Captive's War 1: The Mercy of Gods

Thirty-Four

The last of the fivefold captives of Ayayeh system died reciting a series of concepts in a loop, and Ekur of the cohort Tkalal debated with itself whether the repetition was a symptom of mental collapse or a chosen death ritual. Reflex or prayer. Either way, its five limbs spasmed, curled upward, shivered, and ended their biological activity. What had been the physical manifestation of a mind became an inanimate object. That was what death meant.

The interrogator-librarian settled in its niche isolated from the animals, distilled its conclusions, and prepared to pass a report up to its superior. The things it had learned would inform the superior’s report to the tier above it, and so on until it reached the regulator-librarian and, through it, the Sovran herself. The organism claimed to be artificial: a half-mind built from living tissue. The truth of the claim is ambiguous as evidence exists to both support and refute it.

The summons came before it had a chance to finish its final composition. The chamber it was called to wasn’t in the same part of the world-palace, but it wasn’t a long journey either. Ekur-Tkalal put away its tools, rose up on its legs, and went to the transport queue at the top of the great arch. It had no subordinates to inform of its actions, and the summons had come from above it in the order of things. The only ones that might be concerned with this unexpected meeting were the animals it passed along the way, and the interrogator-librarian had no interest in them.

The ship that waited for it was small, but well-appointed. The pilot wasn’t an animal, but a Carryx artificer successful enough that it was still male. Ekur-Tkalal was prepared to be ignored, but the pilot was welcoming and deferential despite its higher status. When they lifted off, they continued straight up into the higher atmosphere.

The ship they landed in was the color of bone, wider than a level of the great arch, and buoyed up by thousands of gold and silver drones. The transport landed in a dock of polished stone, and the guards that waited to escort the interrogator-librarian were as tall as soldiers, but gendered. These male guards were red and gold, the scents from their bodies acrid and floral and full of threat. The strangeness of it all made the librarian’s head swim. That, or the cocktail of pheromones in the air.

The dock was like well-turned ground and rain-slaked stone. It was rich and biologically active. Organs in Ekur’s abdomen, long ago shriveled to vestigial nubs, filled with blood for the first time in decades. The escorts exchanged looks as they helped guide it down a wide, bright hallway, amused, the librarian thought, by the ways its steps weaved and stumbled. Its body was changing in answer to chemical signals it didn’t consciously understand, and the sensation was eerie and intoxicating.

When the two guards ushered it into the meeting chamber, its legs gave out at the joints. It sank to the deck, overwhelmed. Its fighting arms spread against the cool stone and it pressed its face to the floor.

The Sovran sat, her vast legs tucked beneath an abdomen sheathed in filigree and pulsing with light. Her hundred eyes shifted with a glorious independence, and her feeding arms—each as thick as the librarian’s fighting limbs—were tucked elegantly against her thorax. If she had commanded it to die, the librarian would have ceased to be without a second thought.

At her side, the regulator-librarian was less overwhelming only by comparison. Ekur-Tkalal felt the organs of its body softening, beginning to liquefy, preparing to remake itself in whatever form was required of it. Even without direction, the metamorphosis was underway.

“We have news,” the regulator-librarian said. “The battle at Ayayeh is ended. The dactyl you served is gone.”

“Yes,” Ekur-Tkalal said.

“Your place within the moieties has altered. Your duties and responsibilities will alter as well.”

“I submit.”

“There is a subject species that appears to be related biochemically to the pilot captives you brought. We have come to honor its keeper-librarian and address an incident. Your service to the Carryx will involve these.”

“It will,” Ekur-Tkalal said, and its flesh shifted and lurched as its body hurried to accept the changes, becoming again what it was told to become. “I will. I will.”

When the slaughter was over and the keeper-librarian of the human moiety returned, it had two Soft Lothark escort Dafyd back to his rooms. He didn’t know where they took Jellit. Someplace else. Walking home, he kept imagining the moment when he told Jessyn that her brother was all right, picturing her relief. It was the only good thing in a world full of bleakness and guilt. He clung to it.

