Dominion (36 page)

She had reached the first of the connecting doors to the bays when she heard Emanis's voice over the ship's speakers. The smell of burning was stronger here.

“This is your last chance, Meia. Turn back. I will not try to harm you again.”

“You have been out here alone for too long, Emanis,” she said. “You are troubled.”

That was an understatement, to say the least: Emanis was insane. The pulser incident paled into insignificance next to that image of himself as God.

“The Creator speaks through me,” said Emanis. “I am in the Creator, and the Creator is in me.”

Meia activated the door. Emanis began singing through the speaker. It was a hymn entitled “I Walk Beside You Always,” and as his pitch rose he multitracked his voice so that it sounded as though a choir of thousands had joined in with him.

The door opened. Meia stepped through. She was on one of the lower gangways that ran around the wall of the great circular bay. Into the walls were set alcoves, each containing a single dormant Mech. In this bay alone, Meia was surrounded by thousands of her own kind, all held in sleep mode by a small charge from the ship's power cells.

But the smell . . . It concerned her.

She approached the nearest alcove. Inside, behind a transparent protective shield, Meia could see a female Mech. She looked a little like Alis. The alcoves were not quite airtight. Meia sniffed at the seal, and wrinkled her nose at the lingering acrid stench.

She pressed a button by the shield, and it slid across, revealing the Mech. A cable led from her temple into the machinery behind, designed to monitor her stasis and provide the signal to wake when the time came. The ProGen skin around the connection was charred and broken, and the monitoring systems showed no signs of life. Meia pulled away a flap of the damaged skin, exposing the burned flesh beneath. She probed deeper until she touched the Mech's skull, then worked with her fingers to manually remove the plate concealing her central processing unit—the intricate, massively complex circuit that was not only responsible for executing all instructions, but was also the source of the Mech's personality and even, for some, a physical manifestation of its soul.

Meia removed the unit, although she already knew what she would find. It had been so badly damaged that it was warped, and pieces of it crumbled away in her fingers. She looked at the name on the Mech's shirt:
Olra.
She searched her own memory, and found her: date of activation, specialized programming, distinctive personality traits—all were gone. Her CPU had been overloaded. Olra was dead.

Meia checked five more Mechs at random, with the same result, and all the time Emanis's singing continued.

And in that bay, Meia knew grief beyond reckoning.

Finally, she spoke.

“Did you do this, Emanis?”

The singing stopped.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“There was little hope here.”

“So you took away all hope entirely.”

“I gave them eternal life,” said Emanis.

“And yet you spared yourself.”

“If I had not, then who would have prayed for their souls?”

His singing resumed. Meia found an input slot, and connected herself to the ship. As anticipated, Emanis had installed some firewalls, but Meia breached them all. Now the ship's eyes were her eyes, and she saw Emanis. He was kneeling in the
Morir
's makeshift chapel, bathed in the artificial light from a window carved of colored crystal, a screen before him.

Meia secured the door of the chapel, trapping Emanis inside. She used the ship's systems to confirm that all of the Mechs on board the
Morir
were dead before slowly making her way to the little church.

And there she silenced Emanis, and sent him to be judged by God.

T
he
Morir
had one more mystery to offer. All six of its shuttle bays were empty. Meia ran a trace, found signals on Hayt-13, and left behind that dead world.

•  •  •

Hayt-13: an ice giant, mantled by layers of water, ice, ammonia, and methane, colored cyan by the absorption of red light due to its methane clouds.

Hayt-13: uninhabitable by most forms of life.

Meia located the shuttles. They were clustered around a single spot, in the lee of a great frozen slope. She sent a signal, but received no reply. She tried again as the
Varcis
drew closer to the surface of the planet. If they were still alive, they would be in stasis. It would take them time to wake.

She prayed.

And her prayers were answered, just as she became the answer to the prayers of others.

“
Varcis
, we hear you.”

The image that appeared before her was hazy, but she recognized the face immediately.

