Dominion (23 page)

“And just in case you get taken,” said Kal, “we have ensured that the servers on your craft cannot be accessed by other Illyri vessels, and any attempt to access them without the correct protocols will result in the destruction of the data.”

He briefed them on the necessary security formalities, and then, with all preparations completed, they were all but ready to leave. They waited a final moment for Meia to run through the controls on the
Nomad
with Thula, one last time.

“Take at least a little time to master them before you attempt to enter Derith,” she said. “Just fly around here for a while until you get the hang of it.”

“I think I'll need more than a little time,” said Thula, “and aren't we in one hell of a rush?”

“Well, dying will not get you where you need to go any faster,” Meia replied archly. “Let me leave before you even attempt to take off, please. I don't think I could bear to watch.”

And with that, Meia was ready to depart. They all wished her well, and Syl hugged her close. Meia had saved their lives on more than one occasion. They were more vulnerable without her.

Paul didn't think Meia would appreciate a hug from him, and contented himself with a handshake, but Thula had no such inhibitions, and practically lifted the smaller Mech off the ground.

“Damn, girl,” he grunted. “You're heavier than you look.”

“You need to work on your chat-up lines,” Meia replied. “Is it any wonder that women reject you?”

And then she kissed the big Zulu on the cheek.

“Now put me down before you damage me.”

She turned back to Paul, and put her hand on his shoulder.

“Remember: the Tessel system. If you have to run, that's where you head for.”

Meia departed. They watched her go, and Syl and Paul felt more lost than ever before.

“It will be harder for her now than it was previously,” said Syl, though she could have been speaking about any of them. “She feels more than she used to: fear, loss. Loneliness.”

“I did offer to go with her,” said Thula.

“Before she mentioned that part about maybe having to kill you,” said Paul.

“Yes, before that. In future, I'll clarify these things before I make such a gesture. Anyway, we'd better get up there. I've got some practice flights to make, and I'm damned if you're all staying here while I do it. No way I'm landing this thing again to pick you up. I'm not a taxi.”

He lifted his eyes toward the skies around them, and swallowed hard. Paul patted him on the back.

“I think some practice flights would be a very good idea.”

•  •  •

They said farewell to the Cayth, and Syl heard in her mind the whisper of a billion voices, like waves breaking on a distant shore, but only Fara's voice sounded in her ear as the older woman-figure embraced the younger for the last time.

“Remember, Syl,” she said. “Their weakness is their connectedness. They resemble a single great body; the spores are cells, but the larger ones are like limbs and vital organs. The bigger they are, the more crucial they are to the body as a whole. They are not invulnerable. They can be destroyed.”

“So I must open myself to them,” said Syl, not sure if it was a question or a statement. “Like I did to you.”

She shuddered at the thought. Exposing herself to the Others would not be like revealing herself to the Cayth. With the Cayth, it was communication. With the Others, it would be contamination.

Fara pulled away from Syl, and held her by the shoulders.

“We believe you must, yes, if you are to truly know them, if you are to find their weakness. And they have never faced an opponent like you,” she added, “for I think the universe has never seen anything quite like you. Your mother would be proud of you, Syl Hellais.
I
am proud of you.”

Syl nodded. She tried to smile in a final farewell, but it was a twisted thing, so she merely turned away and followed Thula and Paul onto the
Nomad
, her head low and an ache beneath her breastbone. The door slid closed on the Cayth.

Thula sat down in the pilot's chair, blew air pointedly through his lips, and went to start the engines. He looked a little nervous as he did so, and he swore as the
Nomad
jumped to life.

“Jeez,” he said as he surveyed the panel before him. “It's a relief they sent the
Nomad
back. I'm not sure that I would want to be piloting a craft I'd never even been inside. Remind me to thank that runt brother of yours when we see him again, Paul.”

“If you thank him, he'll think the Others have taken over your brain,” said Paul, who was standing near the weapons console. Rizzo had reminded Paul of the finer workings of the system before she left, and he now intended to run through it with Syl, just in case it became necessary for her to take to the guns.

