She closed the curtains against it. It was a useless act but somehow made her feel better.
The pain was usually enough to keep Peridot’s denizens at a distance. There were no settled islands nearby, nothing that tempted a visit. And just to be thorough, The Divine Alchemists surrounded their home with the swirling waters of Peridot’s ocean, which teemed with aquatic creatures that could make short work of any ship that attempted to navigate on or break through the surface.
She wound the knob on the wall and turned up the warm yellow cabin lights, then poured a touch of rum into her coffee. Seemed like both a good idea and a bad one, so she hoped that by only having a little she wouldn’t have to deal with too much of either consequence. The coffee certainly hadn’t done much except jangle her thoughts further. She sat down at the far end of the table from Scrimshaw so she could put her feet up on the chair between them. Maybe by forcing her body into a relaxed position, she thought, she might convince it to release the tension building up.
“All right, go.” She took a small sip. Just enough for the tingle of rum to be felt on her tongue. She looked at xin and waited.
“You are aware she is currently under the control of the ring.”
One day Talis was planning on very happily never thinking about that damned ring again. “Yeah, she told us. I’ve got it, but I’m not wearing it. She seems to still be on her best behavior.”
“It would be wise not to lose track of it.”
She gestured around the room, indicating the disarray with her mug. “I haven’t lost it. It’s around here somewhere.” She leaned forward. “But tell me about her powers. She can destroy things—or heal them—on contact. Can she do it from a distance?”
“Perhaps if the remaining rings were found and she was fully restored. For now, she is limited to what she can touch.”
“You may ask me about my own limitations,” came Meran’s rich voice from the open doorway. Talis looked up, startled and not a little bit guilty.
The simula’s bearing was regal. She stepped delicately over the threshold into the cabin as though she were exiting a gilded carriage. Talis noticed she was wearing an anklet of strung brass beads and absently wondered where she kept coming up with new accessories.
“Thank you,” she said, instead. She was the captain, and this ship was her main concern. If she wanted to know what Meran was capable of, she shouldn’t feel guilty about it. Their safety might depend on it. Talis rose from the table and nodded toward the empty seat across from her. “Make yourself comfortable. I’m still picking up from earlier.”
Meran’s eyes flashed. “You do not wear the ring.”
“Make yourself comfortable,” repeated Talis, unable to keep the exasperation from her voice. She was exhausted, she knew. Taxed by the proximity to Nexus. Taxed by the whole rotted thing, really. “It was an invitation, not an order. By all means, if you’d rather not be comfortable, do whatever you like.”
Meran hesitated a moment, looking almost unsure of herself. Lost. Then her dispassion returned, sweeping the illusion of vulnerability from her face. She crossed to the table, righted the indicated chair, and sat, pulling one foot up onto the seat with her. Still regal, despite the slouch of her shoulders and the foot on the furniture.
“The restraint of the ring is troubling,” she said. It almost sounded contrite. If she was even capable of an apology. “Even unworn, I am sensitive to its control. I understand your words, but the phrasing makes me chafe beneath the yoke.”
Talis wondered where Meran had ever seen a yoked ox to learn that metaphor.
“So, your limitations?” Talis crossed beyond the arch which partitioned off her private alcove, to the desk centered in front of the wide window. Its surface was bare, having spilled its contents onto the ground.
Meran looked pointedly at Scrimshaw. Talis almost expected her to ask the alien to leave, but instead the simula said, “I cannot read the aliens.”
Recalling how Meran almost always seemed to know what Talis was thinking, what impulses she was fighting, Talis looked to Scrimshaw and asked, “Is it part of the simula’s program?”
She used words like program with some vague notion of what that meant. Sophie had used it in passing, excitedly talking to Meran about how she moved from the ring into the body. Talis was grasping at straws.
Scrimshaw’s mouth parted to answer, but Meran held out a silencing hand, answering for herself. “They are not from here and thus there is no Nexus within them. I am Nexus, and I can feel the same energy within others. See how it traces through their thoughts and follow it. The Yu’Nyun are blank to me.”
“Xe’s not Yu’Nyun anymore,” Talis said, gathering the course-plotting tools and returning them to their cases. Put the pencils in her desk drawer. She noticed that the box where she had stowed the ring had slid off her desktop. It lay in the middle of the floor, on its side, open and empty. She cursed under her breath and began to look around the cabin floor for the pouch that had been inside it. Keeping her voice level, she said, “Xe told me that door closed when xe got the scar.”
Scrimshaw turned to look at her with quiet eyes. Talis couldn’t fathom xist reasons for keeping that door shut when Meran offered xin a way back, but her instincts told her to accept it. Accept xin.
“Xe will never be of this world,” Meran said, dismissive. “Whatever xe has become.”
Scrimshaw stood from the table in a quick fluid motion and held xist chin aloft, proud. “You are as alien as I am.”
Xe looked back to Talis for a moment and dipped xist head, then turned and exited the cabin. Xe had to duck
