, then forward as he fell.
He bumped against my foot as he crumpled to the ground, as if the muscles that had sustained him had just been waiting for this moment, as if life had been an inconvenient kind of nagging blared out by the brain against the overwhelming instinct of the body to collapse, cease, sleep.
The pandemonium that had been suppressed by the Executor’s presence roared back into life. Guns raised, shouting, get down, put it down, put it down,put it down now!The actual wound in Ulannad’s head was neat, relatively tiny, a mere puff of blood from where the projectile had entered, a blossoming of pink behind the Lordat’s eyes the only hint of the internal carnage of its passage.
Through it all, Theodosius smiled.
Hé smiled, and as the raging, the shouting grew higher, hé began to laugh.
It was a rich roar of sound, full-chested, full-bodied, quite unlike any of the little huffs of dire mirth I was used to from the Managers of the Shine. It was a full revelling, a joyous delight,an appreciation bordering on the artistic for that which unfolded about hím. Hé was still laughing as hé ordered hís security to lay down their arms and, turning to Agran with that same expansive beam of pleasure, exclaimed: “Well then, we seem to have a diplomatic incident, no?”
And then, just for the hell of it, hé took a pistol from one of hís entourage and shot me in the chest.
Chapter 42
Idid not die. The shot wasn’t even lethal. If anything, I probably felt it more because I expected to, imagined myself with a hole in my heart. Instead, it was a simple nerve-block, which fizzled out within fifteen minutes of firing.
Agran sat next to me on the floor of a refuge that had actually been kept in proper order, survival suits and spare oxygen neatly arranged, put a cup of water in my shaking hands, said: “My kindler said you should never call someone apytha. It is…huth? That is correct, yes? On the Spindle, we don’t have enough words to curse.”
I nodded; clicked my tongue; couldn’t remember the most appropriate way to communicate. Cuxil sat by the door on the cold metal floor, her legs crossed, arms loose in her lap, eyes half closed like one in prayer.
“Ulannad is dead,” I mumbled, and my speech was messy, odd nerves still firing in all the wrong ways.