“Something certainly took over my brain when I agreed to fly this thing,” Thula replied, “but I should remember soon enough; Steven assures me it's just like riding a bicycle.”

“A bicycle in space, with guns, and with no training wheels,” said Syl, and Thula turned to look at her, surprised that she was joining in their banter. She was folding a piece of paper tightly, but when she saw he was looking at her, she grinned, and then lifted her hand and deftly skimmed a paper plane in his direction. He caught it, and looked at her oddly.

“A gift,” she said.

When he unfolded it, he saw that she'd drawn a large red
L
on the paper.

“Your Learner plates,” she announced.

“I'd have got that without the explanation, thank you very much, Miss Chipper,” Thula said, and he chuckled as he propped it in the window.

“That's
Mizz
Chipper, I'll have you know.”

Thula sighed in mock weariness.

“You ready, guys?” he asked. “Then let's do this.”

With a lurch the
Nomad
uncoupled from the landing pad inside the Cayth ship. Paul staggered over and fell into the copilot's seat beside Thula, and Syl hurriedly strapped herself in at the weapons console.

“You know, Meia told me that these things basically fly themselves,” Paul said as they jolted forward again.

“That's true,” said Thula, adjusting the thrusters. “Until they fly themselves into something else.”

“Oh.”

The bay doors opened before them, and their future was filled with stars.

“Buckle up, kids,” said Thula. “This is going to be a bumpy ride.”

But Syl barely heard him. The wormhole was ahead of them. They were returning to worlds that they had once known, but now changed by the years. She thought of her father, and his betrayal of her. She thought of Althea. She thought of the Marque.

But most of all, she thought of Ani.

T
he passing years had given Peris more than enough time to consider whether he'd done the right thing by fleeing the planet Earth with Danis. At the time, he'd thought that they could somehow find a way to convince Junior Consul Steyr to free them, after which they could join the fight.

But Steyr made it clear that he had risked enough by helping them to leave the doomed planet, and they should now regard themselves as prisoners of war. On the orders of the Archmage, they had been exiled to a homestead on the moon of Beros; they were captives in a gilded cage, safe but impotent, two pampered political prisoners kept at the Sisterhood's pleasure and guarded by Securitats, two aging soldiers robbed of duty or cause, overfed, understimulated, and left to live make-believe lives through holograms of places where they had once walked as free beings.

A quick death would have been better than this lingering one, thought Peris. Perhaps they should have remained on Earth and accepted their fate. Anything had to be better than this slow fading away. Then he thought of the Others, and decided that, no, there were fates worse than this one . . .

He gazed again at the smaller moon above, satellite to a satellite, one of so many moons he'd stared at over the years. He could never look at a moon now without remembering Earth's tale of the man in the moon, inspired by the ancient blue shadows that fashioned a benevolent, craggy face, a watchful presence guiding the planet's waters into tides and eddies, quietly but unstoppably influencing the world below.

The earth had a man in its moon, but Illyr had a woman in the greatest of its moons. Influence she had beyond measure, but as for her benevolence, well, who could tell?

I
n truth there were numerous females—thousands of them—on the most famous of the moons above the planet of Illyr, for the gray sphere of Avila Minor housed the Marque, the citadel of the Nairene Sisterhood, filled solely with feminine forms and girlish voices. A male Illyri had never so much as set foot on it, for to do so was against all laws, and the punishment for contravening them was severe.

Right now Ani Cienda could hear several of the Marque's females whispering loudly outside her chambers. She glanced away from the picture she held in her hands and frowned toward the door. Honestly, did they not understand that she was trying to rest, and she was most certainly not deaf?

“The Archmage has given instructions that she is not to be disturbed,” rang one voice, clear and strident.

That was Cocile, noted Ani, Syrene's former handmaiden, who was now referred to as the Archmage's “aide.” Ani had suggested the title when she'd become Syrene's official scribe, replacing Layne, who had been killed by the Mech, Meia. Even all these years later, Ani could not help but admire the audacity of that damned Mech, for Meia had then taken on Layne's identity after disposing of her, becoming a spy disguised in a Layne-skin.

