Secrets

Chapter Seventeen The Old One’s Tale

The ship would not speak to him, despite his blandishments. Ember hauled himself to his feet, letting his fingers trail along the wall of the cell one last time. He thought this was a cruiser, but it was hard to be sure even of that much: the ship resisted him, blocked his thoughts, and if he pressed much further, it would send a warning jolt of electricity through its skin. He worked his shoulders, assessing his condition. He still felt the haze of the Culling beam, and he was weaker than he should be, the first pains of hunger starting in his palm. He had fed recently, though, so either he had been held for longer than seemed reasonable, or — He tugged open the neck of coat and shirt. There was no mark on his skin, but he was sure someone had fed on him. It was common enough, to weaken a prisoner so, but he wished whoever had done it would sicken. So he had been a prisoner, then, long enough for his body to heal itself, but not long enough for all the effects of the Culling beam to have worn off completely: a day, then, and no more than two.

It didn’t make sense. Why would he have been taken prisoner instead of being killed outright? Death might suspect that he had helped Quicksilver, but the point where that would have mattered was long past. Steelflower had set herself openly against Death, and both sides were gathering their allies and their fleets. The business with McKay had failed, and should be put aside, unless Death was feeling vindictive. That was a possibility that could not be ignored, either, and he grimaced at the thought. He remembered kneeling before her, her feeding hand against his skin, tugging the life from him. Or perhaps she thought he might be a useful bargaining counter: he was, after all, Steelflower’s chief cleverman. That thought was no more appealing.

The light shifted outside the webbed door, and he straightened, smoothing his hair to something like order. A pair of drones, and a tall blade — no, a blade he recognized, and Ember shuddered in spite of himself.

The Old One smiled from the far side of the grill. *Good. You have not forgotten.*

*How could I?* Ember dipped his head politely, and braced himself for whatever game was to come. He was not on Death’s flagship, he would have recognized it even if it refused contact; this was some smaller craft, a ship he had never visited.

*I am sorry it has come to this,* the Old One said, after a moment, and waved the drones to a distance, out of ordinary listening. *Your queen is reckless with your lives, to stand against our lady.*

Death was more reckless still. Ember let that show in his face, said only, *It is her right.*

The Old One gave a thin smile. *As it is my queen’s right to take your life in truth, rather than the taste she had earlier.*

Ember flinched, and knew the Old One saw.

*It is fortunate that she has another use for you.*

*Forgive me if that does not fill me with delight,* Ember said, and this time the Old One laughed aloud.

*No, no, this is truly your day of fortune, cleverman. I wish you to carry a message to Guide.*

*I will not act against my queen,* Ember said warily.

*I do not ask you to,* the Old One said. *I say this message is for Guide as one lord of the zenana speaks to another. It is not yet a matter for queens.*

Such messages were not unknown — Ember remembered such negotiations from childhood, when there had been more hives circling the galaxy in complex alliance. But now? He tipped his head to one side, considering. It would only be trickery, but surely there was no harm in carrying a message. Guide would be glad if he lived, and there was no shame in finding a way to survive. And yet why would the Old One bother, knowing that he would put the pieces together in the same way?

*Tell me this message,* he temporized. *And if I may do so with honor, I will carry it to Guide.*

*You are a cleverman, master of sciences biological,* the Old One said. *Have you never wondered how we came to be?”

*We?* Ember repeated.

*We Wraith,* the Old One said.

Ember paused. *We are not encouraged to pursue the matter.*

*You are a master, a cleverman of Gryphon,* the Old One said. *And the sons of Gryphon never leave well enough alone. What were your conclusions?*

*We are a hybrid of the Iratus insect and humans,* Ember said, after a moment. Anyone who made Sciences Biological their specialty learned that much, though it was not something blades spoke of, and even cleverman treated it with caution. But that much was no real secret.

*And?*

*Iratus abilities imposed on a human template,* Ember said. That was the dangerous piece, that they were close kin to the kine that fed them. No one wanted to hear that, even if it were true.

The Old One gave an approving nod. *By whom?*

Ember blinked. *By…no one, I would say. The Iratus drones are vicious and stealthy. I expect humans came through the Ring looking for a new homeworld, and found too late that a queen and hive were already in residence. Over the generations, the species merged.* His voice trailed off. No, that couldn’t be the right answer. The human settlers would simply have left the planet, gone back where they’d come from, long before the Iratus traits could become solidly established. Unless there had been some reason they couldn’t leave?