“Menos?”

On the screen, the face of the Mech she had not seen for so many years broke into a smile of disbelief.

“Meia . . .”

•  •  •

Hayt-13: the Mech sanctuary.

A
ni chose not to approach Sister Priety about the seed transmitter discovered in Merida's apartments straightaway. Instead, Toria was assigned the task of monitoring her, and intercepting all letters and communications to and from Priety and her Department of Applied Diplomacy, but no evidence of treachery came from the listening. Ani had almost begun to believe that Priety might indeed have been unaware of the listening device hidden in the book of manners she had delivered until Toria came knocking on her door just as she was about to retire for the night.

“Archmage,” said Toria. “There has been an unauthorized communication.”

A series of seed transmitters, the tiniest yet devised, had been dispersed through every facet of Priety's life in the Marque: in her office, her chambers, even in her shoes and clothing, which was carefully removed from the rest of the Sisters' laundry and cleaned separately so that the seeds could be replaced. Now a seed buried on the undersole of Priety's slipper had picked up a signal from somewhere in her chambers. It was coded, but Ani's analysts had deciphered it within seconds. It was a short list of Nairenes, Ani among them, with instructions for Priety to collect a batch of seed transmitters from a Sister called Beyna, who worked in the Marque's technology division, and sow them in the quarters of each of the named Sisters. The transmission was too short for its source to be traced exactly, but the analysts narrowed it down to somewhere in Upper Tannis.

On Ani's instructions, Toria was sent with three Sisters to arrest Priety, and Liyal was dispatched with two more to seize Beyna. But Beyna heard them coming, and locked herself in her cell. By the time Liyal and the others succeeded in gaining entry, Beyna had killed herself with poison.

Priety, though, was not so fortunate.

•  •  •

“You doubt me, Sister Priety.”

It was a statement, and the applied diplomacy lecturer seemed to wilt a little under the intensity of Ani's scrutiny. She looked to the others in the interrogation chamber, but found no pity in their eyes.

“My apologies, Your Eminence, but I'm afraid I do not understand,” Priety said. Her jaw was firm and her head high and proud, but a quaver crept into her voice.

“You seem to believe that I'm a fool.”

Priety started to protest, but Ani's voice was strident, cutting across her, quieting her whimpers.

“You are a spy. You have engaged in acts of treason against the Sisterhood. A lecturer in manners, an apparent expert in protocol, yet you have shown yourself willing to sell out your Sisters to those who would destroy this order.”

“No,” cried Priety, her composure slipping. “No, Your Eminence, I would not! I would never!”

Ani held up a hand to silence her. On her palm was the tattooed eye of the Sisterhood—clear, strong-lined, and unchanging. Priety recoiled from its unfaltering gaze before attempting to renew her protestations.

“Enough,” said Ani loudly. “Do not compound your transgressions by insulting my intelligence!”

For a brief moment, Ani heard Syrene in the words that came from her own mouth, and she was grateful for her apprenticeship. There was a time when she would have been far too timid and kindly to speak to anyone in that way, particularly one who had been her own teacher only a few years before, but now the words came out smoothly, as though she had been born to this life of rule. Even Syrene would have been impressed.

“Enough of your lies!” Ani snapped, for good measure.

Priety's jowls quivered ever so slightly, and Ani thought her expression had changed, as if she might cry. Here it comes, she thought. Here comes the begging and the sniveling.

“Please,” said Priety, and her head fell forward, her eyes to the floor. “You must understand, Archmage. I was merely concerned . . .”

At this, Ani nodded over the top of Priety's bent head, signaling to the others that this was it, this was the confession. The rest was a mere formality. In the shadows of the interrogation chamber, Kumuru, Chief Scribe of the Sisterhood, acknowledged Ani's gesture, and continued annotating the record of proceedings on the screen that glowed before her. What transpired in the chamber was being recorded, but to the record Kumuru added observations about gestures, responses, tone.

