Wings of Retribution (73 page)

Athenais laughed.  “They’re aliens.  You think they’d listen to me?”  She tossed the handheld back.

“I’m warning you, Athenais—”  Juno’s hand fisted on the handset and she scowled.  Like a child throwing a tantrum.

“Warn me all you want,” Athenais said, shrugging.  “I’m not calling them in to their deaths.”

Juno’s sharp face went dark and flat.  “Then you’d better hope they turn themselves in, or you’ll be exploring areas of this planet no one’s ever been to before.”

“You do that and I’ll introduce you to uncharted space,” Athenais said sweetly.  “You have my word.”

Juno laughed.  “When?  You actually think anything
lives
ten miles beneath the surface?  There’s nothing down there to pull your body off the anchor.”  Her smile was laced with cyanide.  “And I’m going to make sure to use
good
ropes, this time.”  At that, she turned and led the Warriors from the room, taking the handheld with her.

…the seas shall dry and the Oracle shall come astride a wave of fire, spreading his prophecy throughout the stars.  It will signal the dawning of a new age, one mankind has not seen for thousands of years.

The stadium erupted in a wild frenzy of cheering and zealous affirmations of faith.  Strangers and Traders alike collapsed in the stands, convulsing in a fervor.  On the stage below, the Emperor nodded to the blind Priestesses with the pitchers, who walked across the platform and unerringly filled the cups of the thousand naked adolescents kneeling before them.

Stuart turned to Ragnar.  “What is that stuff?”

“A drug, I think,” Ragnar replied.  “Are you listening to what he’s saying?”

“The prophecy?”

“Yes.”

“What about it?” Stuart asked.

“It’s odd they picked a man as their ultimate savior,” the shifter said, frowning.  “Seems to me Juno would have set herself up for the task.”

Stuart scanned the gathered masses warily.  “I don’t think Juno knows about this.”

“She knows,” Ragnar said, his face forming into a bitter line.  “Kind of hard to hide fifty thousand people when they’re screaming loud enough to make the walls vibrate.”

“Then why isn’t she here?”

“Maybe she is and we just can’t see her.”

“You think Athenais—”  The stadium fell silent suddenly and Stuart cut off the rest of his sentence as he turned to watch the proceedings on the stage below.  The Priestesses had returned to the sidelines and now the thousand naked adolescents held the cups in trembling hands.  It was obvious some of them were crying.

Now drink,
the Emperor’s voice boomed out. 
And may the spirit of the ocean cleanse your souls.

As one, the adolescents drank.  One boy fumbled and spilled his cup and a Warrior refilled it immediately and forced him to drink.  As soon as it was down, he, like the others, slumped to the ground.

“Poison?” Ragnar asked.

“They’re still moving,” Stuart said.

“Those three are going into convulsions.  Look at them.”

Apparently, the Warriors ringing the platform saw them too, because six of them waded through the mass of prone bodies to pluck the three from the floor.  Two girls and a boy.  These they brought to kneel at the Emperor’s feet.

The gods have chosen.  I send you down your paths with my blessings.

At that, two Warriors stepped away and led the two girls to an altar to the side of the platform.  The rest went to restrain the boy, who seemed to be regaining his wits.  He thrashed in their grasp, his terrified screams echoing across the entire hushed arena.

“You see that?” Stuart whispered.

“Shhh.”

The girls were also beginning to come to their senses.  One tried to run, but the wall of Warriors surrounding the platform caught her and brought her back to the altar.  Then, as everyone watched, they made her lie down on the raised slab of stone.  She began to cry, pleading with the four Warriors holding her down.

The Emperor approached the altar, a red-hot wand of iron in his hand.  Gently, he reached out and grasped her hair. 
The Empire welcomes you to be its eyes and ears in the face of the gods.
  At that, the Emperor plunged the glowing poker into the girl’s left eye.  She screamed, thrashing against the four Warriors holding her on the altar.

The Emperor removed the glowing rod of iron and dispassionately thrust it into her other eye.

“I can’t watch this,” Stuart whispered.

“We can’t leave now,” Ragnar said.  “Close your eyes.”

Stuart did, but her screams dragged his gaze back to the scene on the platform.  The Emperor had exchanged pokers with one of the Priestesses and shoved the brighter one into her left ear.

Thankfully, the girl passed out.

The Emperor went through the same procedure with the other girl and Stuart hid his face behind the seat in front of him, unable to watch.  This one stayed conscious throughout.  Only when her cries finally subsided did he dare to look up.

The Warriors had carted the two girls off of the stage, leaving only the boy, who had renewed his struggles in desperation.

