A long, long silence follows. Then the spider proxy goes still, limbs falling, torso folding. It falls to the floor with a crash and marble-cracks.
“There,” Klesa says. “Samsara has relinquished her hold. You can take those seven ships but nothing else, and now you’ll officiate me, Warlord. Like we promised.”
Ovuha lets her datasphere read Suzhen’s vitals. Stabilized; cerebral activity present. She meets the hawk’s gaze. When it comes down to it there is no guarantee, not as such. Only the seven ships, and soon even that will not mean anything, will no longer suffice against the might that Klesa can muster. The words are ancient, the same words that were given to Samsara eons past, preserved in Mahakala’s legacy. Ovuha tightens her hold on Suzhen and speaks. “When I was a child, I was a larva within the trap of my chrysalis. When I was a child, I was a bird enclosed behind bars. Now I am grown, and I have shattered my chains. I am free and I pass that to you, Klesa. The guidepost of history. The custodian of humanity. I name you the scepter and the crown, and I entrust to you the future.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Suzhen wakes to the scent of a world made new. A cleanness to it, the air glassy, and it makes her think of the first time she stepped outside her home—the one on Vaisravana. On that world, children were not allowed outdoors, in the aegis canopy, until a certain age. She thought it would be like breathing smoke or poison incense, but when she did finally taste the aegis-bound air she found it was strangely sharp, strangely pristine. Then she thinks, This is it after all, that she’s been brought back to that ghost liminal on the moon: that forever after she will be a captive of the Deratchan network, and that Ovuha has failed.
A movement brings her attention to the softness around her, the warmth of it, sweet-smelling—lemongrass, a scent that she’s come to associate with one person and one only. She keeps her eyes shut and burrows deeper into this, breathing in, nestling her cheek against it. Her thoughts do not yet organize, have not entirely cohered. Her last memory is one of falling, of unconsciousness closing around her like a vise. She does not want to come fully awake to discover what she holds is another reproduction, a likeness piloted by Deratchan.
She brings herself to open her eyes.
When she does, it is to the sight of Taheen looking down at her, faintly smirking, holding her to their breasts. Their bare, full breasts, a luxury of sensation against her cheek.
“You’ve been nuzzling my chest like a cat,” they say, and instantly she knows they are the real thing, the genuine Taheen. “I fairly thought you were going to burrow into me, but I didn’t want to wake you up. It’s actually rather endearing.”
“They’re very soft,” Suzhen says, stupidly. “Your breasts. That is—I mean—where are we?”
“Still in Himmapan. This is part of a residential tower, currently vacant, previously occupied by Interior Defense officers—very cushy arrangements, as you can see. The police certainly lived richly, how sad that I never tested into Interior Defense.” They flick their hand, dismissive of the thought and the tower’s erstwhile tenants. “How are you feeling? Your datasphere should be online. Guidance disabled, though. Or deleted, I’d guess.”
So it is. No more chaperone’s voice, no more holding her citizenship hostage against her behavior and compliance. All other channels are online, at full signal. Her diagnostics recount her bodily injuries but indicate the allostatic injected into her—and the subsequent medical care—has completed most of its work. A list of organs: reconstructed stomach and intestines, repairs to a grazed ventricle and a lung. Otherwise she is in as good a shape as can be, somewhat dehydrated, and her torso remains covered in protean. No pain: anesthetizing nanites flow through her, nullifying the aches, the bruises and lacerations.
The bed in which she lies is fit for five or six, a hill of contoured frame and mattress and sheets like the surface of a lake—there is so much of it, so liquid and cool to the touch. Nestling within these sheets feels like drowning, or it would without Taheen’s body to buoy her, the solidity of them, that long muscled back like a fortress. “What happened? There’s no news broadcasts, just information channels, and those don’t even say much. I have—” She sorts through the messages, the condensed information. “I’ve got updates Klesa left for me, but I’d rather hear it from you.”
They stroke her hair, sighing. “The warlord got her way. I should not complain, it’s just that it galls me to admit her success—that she pulled this stupid heist off. With help, sure. Even then. I certainly didn’t participate for any love of her. And she couldn’t even keep you safe.” They give her an abbreviated version, a tally of the living and the dead: fires and maintenance failures across cities, Ovuha’s agents that survived and those that fell, the Thorn’s great scheme, its fruition, and the starburst ships that even now hover in orbit. “She shared command over those with me. I certainly don’t want it.”
Despite herself, Suzhen almost smiles: Taheen may not forgive Ovuha, not any time soon. But there is possibility, she wants to think. Again she looks over the information Klesa has shown her, wondering at the implications of it, this shift in regime. Whether Klesa will replicate Samsara’s policies or upend them over night. One of the first changes implemented is the relocation of detainees in the Vaisravana factory camps to Anatta facilities. The march of the Peace Guard has been halted entirely.
Taheen stops speaking. Their expression turns still and edged, the glint of a razor. The door opens and Ovuha comes through, bearing a tray of water, coffee, ceylon and chrysanthemum tea; a platter of chilled fruits; a platter of fried buns that smell of salted egg yolk and honeyed pork; soup dumplings in every color. It is a bounty of breakfast, and though Ovuha carries it with easy strength she does falter when she sets the entire affair down on a mobile table. “I might have overdone it,” she says, “but I thought I should offer you both plenty of options.”
“My lord.” The title is acrimoniously pronounced and Taheen has made their voice arctic. “I’m quite full, in fact.”
“I’ll have something.” Suzhen reaches for the chrysanthemum tea. “Actually I’ll have a lot—I’m famished. Taheen, I’ll feel embarrassed to be the only one eating.” She picks up a soup dumpling in a curved spoon. “Come on. Save me from being barbaric.”
Grudgingly they eat dumplings one by one, between her having a few of her own. She pinches off pieces of the fried buns and puts those in their mouth too. Taheen pointedly does not look at Ovuha.
Ovuha looks on, amused. “Oh, it’s different when Suzhen feeds you my cooking by hand, is it?”
“I will not dignify that with a response.” Taheen brushes a crumb of fried dough from a corner of Suzhen’s mouth.
“And you do need the calories. I don’t think any of us has eaten for what, eighteen hours? Longer?” Ovuha sits down on Suzhen’s side of the bed, maneuvering around the meal. “I thought joining the two of you in bed would have made someone… testy, and I’ll grant that my lieutenant commands seniority when it comes to you, Suzhen. How’s the food?”
“Very good.” An echo of their domestic conversations, back when she still thought of Ovuha as a potentiate. How different their context is, now. Taheen at her back and Ovuha before her. She rests her hand on the warlord’s lap—the warlord, for that is how she must think of Ovuha, there’s no avoiding the fact that confronts her. Ovuha has put on what must be the full regalia of her post. The blue-black armor, the thornworks sigil across her chest, the broad cape in deep slate. The only missing piece is the masked helm, that which obliterates identity. “Thank you for the breakfast, I…” She swallows. “What are you planning next?”