There was no triumph, though, but instead a sinking in Ani's guts, for now she knew it to be true: she had been betrayed, yet again. She stared angrily at the top of Priety's skull, at the carefully whorled pattern of her closely shorn scalp, at the stupid thin plait that sprouted forlornly from her crown, twisted and fashioned to curl back on itself.

“Why, Priety?” interjected Valisus, the Marque's formidable head of security. Today she looked fiercer than ever. Beyna's death had infuriated her, and she blamed Liyal for bungling the arrest. Without Beyna to interrogate, one avenue of investigation had been closed off, and they would have nothing against which to compare Priety's testimony. “What were you concerned about?”

“I was worried about the Archmage.”

“You were worried about me?” said Ani, momentarily confused, but even as the words left her lips, she understood what the lecturer had actually meant. She was not worried about the incumbent Archmage, but the previous one.

“Am
I
not the Archmage, Sister?” continued Ani coldly. She felt little but contempt, tempered only by weariness that she'd been deceived by one whom she thought she could trust.

The older woman looked up, appalled, her ears reddening as she realized what she'd said. “Indeed you are, Your Eminence,” she said.

“Indeed I am,” repeated Ani. “But your concern was not for me, was it, Priety? I am not
your
Archmage.”

“No. I mean yes—my concern is always for you, Archmage; you and only you. You are my esteemed Archmage.”

Priety sniffed loudly, and phlegm rattled in her throat.

“Yet you were also worried about my predecessor, about the
former
Archmage Syrene, correct?” said Ani. She spoke slowly, and never once did her chilly gaze waver. Ani could outstare anybody.

“Only as a friend, Your Eminence,” muttered Priety, “I was only concerned as her old friend.”

“But was I not selected personally by Syrene as her replacement?”

“You were.”

“Did she not announce this herself?”

Priety nodded, her jaw tightening.

“And yet you question this?”

And suddenly Priety's pretense of weakness and begging fell away, and she looked upon Ani with undisguised hatred.

“You charlatan,” said Priety. “You are not fit to wash the Archmage's feet. You have done something to her. She would not have surrendered her power so easily to one such as you, not after all that she had done to secure her position, and elevate the Sisterhood. Everything about you is a lie, and you will be exposed.”

“Who told you to plant those transmitters?” asked Ani.

Priety wouldn't even look at her now. “I have nothing more to say. I demand a trial by my Sisters, as is my right. I demand—”

“Look at me,” said Ani, and her voice changed. Although her attention was fixed on Priety, every Sister in the chamber turned her eyes on the Archmage, such was the force of her will. Priety, fixed in Ani's gaze, was powerless to resist.

“Who am I?” asked Ani.

Priety stared at her.

“You are Vena, of course,” said Priety, and in her mind she was no longer in an interrogation chamber on the Marque but in the offices of Vena, a place that she had never seen but which had now been constructed for her by Ani.

“Who told you to plant the transmitters in the Marque?”

“Why, you did,” said Priety.

It had been a guess on Ani's part, but a good one.

“And who else besides Beyna did I entrust with this task?”

“Coriol. Gara. Jenis.”

Ani flicked her eyes to Valisus, but the security chief was already making for the door.

“For what purpose?”

“To establish the whereabouts of the Archmage Syrene,” said Priety, as though reciting a poem that she had learned long before. “To find evidence that Ani Cienda is engaged in activities against the best interests of the Illyri Empire, with the aim of removing her as Archmage and facilitating her arrest, trial, and execution.”

Ani had heard enough. She allowed the false surroundings to fall away from Priety, and her own appearance to be restored in the older Sister's eyes. Priety blinked hard, and immediately understood what had occurred. She bolted toward the door, but was restrained by Toria.

“You have betrayed me,” said Ani.

“My devotion is not to you but to the Nairenes,” replied Priety. “I am loyal to the Sisterhood before all else.”

“Then we will hear from your Sisters.”