Not the ocean that encircled Nexus, filtering the green light through glassy blue translucency. An ocean with shorelines, trenches. She saw swells, peaks of white like those of mountains. The swells rose, curled as they rushed against rocky cliffs and crashed, flinging white spray violently against the dark stones. Above it, the sky was opaque and pale gray.
She blinked. “Was that you?”
Meran’s eyes were still flashing. She did not respond.
“What was that?”
“My home,” Meran said, quietly. “But that is no longer of any consequence.”
Talis watched her. She didn’t seem sad. Or angry. “That was Peridot as it was before? Pre-Cataclysm?”
Meran shifted, took a deep breath through her nose. She went back to scanning the room, but Talis got the impression that her gaze extended far past the confines of the cabin. “It was not called Peridot. That is a name as unfamiliar to me as what this world has become.”
“What was it called?” Talis caught herself leaning forward, shoulders climbing up her neck. Tense. This information seemed so important to her, and she didn’t know why.
The simula turned back to look at her. “It was called Meran, of course.”
Talis stared. It was an absurd answer. But it was right. She could feel, in her bones, that it was right. And things shaped into something forming a sort of sense. The Five, Meran had called them thieves. She was fragmented, bound into rings. Her rawness. Her regal bearing, her predatoriness. She was wild, unharnessed. Tempered with wisdom.
She was the gods-rotted planet.
Or a piece of it, anyway. One piece out of ten.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” Talis said, at the same moment she realized it. “What would you do, given your druthers?”
Meran flashed teeth, a smile that was something else as well. With two hands, she pulled her ankles up onto the seat and sat with her knees bent to the sides. The predator was gone again, shifting back to the sage. The smile became gentler.
“The only thing I can do. Meet your goddess as she has bid, and destroy that which endangers this world.”
It itched at Talis’s mind. That was not a clean answer, interpretable at least two ways. That would serve Hankirk’s position. Would serve hers. Would serve peace, and would serve destruction.
She opened her mouth, trying to frame a question that would require a direct explanation.
But she hesitated, no longer sure she even wanted an answer.
She’d already decided that she didn’t want to be responsible for the power this woman possessed. Would unleash, if given the nod.
Meran had destroyed the alien ship by placing her hands against its engine. Even The Five—now The Four, Talis reminded herself—needed raw ingredients for their alchemical processes. Needed equipment and a lifetime’s worth of researched notes. Meran just needed a free hand.
Maybe the simula would do something reckless. But Talis knew Hankirk would. Knew the aliens would. Maybe reckless was the force she needed to employ. If Talis wore the ring, at least she knew her ship and crew would be spared. That was high on her list of priorities, guaranteed even if Meran followed her instincts, not her words. Without the ring to keep rein on Meran, there was no way to know if the strange woman would even consider their safety.
While these thoughts spun in her head, Meran only watched, waiting for her to speak.
Talis opened her mouth again, finally deciding on a question.
The ship’s bell rang hard and fast from outside before she could speak. The intercom behind her crackled to life.
“Captain,” came Dug’s voice, “we are making our approach.”
She pushed her chair back and rose, crossing to the intercom. Thumbed the textured brass button that opened the pipe. “Okay, Dug, be right there.”
She turned back to the table, trying to remember exactly how she’d decided to phrase the question.
Meran’s chair was empty.
Chapter 35
Talis knew, from the pull in her chest and the pulsing ache in her head, how close they were to Nexus.
To see its great arching shape filling her field of vision, though, took her breath away. Less than the top half of Nexus’s sphere could be seen. The rest was blocked from her view below the railing and above the lift envelope. She turned to look aft and saw the ocean channels forming a cage that closed around them. From this side of the ocean, the water looked impossibly dark. The overlapping bands that enclosed the space nearest Nexus seemed almost solid, though they shifted from gray-blue to darker, almost black depths. Shadows moved within the water, sinuous forms lurking in the changing currents, unconcerned with their presence. Flashes of green light reflected off the roiling surface, and white caps seethed along its edges.
“Well, I’ve been to Nexus. I can cross that off my list,” said Tisker from the wheelhouse. His voice was taut. “Ready to leave again when you are, Cap.”
The light was intense, so that she had to squint even when she looked away from it. Dug brought her a pair of tinted goggles to match the ones he, Tisker, and Sophie were already wearing. Beneath the dark lenses, their mouths were thin lines. Pinched with pain. Scrimshaw stood beside them, xist nictitating membranes shielding xist eyes against the harsh light.
The goggles shaded Talis’s vision and gave her some relief. It was still bright, but at least she could look directly at Nexus for a few moments at a time without her eyes watering.
From a distance, as she had known it her whole life, Nexus had always looked like a smooth sphere. A neon green ball whose undulating ribbons of light filtered through the rippling ocean that enveloped it. A sparkling reminder of their gods’ power. Now that the ocean had parted for them, she could see that the surface of Nexus had its own texture and detail. There was a hole, interrupting the curving silhouette to one side. An arch. An entrance. Angular