The Old One smiled again. *You already see the flaws in that hypothesis.*

*You have a better answer?*

*We were made,* the Old One said. *We were made by the Ancients for their own purposes, but we rebelled against them. What did you think caused the war between us? They knew we would kill them all for what they had done.*

Ember’s breath caught in his chest. Yes, that made sense. It smoothed out the impossible time line, eliminated a hundred problems that he and other clevermen had worried over — that generations of clevermen had worked to solve, but could not, unable to imagine that one possibility.

*You see it,* the Old One said, and Ember dipped his head again.

*Yes. But — why?*

*That I never knew,* the Old One said, and there was a bitter edge to his voice. *But that is the message I would have you take to Guide — and to Steelflower, if she has wit to hear. We cannot trust these humans, these new Lanteans. They are children of the Ancients, carrying their blood, their genes, and we cannot make peace with them. If we try, they will destroy us utterly.*

*That doesn’t follow,* Ember said.

The Old One bared his teeth. *They will have no choice. They made us too well.* He paused, extended his off hand through the unshielded bars of the holding cell. *As we had no choice in our day. Come, I will tell you a story, one no one has heard in a thousand years or more — if you dare listen.*

*What is your lineage?* Ember demanded. A man of Osprey could fill his mind with visions, Cloud’s children could compel —

*I have no lineage,* the Old One said. *I served Osprey in my day, but I am not of her kin, or any others’. I am the last of ninety-nine men who served the First Mothers. Will you hear my tale?*

Impossible, surely — but, no, it was all too possible. Even the Old One’s face testified to its probability, carved on lines no living queen, no queen in living memory, would choose. Slowly Ember held out his own off hand, let the Old One close fingers around his wrist.

*I will hear,* he said.

Their eyes were stung by the full light of day but the caves beneath Mount Sirris were cool and damp and welcoming. Ashes had hunted crystals there when he was younger, before he had sought the City of the Ancestors, and to his mild surprise he found that he remembered the network of tunnels as though he had searched there yesterday. There was a cave toward the eastern side of the mountain where the air was sweet and there was access to a cold spring. He led them there by the light of a single torch, amazed at how much better his night-sight had become, and as their band spread blankets and kindled a fire, he carried skins to the pool to fill them. Not that he was thirsty — none of them were; he’d asked, over and over, and no one admitted thirst — but he still could not entirely believe that they could live without drinking.

Without drinking water, in any case. He sat back on his heels, the first waterskin soft and plump at his side. The distant firelight caught the crystals that studded the rock behind the pool, flecks of light like stars, like his first glimpse of space from the Ancestors’ ships, when he had still been loved by them, when he had still believed… He looked away, fixing his eyes on the barely-rippling water. They had all drunk blood in plenty, in the escape, and after.

He looked down at his left hand, turned it palm up to study the new organ at its heart. He’d heard the uneasy jokes, first from the Ancestors themselves, when they hadn’t known he’d listened, and again from the younger men, though the women’s strength kept them from saying them too loudly, but he had no time to waste with that. He was a scientist; it was his task to decipher what it was that they had become.

It — they, he — he did not actually drink blood. He had tested that theory when they first fled to Athos, and from Athos to Lepys: it was not blood alone that nourished them. Nor could flesh or vegetable feed them. The most changed, the ones he guessed had been most malleable, most receptive to the virus, vomited the food immediately; when he palpated their bellies, in the moments before they sickened, he could feel the food shifting in a shrunken stomach pouch. Others ate and enjoyed the taste, but within a day either threw it up again or passed it undigested. A few fruits — dammas, on Renweir; the sweet plums of Athos — seemed to pass without undue pain, and they’d all enjoyed the taste, but he could tell they took no nourishment from them.

The death of men nourished them. That he had proved conclusively, both in the escape and in the hunted aftermath. The death of animals did not. He had tried, trapping coneys alive and latching onto them with his strange new claws and the mouth in the center of his hand. The coneys had withered and died like men, but there had been no surge of strength, no respite from the hunger.