Once Meia's duplicity was revealed, Syrene was so enraged that all those who served her directly were immediately rounded up and sliced open. Random cuts were inflicted to the arms, the legs, the shoulders, the cheeks, and one unfortunate Half-Sister had even lost most of an ear by panicking and struggling. Syrene's search for impostors was more than skin-deep: she wanted to see the Sisterhood bleed; she wanted meat and pulsing arteries to convince her that no further Mech impostors hid among her Nairenes. Everybody was a suspect. No one was immune.

On hearing of Layne's demise, Ani had hurriedly offered her services as Syrene's new scribe—and she could be more than a scribe too, she reminded the Archmage, for she was the last of the treasured Gifted, the young Novices who possessed psychic powers, and whom Syrene had been molding into her personal cohort of assassins.

What they were—and the purposes for which they had been intended—hardly mattered now, though, for they were all dead, with the exception of Ani. As the only Gifted still breathing air, Ani could serve as more than a mere keeper of records, she reminded Syrene; she could be a protector, an ally. Upon hearing this suggestion, Syrene had smiled curiously at Ani, a new light in her eyes, and after several long minutes during which she probed Ani's mind—and Ani stared back at her meekly, allowing her access, up to a point—the Archmage had reached into the folds of her red robes and produced a blade.

“Give me your hand, Earth-child,” she said.

Ani held out her right hand, palm up.

“Are you right-handed?”

“Yes, Your Eminence.”

“Well then, the other one, idiot.”

Turning her face away, Ani proffered her left and, without ceremony, Syrene swept the blade across the palm. Ani screamed as the skin split open, creating a deep gash of lumpy white flesh and sinew that quickly filled up with blood, spilling over and splashing to the floor.

“You look real enough to me,” said Syrene. “Cocile, get a medic. And a mop.”

She turned to Ani again, who was kneeling at her feet, clutching her balled left hand in her unharmed right, tears leaking from her eyes. The Red Witch bent down and whispered into Ani's ear so that only she could hear.

“Now, how did you expect to be my scribe with an injured writing hand? Stupid child. Get some rest. You'll be ordained as a full Sister in the morning.”

The following day Ani was transferred from the Twelfth Realm to Syrene's private sanctum in the Fourth, with strict instructions to leave all but her most personal belongings behind, for her new role demanded fresh robes, and brought with it an elevated position in the Nairene hierarchy. From that day forth, everything was kept fragrant and clean for Ani by the white-robed Service Sisters, who held their tongues and lowered their heads in her presence, such was Ani's new status and influence.

After the first week, Syrene had waved the blade at her again.

“Oh, I should cut off
both
your hands, Earthborn,” she snapped. “Your handwriting is appalling. Is there anything else you're good for?”

Ani took a deep breath.

“Clouding, Your Eminence,” Ani reminded her. “I'm quite good at clouding . . .”

And as she revealed more of her powers to Syrene, she had cause to write less, and in this way she grew closer to the Archmage, and increasingly valuable to her.

•  •  •

The Archmage now had many aides and scribes, although much of the time she preferred that notes weren't taken at her meetings. After all, written records could incriminate, especially during a civil war that had now been raging for for more than four years, and still thundered on far beyond the protective walls of the Marque.

Absently, Ani rubbed her thumb over the thick scar on her left palm, the relic of Syrene's blade. She had worried at it regularly in those early days, fretting as she tried to find her niche among Syrene's initially unwelcoming staff, so that the wound had healed lumpy and risen. She had considered getting it fixed, but it had come to represent something more to her, a constant reminder to be vigilant, and even now, as she felt it, her ears remained attuned to the noise outside. That was one thing she'd learned very quickly after her promotion: in the Sanctum, you kept your ears open, especially when it was assumed that you weren't listening. You always listened, you always watched.