Two Rak-hund were shifting restlessly in the hallway outside their quarters. The wide door was rolled open. Jessyn, Rickar, and Campar were sitting by the window, as silent as people at a funeral. Tonner, in the kitchen, was taking plates and cups one by one and smashing them on the floor. Else and Synnia were missing. She’s dead. Else is dead. Tonner had said it. They’re all dead. It had been like a brick thrown at Dafyd’s forehead. The sense of impact first, and then a slow bloom of pain that overwhelmed everything.

After that, even the news that they’d traded Jellit’s life for Ostencour’s conspiracy seemed small. Now that the other deaths had come, they were all Dafyd could think about.

The Carryx came for them on the morning of the next day. The sun had come up long enough ago that the rose and gold had vanished from the high clouds. A glimmer of lights that Dafyd thought of as ships or transports or some technology he hadn’t yet imagined passed across the brightness of the sky. The wide door slid open, and two of the Carryx were in the hall, half a dozen Rak-hund behind them. One of the Carryx was the librarian. The other, Dafyd hadn’t seen before. It was a little larger, its flesh was darker and more purple, and it had streaks of bright red along its massive forelegs.

“Come with us now,” the new Carryx said. Its voice box rendered it in lower tones than the librarian’s, and with a flatness of affect that felt like a threat.

“All of us?” Campar asked.

“All of you,” the new Carryx said.

“Can you give me a moment to pack?” Campar said, his tone light and breezy the way it got when he was angry or stressed. “I’m sure I have my overnight bag here somewhere.”

The new Carryx raised up a bit, one of its heavy fighting arms coming up off the floor. Campar immediately bowed and said, “I will come with you,” all the mocking humor gone from his voice. The arm lowered.

The five survivors of Tonner Freis’s celebrated workgroup lined up like schoolchildren under the eyes of a strict teacher. The Rak-hund pulled the door closed behind them and then walked at their sides as they went. The hallway they took led up along wide, metallic ramps. Dafyd noticed the aliens around them shifting to make way or to join their formation. More Rak-hund and Sinen and Soft Lothark. The war dogs of the Carryx. More of the Carryx themselves, and more of those with the carapace and larger build of soldiers. Fewer of the bound species that served in the wide cathedral and alcove laboratories.

The Carryx turned at a huge archway, leading them out onto an open-air platform. The air smelled rich, like the end of a rainstorm, and the wind was cool against his cheek. The transport they were led to looked too thin and delicate to hold them all, but the Carryx and their guard didn’t pause, so Dafyd didn’t either. When it rose, humming, into the wide air, Jessyn caught her breath. It was the first time they’d been outside a building since they’d arrived.

The transport swung out wide around the massive structures. Huge bulwarks with tens of thousands of windows like the one they’d lived behind flashing in the light like sightless eyes. The ziggurats shifting with the parallax of flight, showing just how massive they really were. The planet below was so far down, it seemed impossible that there was atmosphere enough for them to breathe. The Carryx whistled and trilled to each other, but no translation came. Whatever they were saying, the little box around Dafyd’s neck didn’t think it was meant for human ears.

When it approached a different building, or maybe a different arm of the same vast world-palace, Dafyd had to fight the sense that they were being swallowed. The entrance they passed into was more vast than any cavern. The pillars that rose through it were larger and taller than the Scholar’s Common back on Anjiin, and they seemed tiny and thin in the space. The transport’s hum grew deeper, and it began to descend. The space below them was like an arena or a theater without quite being either one. A rough semicircle centered on a dais, and kneeling in rows like the pious on their pews were more human beings than Dafyd had seen in one place since the fall of the Irvian Research Complex. There had to be thousands of them. A sea of grim, terrified faces.

At the center of the dais, with a dozen Carryx soldiers on either side, was the largest Carryx that Dafyd had ever seen. Twice the size easily of the bone-pale one they’d been presented to when they’d first arrived. It wore a mesh of silver and emerald, and its abdomen was encrusted with a complex of fine wire that seemed to pulse with a life of its own. Its massive forelegs were as thick around as the librarian’s chest, and the thinner, mantis-like arms were folded together before it as if in prayer.

