All this time I hadn't moved. My head was swimming, and like Roland after the parrot died in his hands, I was on the verge of passing out. But when I heard Alex's cries, his pain and terror, I forced back the edge of my dizziness and clumsily crawled off the altar. Fog was billowing everywhere, spreading fluidly over the grass. I staggered into it, the cold, dusty-smelling CO2 fog, trying to stay on my feet long enough to reach Alex.
I found him in the heart of the fog bank, sprawled across something my muddled mind didn't recognize at first—a box, some kind of open box, like the one Alex and I had found on the hill. But as I stumbled closer, I saw it was the hopper for the fog machine, its lid smashed off in the Singer's rage. Steam boiled off the dry ice inside, curling and churning around Alex's prone body. He lay flat across the exposed ice, his bare chest pressed against it.
He screamed as the intense cold burned him like fire.
I grabbed his ankles and pulled weakly, trying to drag him off the ice pile. He didn't budge; I wondered if he'd actually frozen in place, like flesh bonding to sticky-cold metal. Then his legs kicked feebly out of my grip and I heard the voice of the Singer in my mind. "No, milady. I have sought the cold and found it. Cold, true cold, bright cold."
Alex howled.
"You're killing yourself," I shouted to the Singer. "You can't survive in there. God only knows what it's doing to your heart."
The Singer just laughed.
"Lyra?" Alex whispered. A real voice, forced through his lips by lungs that could scarcely breathe.
"Yes, it's me." I fumbled around to the other side of the hopper, only managing to stay on my feet by clinging to the edge of the bin. "Yes, Alex, I'm here."
His hand moved slightly, but his palm seemed stuck to the ice. I could feel him steeling himself, Alex's voice in my mind muttering, Do it, do it. Then he heaved the hand upward, ripping off most of the skin as he freed it from the ice's grip. Bleeding, he held it out to me. "Lyra."
I took his hand, holding it high above the ice. My fingers still dripped with parrot blood; Alex's blood mingled with it, in the fog and the cold.
The Singer's thoughts crooned with the cold, but I could hear nothing from Alex. Whatever went through his mind was too gentle for parrot blood to transmit.
"Alex," I said. Then a fresh surge of dizziness washed over me and I sank into its blackness.
I woke groggily, roused by burning pain. When I had fainted, my arms slumped across the dry ice, still holding Alex's hand.
His hand was as cold as the ice. Fog filled the hopper and dribbled out over the sides.
I looked down at my hands, still lying against the ice. Their skin was white and puckered, and they didn't ache much; the serious pain was higher up, near my elbows. I knew that was a bad sign—so much nerve damage in my hands, I couldn't feel how badly I was hurt.
That was when I realized the night was silent—no sound of thoughts. Not Alex's, not the Singer's, not mine. Parrot blood glistened on my fingers, parrot blood crystallized to ice; but my hands were too injured for the blood to work.
Pulling my hands off the ice left strips of skin behind. I scarcely felt it. For a moment, I considered pulling Alex's body out of the hopper, but I couldn't move my fingers. I couldn't grab him, I couldn't hold him; and it wouldn't make a difference if I could. It was far too late for anything to make a difference.
I took one last look at him lying there, burned and blue, silent on a bed of fog. Then I began plodding back to camp.
My hands will never move again. Jerith's medi-bot works on them daily to stave off gangrene, but repair is out of the question; that has to wait till I get to a populated planet. The bot says a good med center might be able to cut off my arms at the elbows and put me in a tank till they grow back.
No one knows what to do with the others in our party, still marked by parrot blood. A week has passed, and the telepathy shows no signs of wearing off. One of the roadies tried to cut away his bloodstained skin with a knife, but he passed out before finishing the job. Now the medi-bot keeps him under sedation.
Sedatives are handed out freely these days—the bot can synthesize enough to keep everyone subdued until the rescue ship arrives. The ship is scheduled to land an hour after sunset tonight, and the Planet Protection Agency has a good record for punctuality.
They've reclassified Caproche as TPI: Total Permanent Interdiction. Jerith will have to start over, another dig, another planet. He says he doesn't mind.
Jerith spends a few minutes with me every day…but with blood on his hands like everyone else, he mostly stays out in the wilds—a long way out, where he can't hear anyone else's thoughts.
I stay in camp, close to the medi-bot. It watches me and feeds me.
From time to time I catch sight of parrots, bright green and crimson, waddling across the dirt of the camp compound. I like to stroke their noses with my bandaged hands. When I do, the medi-bot stands beside me and whirs in disapproval.
It's decided the parrots are dangerous.
A Changeable Market in Slaves
In the first day of the Month of the Quill, Slavemonger T'Prin finally admitted to himself he was bankrupt.
On the first day of the Month of the Quill, Slavemonger T'Prin finally admitted to herself she was bankrupt.
On the first day of the Festival of Galactic Harmony, Slavemonger T'Prin finally admitted to himself that the Avatar of Financial Abundance had not accepted his sacrifice.
On the first day of the Month of Joyous Struggle, Mother Machine awoke Slavemonger T'Prin with the cheery message, "Good morning, Citizen. In order to serve you better, your credit chip has been reduced to scrap plastic."
On the first day of the Month of Desolation, Slavemonger T'Prin found no cup of blood by the coffin when he rose at sunset. The servants were dead, the chapel had been desecrated, and his possessions were gone, down to the last gold candlestick.
On the day after the orcs had been driven across the river for another winter, Slavemonger T'Prin discovered the contents of his storehouse had gone with them.
On the day after his revivification, Slavemonger T'Prin was informed by an embarrassed Integration Counselor that he had been reclassified as Financially Bereft, Category III (Organ Donor).
On the third day of Ragnarok, Slavemonger T'Prin finally admitted to himself that business would not improve.
On the day after Judgment, Lucifer informed Slavemonger T'Prin of a universal truth: you really can't take it with you.
On the day after his reincarnation, Slavemonger T'Prin realized money is useless to those without opposable thumbs.
It was the first day of the Month of the Quill, a cold gray day with the wind blowing down from the hills like a banshee looking for fun, a day when the whores on Galadriel Boulevard were lowering their prices to get indoors faster and the thieves from Rudyard Alley stole gloves instead of gold; the sort of day when you long to be inside with someone who'll say she loves you and maybe for a while you'll even let yourself believe it because you want to think there's such a thing in the world as warmth. Not the sort of day for sitting in your office and going over bank statements again and again, looking for anything that will tell you it's all a mistake, that the money isn't really gone like a woman who's decided she needs time to find herself.
My name's T'Prin. I sell slaves.
He awoke, remembering nothing. They told him his name was T'Prin, that he'd been a slavemonger, that he was now bankrupt. They thought he'd want to know what date it was and kept repeating it to him.
He'd never heard of the Month of the Quill—he knew the months by other names. But he'd call it Quill if they did. He'd play along with everything they said until he found out who he was this time and what the hell they'd done to his eyes.