We feed on that which separates men from beasts, he thought, and wondered again if that had been the Ancestors’ deeper intent. They had said they sought an immunity to the attack of the Iratus bug, but he no longer believed that. More likely, they sought immunity from disease — there had been whispers of a plague, once and away, that even the Ancestors feared — or perhaps they sought another route to Ascension. And perhaps this had been intended to become a gift for their children, he thought, a way for us to follow them into whatever bliss lay beyond this life. Perhaps this — soul? Mind? Perhaps this essence we feed on is what one must have in order to Ascend? Or perhaps it is that from which we must be freed? Maybe that was what they wanted, that we should free them, send them on their way… His hand ached, a dull throbbing in the center of his new mouth, slower than a heartbeat, and he slipped it beneath the water as though that might numb the pain.

The cold was like an electric shock, a thrust of lighting and a knee to the balls, shaking his very heart. He snatched his hand away, hissing between his teeth, cradled it against his chest until the pain stopped.

*Are you well?*

It was Osprey’s voice, and he looked up, still clutching hand to chest, to see her standing at the other end of the sliver of dark beach. He had not sensed her presence — he could feel the others, all of them, count them together in the larger chamber, but she was as invisible as a ghost until she chose to be seen.

*Yes,* he said. *I’m — I did something stupid, that’s all.*

*You must feed soon,* she said, and he nodded again.

*Yes. But not immediately.*

She regarded him thoughtfully, and his eyes fell. He remembered her as she had been, slight and smiling, barely out of girlhood, her long black hair in a braid that fell below her hips. He had taken her hand, recognizing a fellow Athosian, spoken to her of places they had shared before he’d gone to serve the Ancestors, promised her he would look after her, promised that she would be unharmed, and changed only for the better. The lie had been inadvertent, but it had been a lie nonetheless, and its weight was in his chest every time he looked at her.

*You know more than most about what was done to us,* she said. *And I’ve seen you testing your ideas. I want to know what you’ve found.*

He hesitated for a moment, seeing again the smiling girl, a farmer’s daughter, not even a child of the Ancestors’ City, and he felt her displeasure like a shock of cold air.

*I am not that child,* she said. *I am not sure I was ever only what you saw, Kairos, but rest assured I am not her now.*

Kairos. The name echoed, and with it came an image, his face, flat and plain and kindly — her memory of the man he had been, and he bowed to her, bending deeper than he had bent to the Ancestors themselves. *I apologize.*

*We must share everything we know,* she said. *No matter how we have come to know it, or where it may lead us, we must pool our knowledge. Without it, we will not survive.*

It was more than a year before they came again to Athos, and by then Osprey’s band had stolen a ship, so they were no longer dependent on the Rings, at the mercy of the Ancestors. It had been Ashes’ idea to return to his and Osprey’s home, to try to contact the kin they had left behind, and after some debate the others had agreed that the risk was worth the trial. Only Wind objected, but he bowed to Osprey’s decision. Whether he had come to agree with the idea, or merely did not wish to break the band or to be left to himself, Ashes could not have said, and did not inquire. He was simply grateful that Wind had capitulated.

They landed in the hills north of Emege, where the people lived in seasonal villages, and the high pastures would still be untenanted at the beginning of the spring. The air was cold and thin, but neither seemed to have much effect on what they had become. Ashes noted that, as he had noted all the other changes, the records of how they fed, and when, on whom and what it did to the victim. The last had not been pretty to explore, but it had been necessary: they could not always feed on their pursuers, and it had seemed worthwhile to find out if they could gain sustenance without damaging the subject beyond recovery. The feeding process mimicked aging in the subject, though it was not completely analogous. They had captured one of the Ancestors, a pilot, when they first tried to steal a ship, and kept him alive almost three months, draining his life sip by sip, but he had never recovered the strength he had lost. He had died raving, maddened by the enzyme that triggered the feeding process, and even the most embittered of the band had turned their face from him. But the result was incontrovertible. They could only kill, quick or slow, and Wind and the others who called themselves his blades swore that they would drain all at once and call it mercy. Ashes did not disagree, at least in principal, but he would not rule out the possibility of further research. Osprey granted the necessity, and that was enough.

*I suppose you’ve brought us here for a reason,* Wind said, standing in the hatchway of the stolen ship. It was a small craft, a freighter, but the former engineer they called Glass had rigged it with guns they’d stolen from one of the Ancestors’ scouts.

