“I know this sounds crazy, but they attacked the Rhya,” I said. “It was part of their plan to knock out the Fountain. Then they placed dark space beacons.”
Narcissa nodded as the realization played across her features.
“Their expeditionary force arrived about eighteen hours ago,” I continued. “We tracked a Scout Carrier and a squadron of fighters. They probably have more vessels—including a jumpship parked somewhere in your back yard.”
“My men are already searching for it.”
“It may already be too late. I’m sure their command knows something is up with the patrol.”
She took another drink from her mug. “So if you’re not with the Mayir, how did you happen to be wearing their exosuit?”
“It’s a long story, but we ended up seizing their ship.”
Her eyes widened.
“After they blew up ours,” I added. “My own suit got trashed in the battle. Listen, we don’t really have—”
“Why are you even here? In Roan Andessa?”
“The ship we took got damaged. I needed some mimonite.”
“Mimonite? For what? Are you making a coidinetical inductor or something?”
“It’s for the power weave. Something called a ‘discharge retainer,’ I think.”
Narcissa made a face. “Those don’t normally go bad.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Let’s suppose you get this mimonite. For the ship that you stole. Then what?”
“Then we repair the Vostok.”
“So what? If what you say is true, the Fountain has been disabled. You can’t go home.”
“I’m aware of that.” I took a deep breath. “There is another reason we came here.”
“Uh huh.”
“We were hoping to find a Rhya wardship.”
“Why?”
“We think it might be sentient.”
“Sentient? A wardship? That’s a new one on me.”
I sighed. “It was a stupid hope.”
Narcissa didn’t say anything—just looked away in thought.
Sitting here in some crazy warlord woman’s throne room, the realization of exactly how screwed we were finally dawned on me.
Narcissa was right. We couldn’t go home. And the Mayir would now be doubly pissed at us for wiping out their fire team—on top of stealing their ship and taking out their expedition. We’d be killed on sight. Unless they felt like torturing us.
Maybe Qualt had been right. Maybe we should have considered joining the Mayir. Or at least pretending to until we could get away.
No. Even as the thought entered my mind, I pushed it out. I could never work for the Mayir. Not knowing how fucked up they were. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.
Maybe it was better that I’d already burned that bridge.
5
“Come.” Narcissa swept out of her throne. Her shawl falling from her shoulders looked like a cat jumping from its mistress.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.” Flanked by two guards, she led me back up the wide staircase and across the plaza. It was dark now, but the plaza was lit by the soft glow of hanging lanterns.
We entered another temple-like building with a large staircase and then walked down to another subterranean hallway. This one was filled with statues of grim-looking non-humans. Not Obaswoon, that was obvious.
“Are these—?”
“Yueldians,” Narcissa said. “The fearsome Sky Reavers.”
They didn’t look particularly fearsome to me. They were close in appearance to Faiurae: tall and bony. Their necks were long and curved and their heads were elongated, stretching back to a fin-like mantle that almost looked squid-like.
“Let’s move it,” Narcissa said. “As you said, we don’t have much time.”
We descended a second staircase and then a third, which ended in a long dark corridor. Where the hell was she taking me?
As we walked down the corridor, I noticed a strand of heavy cables as thick as my wrist. They poked through a broken hole in one wall and then continued down the hallway, hung close to the ceiling. They looked like power cables. But they were definitely out of place in this ancient structure.
The corridor ended in a thick wooden door guarded by an Obaswoon soldier. Narcissa had a quick interchange with him in his own language and then he stepped aside.
I wasn’t really prepared for what was on the other side of the door: the glowing globe from a containment field generator.
And inside the field was a live Rhya.
It floated right up to the edge of the swirling translucent energy field and stared at me curiously.
I gawped for what felt like five minutes, then glanced back at Narcissa. “Holy shit.”
I had a million questions and she knew it, so she tried to preempt most of them with a quick explanation.
“I had been stuck in this system for nearly twenty years. And I wanted to go home.”
“That’s what Murroux said.”
“Yeah, well, at the time he didn’t seem so keen on going back,” she said. “Anyway, we went our separate ways and I salvaged an old shuttle and figured out how to get planetside.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I was going to see if I could hitch a ride back with one of the next expeditions to come through the Fountain. So I made my way to Roan Andessa.”
“But you must have known about the Rhya—the interdiction of travel to Roan Andessa.”
She shook her head. “In ’39 we were allowed to venture into the capital. There were rules, of course. We weren’t allowed to interfere with the locals. And the Rhya were there looking over our shoulders the whole time. But all the expeditions spent time here in the city. There’s so much archaeological material in Roan Andessa, I never thought it would be declared off limits.”
“Oops.”
“Oops is right. Anyway, no expeditions came, but a number of Rhya wardships did. They dropped supplies, took census counts, wanted to meet with the vadas—”
“The what?”
“The Obaswoon chief. They found out about me pretty quickly. A human living among the Obaswoon. Ruling them, if you wanted to get technical. Exactly what the Rhya had been trying to prevent all these years. They were not happy, to say the least. But I didn’t care. Even a Rhya prison would be better than this swamp world.”
“I don’t think the Rhya actually have prisons.”
“Well, it didn’t matter, because they all started dropping dead around me.”
“You saw it?”
Narcissa nodded. “I still can’t