Two only slightly less massive Carryx stood at its sides in carapaces of crimson and gold, radiating a sense of menace and barely restrained violence. Guards, or executioners.

The transport landed just before the dais, and the Rak-hund guided the five of them out to a bare place on the floor where, from context, it seemed they were meant to sit.

“Does anyone know what’s going on?” Tonner asked. His voice was peevish. “We did what they wanted. We made the thing work. We saved them from Ostencour, even when it meant losing our own people. You’d think that half a minute’s orientation wouldn’t be too much to ask.”

Rickar cleared his throat. “Tonner, this isn’t the time for complaints to the management.”

Tonner bristled, but he sat. Dafyd knelt down too, and the others followed. Across the way, also in the front row, Jellit was sitting, legs tucked under him. His face looked thin and pale, but his eyes were as wide and amazed as a child at his first circus. Dafyd could tell from the relaxation in Jessyn’s shoulders the moment she saw him, and he felt a little relief too. Whatever he’d done, he’d kept Jellit alive. Or Else had, whatever she’d said to him. Or shown him. With a little shock, he remembered again that Else was dead, and the memory was like a vast hollow opening just behind his breastbone.

Another transport arrived, floating down from the wide air like a basket being lowered on invisible strings. Another dozen people spilled out and were taken to their places at the back of the grouping. The best of the best of Anjiin, if Else’s spy was to be believed, all humbled and humiliated together. A few were looking around the way he was, faces turning one way and another, searching for someone or something familiar. Many more stared straight ahead, their eyes emptied by all that they’d been through.

At the dais, the huge Carryx stepped forward, and a procession of smaller animals or machines that Dafyd hadn’t seen before appeared, trundling out to surround the dais. They were the size of large dogs, but where the heads would have been, they opened up like gigantic lilies. When they’d taken their places, a roll of sound began—chirping and trilling and humming like deep birdsong. The voices of a hundred Carryx lifted together. The chorus reached some deep part of his brain that said predator, and made him want to stay very still.

When the chorus ended, the huge Carryx trilled and muttered, its forearms tapping together in a complex pattern that might or might not have meant anything. Its vast abdomen swayed like a boat on gentle waves. Tonner, beside him, leaned forward.

“What are they saying?”

“I don’t know.”

“You didn’t bring the… thing? The translator?”

Dafyd pointed at it. The silence coming out of the box was self-explanatory.

Tonner let out an exasperated sigh. Deep in his memory, Else said When he’s overstressed, Tonner can get petty. It’s his pathology.

“Given context, I assume this is about the resistance,” Campar said.

“Could be about our finishing the project the way they wanted,” Tonner said. “I think you’re all underestimating how important our work is. Look at all the different species they have under one umbrella. If we can make it so they don’t have to have a separate agricultural source for every one of them, we’re made from gold.”

“Keep your voice down,” Jessyn said.

“We stopped the conspiracy too,” Tonner said, and Dafyd winced. “They wouldn’t have known a damned thing without us. We paid a lot. A fucking lot. Be nice to see that recognized.”

On the dais, the Carryx with black-and-red arms stepped up in front of the larger one, tucked its legs under it, and lowered its head like it was praying. Dafyd could hear its voice—what he assumed was its voice—but not coming from the dais. The flower-headed dogs were relaying the sound like speakers.

He let his gaze wander, following the arc of soldier Carryx arrayed behind the huge one. An honor guard, maybe. As if this particular individual was too important for any mere alien to serve. One of the soldiers caught his attention, and for a moment, he didn’t know why. It was large, but no larger than the other soldiers. Its shell was a vivid green. It was larger than the librarian—than any of the librarians—and still dwarfed by the grand Carryx on the dais. Its head was odd, though. Like something had taken a bite out of it when it was young…

And he understood. Between one moment and the next, it came into place like something he’d known before and was only remembering. The librarian of the hallway crows with its three scars, and the soldier with the matching marks. The Night Drinkers’ librarian with its broken leg transformed now into a green soldier on the dais. The translator’s hiccup when he’d upset the librarian. The difficulty that the system had suffered trying to change a single, unified Carryx idea into something a human could understand: essential nature and place in society. An animal doesn’t choose that. And neither did the Carryx. Carryx changed with their social status. Their place in society literally determining the form of the bodies.