Osprey stepped past him into the gathering dusk, her hair falling straight and silver to her hips. She walked past both of them without speaking, until she stood at the edge of the meadow, where the ground fell away abruptly to a forest of conifers. There was still snow on the slopes above them, and they could feel its breath chill them as the first stars showed against the purpling night.

*My former wife lives in the nearest town,* Ashes said. *That is why I have brought us here. She is a physician and a scholar herself, and I would tell her what the Ancestors have done to us.*

*Former wife, you say.* Wind’s mental voice was tinged with skepticism. *And on what terms did you part?*

*Good terms,* Ashes said. *In these hills, we marry for a term, and when the term is run, we may part without dishonor. She had her life, her work, and I —* Even now it was hard to say it calmly, and he bit down hard on the bitter anger. *I wished to go to the City of the Ancestors, to learn what I might of their science. And I had been chosen, over a dozen others, and we were both proud —*

He stopped, unable to go on, and Osprey’s voice reached them, soft and cold as the touch of a snowflake.

*I was born in these hills — there, on the slope of Gallenar, beneath the Father of Snows. My mother, my father, they live there still, for all I know otherwise.*

Wind took a step forward, as though he would take her hand.

*There is a lake there, where the ospreys live.* She turned, held out a hand to each of them. Ashes took it, bowing his head, and her grief and anger broke over them like a great wave. He braced himself, stood firm against it, saw tears on Wind’s cheeks. Even in that moment, he filed the fact: he had not known they could still weep. And then Osprey mastered herself, took a slow breath that calmed them all.

*So,* she said. *And you believe she will help us?*

*I believe she will listen,* Ashes said. *And, at worst, she will not betray us.*

*And at best?* That was Wind, wiping his hand across his face.

*At best, I believe she will aid my research, help me find out what I, what we, have become,* Ashes answered. He did not speak of a cure, though that thought still hovered in the backs of their minds.

*It’s a risk,* Wind said.

Osprey paused. *Yes. But I can bring us there — a few of us, Ashes, of course, and you, Wind, and — shall we say two more? Armed and ready?*

Wind nodded.

*The more we know, the better,* Osprey said. *And if any of our kin will help us — we could surely use their aid.*

The chosen company made their way down the winding path that led to the winter village, arrived at its edge in the coldest hours just before the dawn. Osprey wound them in a cocoon of mist, and they drifted along the side streets until Ashes held up his hand.

*Here.*

Rissa’s house stood a little apart from the others, with a larger yard where stock could be held for treatment. The pen was empty now, though he could hear the faint stir of animals in the barn. In the yard, a dog lifted its head, but Osprey soothed it to silence. A lantern burned at the side door, shuttered against the wind, the candle almost out — the healer’s light, announcing that someone within would deal with emergencies — but another, brighter light glowed from a back window. That had been Rissa’s workroom, and Ashes edged closer, until he could peep in the rippled glass. She could have remarried, could have lovers, could even have taken an apprentice, but to his relief, he saw she was alone, bent over her microscope at the long bench. She had always said she worked best in the still of night, when there was nothing to interrupt her thoughts. He remembered waking to find her gone, the warmth still lingering beneath the blankets, the distant flicker of her lamp a comfort.

*We will wait,* Osprey said. *But — do not take too long. There is something not right.*

*Then we should leave,* Wind said. *Try another time.*

Ashes hesitated, knowing he spoke sense, but held by the familiar images. Beyond the glass Rissa straightened, reached for another slide, her long hands sure and steady.

*No,* Osprey said. *This may be all the time we have.* She nodded to Ashes. *Go, speak to her. We will cover you.*

The mist swirled higher, covering her as she spoke, and Wind and his men melted into its shelter. Ashes took a breath, and tapped gently on the glass. Rissa looked up sharply, her eyes widening in fear.

“What —” Her voice broke, and she reached for the pistol she had always kept beneath the workbench. “What do you want?”

“It’s Kairos,” he said. His voice was rusty with disuse, the words clumsy on his tongue. “Rissa, I need to talk to you.”

“No.” She kept the pistol leveled, but moved closer to the window. “I don’t believe you. Who — what are you?”