The Emperor exchanged the poker for a long, curved knife.  He walked up to the boy, who now stood still, weeping, and looked into his eyes.

You are not the one.
  With that, he thrust the pointed end of the knife into the boy’s belly and jerked upward.  The boy’s scream was cut off when he yanked the blade loose and sliced it across the boy’s throat.

“These people are sick,” Ragnar muttered.

“Can we go now?”

“Just wait.  I think the worst part is over.”

It was.  They carted off the boy’s body and two Strangers wiped up the blood.  Then the Emperor returned to the pedestal, looking down upon the naked adolescents who were just beginning to stir.

To the survivors, he said,
You were not chosen.  The ceremony is over.  You may go home.

The teenagers on the floor jumped to their feet, hugging each other and crying.  Anxious parents rushed out onto the platform and embraced their children, laughing.  The Emperor turned and left the arena.

At that, people in the stands began to get up and head toward the exits.

“That was an hour of my life I could’ve done without,” Stuart managed, on the very brink of vomiting.

Ragnar grabbed his host’s arm and pulled him out of his seat.  “It’s obvious you’ve never been to war, little man.  Come on.  I bet they’re all heading to dinner.”

“You can still think about
food
after watching that?!” Stuart cried, aghast.

Ragnar turned back to give him a hard look.  “Maybe you can’t understand this, parasite, but compared to what I feel after a
yeit,
that boy had it easy.”  He rounded and blended into the crowd, giving Stuart the choice of following the shifter or losing track of him forever.

Even the shifters call me a ‘parasite,’
Stuart thought, following Ragnar unhappily. 
Like it’s a goddamn hair color. 

He wasn’t a parasite.  He was a
symbiont.
  There was a difference.  A big one.  Like the difference between a coelacanth and a dolphin.  Yet none of the peabrained species he’d run into seemed to be able to grasp that concept.  They saw his useless little body, saw what he had to do to survive, and decided that his presence was automatically unwelcome.

Well, dammit, it wasn’t his fault that he wasn’t being given a chance to goddamn shine! 

It wasn’t
his
fault he was stuck in a body that didn’t want him.  If it had been
his
choice, he’d have made the bond with the first human he’d found and that would have been that.  But no.  The whole universe was suspicious, egotistical, and mad.  They saw his helpless little body and automatically assumed the worst.  Even shifters told him he had the right to fight to survive…and then told him he was just a useless sponge, surviving off of the good graces of another species.  Well, he was getting
so damned fed up
with their hypocritical horseshit!

Stuart had worked himself up into a near-froth of indignant rage by the time they found the kitchens, exactly where Stuart had thought they would be, on the lowest floor of the Wall. 

Of course, Ragnar had made them search through another two dozen floors before he would finally concede to checking the bottom floor, as Stuart had first suggested.  At least, once they
did
find the kitchens, Ragnar had the decency to look abashed.  If he hadn’t, Stuart would have lost it right there, and left the hypocrite to find his own way back home.

Unlike a human’s temper, however, after it had made a brief appearance, Stuart’s was very quick to subside.  After all, it had shown itself—and had thus been duly noted for what it was.  An emotion, a raw gut reaction, a visceral response to a stimulating situation.  Evolutionarily, his anger didn’t need to have any more control than that.  To allow it to do so could have been disastrous for both
suzait
and
harra
alike.  Unlike his current host species, who only thought and acted for one, Stuart had been taught that a
suzait
should always make decisions for two, and that training had stayed with him throughout the ages to come.

As useless, Stuart thought bitterly, as that training had turned out to be.

Well, until he’d met Dallas.  Compared to what he had faced before, Dallas had been an escape into paradise.  He’d finally been able to relax, to ease up control, to
rest
without worrying that his host was going to pick up the first weapon he found and blow them both away.  It had been utter bliss.  His first taste of a true host since his
harra
had died to a hunter’s bolt, so many millennia ago.  He’d enjoyed the company, the banter, the silly threats.  He’d enjoyed the shared secrets, the inner fears, the little outrages.  He’d loved being the watcher, the advisor, the counsel.  He loved being a
suzait
, not a
parasite
.

But that had only lasted for a few short weeks, just as he had known it would.  The whole experience had been bittersweet, and it left him with an agonizing welling of longing in his gut.

Seeker, he missed Dallas.

He often found himself wondering if she would have let him stay, had he asked.  She had seemed so hesitant to see him leave… 

Again, pangs of longing radiated from his core, agonizing his soul.  Why had he given her up?  What had
possessed
him to give up the one bit of peace he had earned in his long lifetime of fear and persecution?  Was it his own guilt?  His own sadism? 
What
?