The ones who were victorious were better suited. The ones that failed were inferior because they had failed. Possibility was an illusion. That was what the librarian had said, but what it meant was choice. What happened, happened. What didn’t, didn’t. A species was useful to the Carryx, or it was not. They ruled their universe because they did. The other species didn’t because they didn’t.

For a moment, Dafyd Alkhor saw the universe the way a Carryx would, and it was beautifully simple and utterly horrific.

The huge Carryx intoned something in reply loud enough that it wasn’t repeated by the dogs. The new red-armed one shuddered in a way that Dafyd thought of as a bow, and it started moving off to the side. The humans’ keeper-librarian marched forward, solemnly taking the place where the other one had been. Tonner made an impatient sound.

Then he stood up.

“Excuse me,” Tonner said, raising his hand. “Hey, hey. Excuse me? Could we have a translator here at least? We are part of this, you know.”

Jessyn’s face went pale. Rickar and Campar exchanged a look of confusion and alarm. Tonner took a few steps toward the curve of flower-dogs, his arm still raised in what he didn’t know or didn’t remember was a gesture of challenge. An invitation to violence. The librarian and the huge Carryx both turned toward him. The librarian leaned back into the four legs of its abdomen, lifted its massive forelegs like it was getting ready to embrace the universe.

Dafyd didn’t choose to move. If he’d thought about it at all, he wouldn’t have. The time it took to think would have been longer than Tonner Freis’s life. He was already up and running, fully committed, by the time he knew he was going to. He barreled into the backs of Tonner’s knees. Tonner yelped as he fell, but he hit the ground. The assembled mass of humans gasped and murmured as Dafyd grabbed Tonner and rolled him onto his belly.

“Put your arms out at your side,” Dafyd said as he took the position himself.

“What are you talking about?” Tonner spat. “I’m not going to—”

“Lie face down. Put your arms out. They are about to kill you. You are seconds away from being dead.”

Tonner scowled and lifted his head. The librarian had its forearms out at its sides. The crushing blow would have taken less than a heartbeat.

“He is young,” Dafyd shouted into the ground, hoping that he would be heard, and that there were translators somewhere that would pass the message on. “We are both young. He didn’t know better. He meant no disrespect. He’s young!”

Tonner looked back. The universal fear on the sea of faces seemed to snap him back to reality, and he let his head drop to the floor. A moment later, he pushed his arms out to the side.

“I am young,” he said, his voice hardly more than a breath. “I didn’t mean anything. I’m young.”

The librarian didn’t move, but the two massive red-and-gold Carryx surged forward. Dafyd didn’t think about it. As if by instinct, he stood, lifted his knee, and stomped down on Tonner’s elbow with his full weight. The snap of bone and Tonner’s pained shriek filled the air. The Carryx paused.

“I take responsibility for his correction,” Dafyd said. “He is humbled.”

Dafyd lay back down on the floor at Tonner’s side and waited to see if it had been enough.

For what felt like hours but was a minute at most, they were still before their captors. The huge Carryx sang something, and the clicking of sharp, knifelike feet announced a Rak-hund coming close. Dafyd closed his eyes, waiting for the attack, but instead something grabbed his ankle and hauled him backward, scraping along the floor. His tunic rode up to his armpits. The Rak-hund released him back beside Jessyn and Rickar. Another dropped Tonner beside them before returning to their place among the guard. Tonner sat up, his face pale except for a long, bright scratch along one cheek.

On the dais, the librarian turned back to the huge Carryx.

