“Lies,” he cried, heaving a huge slab of stone into place upon his pile, now waist-high. He tossed me onto the stone like wood onto a fire, effortlessly. My head hit, and I felt myself go limp, dazed. I couldn’t struggle, though I could feel him lashing me to the slab. “The Gracious One warns us against your kind! Animal-lovers! Devils! Mistresses of lies!”
He licked at the spittle that ran down his chin. Past him I could see Snark on her belly, worming her way up the slope, and behind her, Lutha struggling with Leelson, trying to get free from him. It was all happening too quickly and too slowly, both at once. There was time to be terrified, not time enough to do anything. I prayed, begging Weaving Woman to let my pattern end cleanly, swiftly, without pain. Surely there had been enough pain!
“Not nearly enough,” Mitigan jeered, and I knew I had spoken aloud. Now his hand was aloft, already reddened by sunset, glittering with the blade it held. That was for me.
Far off, as though in another world, I heard Lutha and Snark shouting, not pleading. There was a strangeness in their voices, something inappropriate. I had time to think that. Why did they sound that way? I squeezed my eyes shut, clenched my teeth tight, waiting for the knife to come….
It didn’t come. Instead Mitigan bellowed, harshly, horrified.
I opened my eyes against a dazzle of light. Mitigan stood with his back to me, his head thrown back. Beyond him was Behemoth, up from the sea, serpent-necked, dragon-jawed, caldron-eyed.
“No,” it said in a voice of wind.
“But she refused you!” Mitigan howled. “She deserves to die. She refused you!”
“She has that right,” said the wind. “Do not all my beings have that right? Even you? You may ruin yourselves by your choices, still I will not take them from you….”
Mitigan turned frantically, lunging toward me, the knife aimed at my heart, but the wind came after him, raising him, taking him up as the vortex had done, twirling him, spinning him, up and away, away, glittering with weapons, howling with rage, away….
And all the while, for that tiny eternity, Behemoth looked me in the eye until I felt I had drowned in that look. Willingly. Forever. I did not want to come away.
“Still your kind may choose,” it said in a fading whisper. “Choose truth; choose lies; still you may choose, even now.”
I saw sunset. Only that. Behemoth gone. That rough beast gone. That enormous glory gone. That terrible beauty, gone. Leaving only its purpose evident all around us.
“Saluez,” cried Lutha, her fingers busy with the lashings. “Oh, Saluez.”
Far above us in the dusk, a sudden star bloomed and moved, swimming toward us through the evening.
“A ship,” said Leelson disbelievingly. “It’s a ship.”
The ship hung above us for some little time while we stared and mumbled. It had grown quite dark before it broke into two glittering parts, one of which descended. When it set down beside the camp, we saw it was a tender. It was from the Vigilance, as it turned out, a battle cruiser of the Alliance.
We stood slack-jawed while the lock opened, the ramp came down, and a woman alighted.
“Chadra Tsum,” said Poracious wonderingly. “Just as I saw her in Simidi-ala. And there behind her, that’s old Thosby Anent.”
He was a crooked man, with a lopsided walk. “Ah,” he cried as he hobbled toward us, his eyes scrunched almost shut with delighted self-importance. “Ah, Vigilance! See the ship’s name? Ah? I’ve been watching, waiting. Vigilance!”
He went on past us to stand upon a small hillock, looking about himself like a conqueror of worlds as he drew deep, dramatic breaths and tapped himself upon the chest in self-congratulation.
“Let me guess,” whispered Poracious to Chadra Tsum. “You told him we were here, expecting rescue, but he had to think it over. He couldn’t make up his mind to do anything about it?”
Chadra Tsum nodded, murmuring, “After some time had gone by, I asked if he would attempt to rescue you, and he said, ‘That’s the plan!’ Days went by, however, and he did nothing at all. So I commandeered an Alliance ship in his name. Then, when it was the Vigilance that showed up, he assumed he had done it himself.”
“Quite a coincidence,” Lutha murmured.
“Not really,” said the woman. “It’s the only battleship assigned to this sector. That’s where Thosby got his password in the first place.”
“I’m surprised you’ve come so quickly,” I managed to say. “Poracious and the king only prayed to you this evening!”
“You mean you really did that?” the woman breathed. “You know, I’ve felt something for days, as though you were speaking in my mind. Isn’t that strange?”
Poracious took her by the arm and led her a little aside, where they spoke animatedly to one another. Leelson joined them, and then others from the ship. Leely watched them for a moment, his face intent, then he wandered away toward the sea. I stayed where I was, with Lutha. In a few moments Snark joined us, then the ex-king, none of us making a move to join the general rejoicing. It was as though the four of us had been pulled together.
“Why did it let the ship come?” whispered Lutha. “Why?”
“Didn’t you hear what it said?” I murmured. “We have a choice. We’ve always had a choice.”
“Between what and what?” asked Snark.
“What choices are there?” Jiacare counted them off on his fingers. “What truths we choose to see. What lies we choose to ignore. Whether we become Firsters … or something else—”
He was interrupted by a raised voice from the group down the slope. Someone said loudly that ships were still disappearing in Hermes Sector and the captain wanted to get away quickly. Someone else reinforced this, but Poracious demanded, loudly, that the Procurator’s body be retrieved. There was a muttered argument, then general assent.
