The temple had been built, the colligation begun. Sena would not give up. She would not relent. She would fight until the end.
Yul had brought the nautrogienilus and the airship from the Pplar. The Pebella was not on board. Her presence had been a ruse, orchestrated to coincide with the gathering at Sandren.
The airship was not for Sena’s comfort. What it provided was something rational for Caliph to pursue. Caliph could not see Sena, therefore the vessel was now essentially the same as her. Caliph would follow it relentlessly, under the assumption that she was aboard. Even while she left and did other things, the Pplarian ship would draw the High King relentlessly into the south. This was part of her plan.
Her thoughts had slipped out. He had heard her. She scolded herself frantically but on the surface remained calm. “Extraneous, is it? Then why did
As Sena lay in the bed of pink tentacles, Yul came into the room. Yul could not see the thing that haunted her but one of his eyebrows lifted slightly, a betrayal of his thoughts that despite his foreign preferences, Sena reminded him of an alien pinup, posing on a pink anemone.
The nautrogienilus’ foot supported her weight while its arms arched over her back. Its tentacles flexed, tips brushing her shoulder blades. Sena did not close her eyes as the first arm slipped into her skin.
“Do you need anything?” Yul asked.
“No.”
Yul lowered his hairless head and left the room.
The tentacles pierced her because she allowed it. She controlled it. All the arms moved in orchestra, slicing precisely. She could have done this herself but the creature provided her with the fortuity of conservation.
The beast needed few holojoules to guide.
Each microscopic mouth chewed with surgical skill. She did not bleed as the first corner came up, tugged gently by a single arm. The meat beneath her skin was paler than pink, it was nearly white and shining. Fine radiant filaments stretched between the integument and a deeper glow of tissue. There were several layers. She did not enjoy it. She set her teeth. But this was necessary. Nothing else would endure the trip. Her skin embodied perfection at an atomic level—just like Caliph’s blood. Therefore, like his blood, it would last.
The melon-colored blush of chewing organs took no notice of her thoughts. They moved rhythmically, until finally she shut her eyes.
* * *
THE nautrogienilus finished its methodical work, having avulsed a perfect square. It held the thin slab of flesh aloft, dangling from tubiform arms.
Sena stood up. A field of light, evocative of the backswept membranes of a damselfly, streamed from the corresponding breach between her shoulder blades. The excised area was surreal in its perfection, as if drafted by an architect. Its upper edge ran level with her shoulders, its bottom chined the center of her back. She had directed the nautrogienilus to remove a quadrate from the only location on her body that would accommodate a flawless, unmarked sheet. It was the only part of her, of the necessary size, where the platinum designs never crossed. As if this span of skin had been prepared for exactly this purpose, planned in by the Entities who had gifted her with immortality.
The Pplarians said it was part of the deception, that she was following exactly where others had gone before.
To that, Sena had not argued but said simply, “I have to try.” She was different. This would be different. Her plan would see her through.
The skin taken from her back covered more or less thoracic vertebrae three through seven, representing seven inches top to bottom and a perfect tenth of her frame’s full height. There was a beauty to the numbers and the ratios.
The tiny mouths on the tips of the tentacles gobbled at the underside of her dermis but Sena whisked it away. As she held the slice of her back, seven inches by seven inches seemed an extraordinary span.
With broad angles of light still gushing from her, she placed the specimen on an oval tray. The room around her was an ooidal pocket punctured by blue-gazing duct-like portholes. Cool air slugged in. The walls, floor and ceiling all blended into one and moved in gentle ensemble. Most of the equipment in the room, the trays, racks and shelves, were living or once-living dentin.
A three-foot fibril sprouted from a workbench like the feeler of a white roach. It bent under the weight of a citrus-blue berry of light that quivered at its tip. Under the luminary, Sena carefully separated her skin, like layers in an onion. It did not resemble human flesh and came apart easily into three distinct strata, each identical in size and appearance. She placed each of the three squares in a separate tray and began pinning down their edges. While she worked, the room expanded and contracted around her, gently, almost imperceptibly, as if breathing.
Yul came back into the room. This time he ignored her unclothed body and offered a polite greeting in White Tongue having to do with the moon.
Though it was midafternoon, Naobi’s face cratered the sky through one of the pore-like windows.
“Moon’s greeting.” She smiled faintly.
The Pplarian wore a red kash. He approached and extended both of his usable hands. Sena paused what she was doing and allowed him to press his fingers and thumbs into her palms and wrists, a ceremonial two-handed exchange that she accepted without question.
“The temple has been closed,” he said. “The colligation is complete.”
She had already seen it with her eyes, the gates being pulled shut, the sign being installed, the chain taking its padlock in the dark and snowy cold.
Nevertheless she thanked him and her words were sincere. Knowing what the Pplarians had done for her only enhanced her sense of gratitude. The Pplarians owed her nothing, yet they had performed this service with strange munificence. Where they would go, what they would try to do on their own and whether they would succeed or be destroyed like the rest of the world was a mystery that remained beyond Sena’s knowledge. The Pebella of the Pplar was powerful and her ambit kept the fate of her people hidden.
Sena adjusted her skin over one of the trays’ thick wax bottoms. She placed an additional pin, then looked back at Yul. “Thank you for coming this far. I get lonely.”
Yul smacked his lips and craned his long neck to port like an albino tortoise without a shell. He peered through one of the windows at the
“Yes.” She looked through the intervening walls—unlike Yul—across the sky to where she could actually see Caliph talking with Taelin.
Yul inclined his head slightly in calm obeisance. He seemed calm. But she saw through the tight kash. His vestigial hands groped from caterpillar-sized arms and cupped his nipples. He pinched himself anxiously.
“You should go,” she told him.
He bowed, grinned brokenly and excused himself. As he neared the exit the muscular valve-like flap of the door opened and trembled around him. Yul squeezed his papillae fiercely and said, “The Pebella is never wrong.”
Sena offered him a thoughtful scowl and nodded her head. Then he was gone and the valve snicked shut behind him.
CHAPTER
30
“How did you know I was reading?” Caliph asked.
Taelin didn’t like the way his eyes scoured her face. Like he was searching for a lie.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I felt sick. And … I just knew. I know that sounds crazy but I feel like I’m inside