“I just wanted to make sure we got credit,” Tonner said, weeping and cradling a rapidly swelling arm. “We did all the work. We should get—”

Campar put a wide, comforting hand on Tonner’s shoulder. “Be quiet, love, or I’ll snap the other one for you.”

Their librarian was chirping and trilling its deep bass. It planted its dark forelegs and leaned forward until the pale arms reached down to touch the floor, the back of its neck exposed to the one in silver and emerald. The soldiers shifted from side to side in excitement or anticipation. The flower-dogs murmured a wild chorus of trills and chirps: the voices of a thousand Carryx who were there but not physically present. The large Carryx let out a deep, fluting moan unlike anything Dafyd had ever heard.

Then the two guards stepped forward and placed their heavy fighting arms on the librarian’s back. The huge Carryx in silver and emerald gently placed one of its massive arms on the librarian’s head. The crack when its head was crushed reverberated like a gunshot across the dais.

Afterward, they were taken back to their rooms. For a long while, no one spoke. Campar sat on one of the sofas, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. Rickar and Jessyn constructed an ice pack and splint for Tonner’s broken arm.

Campar broke the silence. “What just happened?”

“Dafyd broke my fucking arm,” Tonner said.

“He saved your fucking life,” Jessyn said. “What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t,” Tonner said. And then, a moment later, and with an exhausted kind of sorrow, “I’m not really myself right now.”

Rickar lay down on the floor, and raised one arm in a gesture that was at the same time open and despairing. Dafyd wondered if, in another time, they would have been as sapped by the violence. There were only so many horrors they could witness, only so much outrage and fear they could hold in their hearts, before they were just exhausted by it. The weight that bent Campar’s shoulders and pressed Rickar to the ground wasn’t the execution of the librarian. Or not just that. It was Synnia and Else. Nöl and Irinna. It was the destruction of Anjiin and the Night Drinkers and the execution of the near-field group. Even the moments of success were drowning in darkness.

Dafyd tried to imagine what Else would have said, where she would have sat, how she and the secret spy would have made sense of it all. He couldn’t.

Heavy footsteps sounded from the hallway. Rickar sat up. The Carryx that opened the door and came in was the same black-and-red one that had escorted the librarian to its death. The one that had spoken on the dais and survived. It moved with a calm grace, its steps so smooth it seemed like it was gliding. It had one of the translators around its neck, but its muttering and chirring weren’t being passed on.

Tonner walked toward it, then hesitated and stepped back like he was trying to judge its reach. Campar watched it like he was watching a lion in a menagerie, like there was some invisible cage that kept him safe from it. The new Carryx shifted its eyes from one to the other of them. Dafyd couldn’t tell if it was identifying each of them or watching for signs of an attack or lost entirely in its own thoughts. He’d only ever spoken to the librarian. He didn’t know what gestures and habits were common to all the Carryx and which had been idiosyncrasies of the one individual. He’d find out, though.

Something moved behind the Carryx. A more familiar form, walking just behind it. Jellit limped into the room. Jessyn let out a cry and ran to her brother. For a moment, they held each other. Dafyd watched the embrace and tried to take comfort in it himself. Whatever else he’d done, he’d also done this.

The Carryx planted its massive black-and-red forelegs, leaning its weight onto them. Its abdomen shifted gently from side to side on smaller, graceful, uneasy legs. It seemed to consider them all, and then turned to Dafyd, focusing its attention on him as if by breaking Tonner’s arm he’d identified himself as the leader in the Carryx’s eyes.

When it spoke, the voice box translated it with a different voice. Not the genderless matter-of-fact of the soldiers or the reedy calm of the librarian, but something more fundamentally threatening.

“I am Ekur of the cohort Tkalal, and I have been made the new keeper-librarian of the human moiety. Your place within the moieties has altered. Your duties and responsibilities will alter as well.”

It shifted its weight. It waited, as if it anticipated some response. None of them spoke. After a moment, its pale feeding arms unfolded, its clawed hands interleaving in something like prayer.

“First,” it said, “as your librarian, I congratulate you all on your success…”