Illiya motioned for her to approach, and Talis found her feet reluctant to move. Once she had seen Silus Cutter and Lindent Vein together at a parade for the rare occasion when their worship holidays fell on the same day, but it had been at a distance. She had been part of a crowd, lost in a sea of faces, not summoned into their presence or singled out.
She fidgeted with the hem of her shirt. Illiya hadn’t made her wear the drapings the Yu’Nyun had. That had been purely meant to make them uncomfortable, a fact which she’d confessed to Talis with a pleased grin.
The curtain pulled back to reveal a hulking mass of Pre-Cataclysm ’tronics lurking in the darkness. A display screen mounted several hands above eye level glowed green, tilted down at the empty space in front of it. Behind, snaking machinery connected it to a cabinet on the floor. The metal enclosing it was dark and, in the glow of the screen, seemed just a shadow. It would have been impressive, if Talis hadn’t seen the crisp alien display screens that fooled her into thinking they were windows, or the portable tablets that ran off unseen power packs and weighed less than a dinner plate.
Illiya monitored something on the back of the cabinet, then looked to Talis. “The connection has been established. Come closer, hurry.”
Prompted by the tone of Illiya’s voice, Talis took an automatic step forward, standing in the indicated spot—a purple mandala painted on the floor two paces in front of the display screen. She had to tilt her head back to look up at it. It was likely no coincidence that the posture made her immediately uncomfortable. Discomfort was an art that the order of Bone Priestesses had perfected over seventy-five generations.
A flicker of light and a strange thump sounded once, then the goddess’s image appeared on the glossy screen. Her form was rendered in shades of green. She leaned forward, moving her head in a thoughtful scanning arc, as though peering into a tank of shellfish to pick one for her supper.
“Illiya, my child, is this the one?”
The goddess wore an apron over a form-fitting sleeveless tunic. She adjusted a pair of welding goggles on her forehead and Talis saw that she wore heavy gloves as well. Her dark plumage was bound back at the nape of her neck, and feathers framed her shoulders. Behind her, out of focus and blurred, were the contours of arcane mechanisms, books, equipment, and ingredients, spread out across a flat surface.
“It is, Holy Mother. I present Talis, of Wind Sabre.”
Talis swallowed.
“Child,” the goddess said, leaning forward and peering at her. “You are neck-deep in a bog of sacrilege and treachery.”
Talis looked to Illiya for help, but the priestess was watching the screen and offered no cues.
“Please, Bone Mother, guide me,” said Talis. No point in denying the accusation. She’d been sensing it all closing in around her, and Onaya Bone almost certainly knew the wider landscape of it.
“The invaders have a ring that once belonged to my cohort, Lindent Vein.”
“Rotten hells.”
Talis froze, mortified at the slip, however inevitable.
“Indeed,” was all the goddess said in recognition of the vulgarity. “Illiya tells me they promised to leave our planet after speaking with me.”
“Yes, Bone Mother,” she said, quickly following with: “It was the only reason I agreed to it.”
“Were you not given one million other reasons?”
Caught. Hand in the till.
“I was, Bone Mother, which seemed a personal benefit that was far dwarfed by the idea of the aliens’ departure.”
Onaya Bone scratched an itch on her face, unimpressed. The gloves left a streak of something dark across her divine nose. Talis was reminded of Sophie and her ever-present grease and coal smudges.
“In their audience with me,” she said, looking as though she had stepped in something, “they demanded that we gods present ourselves before their ship and surrender.”
Talis heard the scrape of Illiya’s sandaled feet against the floor but her eyes were riveted to the image of Onaya Bone’s face, watching her. The already dim room around her went black, and the lurid green moving image of the goddess filled her vision. Her eyes burned and started to water. The ludicrous and horrifying statement overloaded her mind, and she winced at the small unintelligible sound that escaped her lips in place of a proper response.
“Quite. The aliens you consort with travel in a scout ship, sent across the emptiness between stars to find planets with resources such as ours. Resources like Nexus. There is an armada—an invasion force—waiting for their signal.”
Onaya Bone pulled off her gloves, dropping them somewhere out of the screen’s view area. She then itched at the same scratch with one of her long, taloned fingers, before untying the apron and pulling it away. Talis heard a smack as the heavy material hit some surface on the other side of the transmission. The goddess sighed.
“Can you just…” Talis searched for a word, “Can’t you deal with them? Um, Bone Mother.”
As soon as the words came out of Talis’s mouth, sounding even worse than they had in her head, she braced herself to be destroyed on the spot. Instead the goddess looked at her quietly for a moment. Her lip twitched. She took a deep breath and finally replied.
“There is a reason, I will confess to you, that we have not dealt with the alien invaders ourselves. We first saw their vessel when it was well beyond the reach of the planet’s atmosphere, as they orbited Peridot and watched our peoples. Watched us. We approached them and made an attempt at contact. Whatever they hoped to learn about Peridot, they already had learned it, at that point so long ago.”
“But then why… ?” Talis couldn’t think straight. Whatever Illiya had spiked her drink with was stronger than she expected. What was the