“It is me.” Ashes paused, trying to think of some way to prove it. It was hard to think, though, standing here with only a pane of glass between them. She had changed, of course. There was silver in her hair, and the lines at her eyes and bracketing her mouth had deepened, her skin more weathered. But still she was Rissa, and the breath caught for a moment in his throat. “I gave you the ring you wear there on your left hand, and our names are engraved within it.”

“And what else?”

Ashes closed his eyes. “Our prayer for a child. A prayer not granted.”

She moved then, came to pull back the door, but did not lower the weapon. Ashes turned to face her, but knew better than to close the distance between them.

“You cannot be Kairos,” she said. “You are nothing like.”

“Look again.”

She shook her head, more in denial than in lack of recognition.

“I have been changed,” he said. “But it is still me.”

Rissa shook her head again. “I don’t understand.”

“This.” Ashes gestured to his face, his hair, but some sense of decency kept him from showing his feeding hand. “This is what the Ancestors wanted. This is what they did to me, and to everyone who joined their experiment.”

“No.” Rissa’s face hardened. “I don’t believe you.”

“It’s true!”

“No,” she said again. “They told me that you might come, that you stole my friend’s memories and his life, a revenant monster —”

*Ashes!* That was Wind, and in the same instant Osprey’s mind leaped to warn them all. The Ancestors were there, hidden in ambush, Rissa the bait to lure them in —

Ashes snarled aloud, knowing and not caring that it made him seem more monstrous still. “I am Kairos,” he said, his eyes fixed on Rissa’s. “I was your husband and your friend, and you have betrayed me.”

“Liar,” she said, her hands steady on the gun.

“Kill me, then, if you can.”

She fired, a shot that sent him staggering back, more in surprise than in actual hurt. She fired a second time, and a third, and his control broke. He lunged for her, his off hand whipping up to strike the gun aside, his feeding hand flexed and ready. She screamed, a high and terrible noise that tore at his heart even as he sank his claws into her chest. The handmouth pulsed and clung, and she withered to a corpse in his hands. He pulled his hand free, blood on his nails, between his fingers. He had been so sure she would listen, that she would believe, and she had betrayed them, was part of the trap the Ancients set — and she was dead, Rissa dead at his hands, her life stolen. He had stolen her life, and it would never be enough. There would never be revenge enough for that.

One of Wind’s men seized his arm. *Come!*

An energy weapon blazed through the night, one of the Ancestors firing blind into the mist.

*Do not answer,* Osprey called. *Fall back to the ship.*

Ashes shook himself, the wounds in his chest already healing, and turned to follow the others. Rissa, of all people — that Rissa would choose to follow the Ancestors blindly, even with the evidence standing before her — She of all people knew science, should have been willing to test, to probe, not to accept anything at face value. But she had not, and they were utterly betrayed.

He stumbled up the trail after the others, his face wet with tears, and at the top of the slope Glass caught his arm, drew him into the shelter of the ship. Wind took the controls, and they leaped for the shelter of deep space.

Ember jerked his hand free, snarling, the echo of Ashes’s — the Old One’s — grieving fury an ache in his own chest. I don’t believe you, he would have said, except that the memory carried the conviction of truth. That is how it had been, how they had been born, been created, in the error of the Ancients’ laboratories. It was a hard truth, but it made too many things fit together for him to reject it outright.

*What then?* he asked, and was proud that his tone was mostly steady.

The Old One gave a thin smile. *The rest you know. We hid, scurrying from shadow to shadow, and all the while we gained strength. Our queens bore children, blades and clevermen and daughters to aid them, and we soon found we did not age and die. Immortality the Ancients sought, and immortality they gave us, though they would never pay the price we paid. In the shadows we hunted, and they did not know what to make of us, or what to do to stop us. They could not find us, and our numbers mounted. They died, too, generations of them died, until at last there were enough of us to meet them face to face. We swept out of their nightmares then, and drove them out of a dozen systems before they knew what had happened to them.*

*Yet it was not an easy victory,* Ember said. That much he knew, that the Ancients had nearly destroyed them, and it had been force of numbers alone that had overwhelmed the Ancients in the end. The Wraith were still paying the price of that victory, too many men still living, and not enough humans left to feed them all. Which was something his work might solve, but he buried that thought deep in the recesses of his mind. He could not afford for the Old One to know of that, or he would never be released.

*It was not,* the Old One said. He sounded tired now, as though the memories themselves weighed more heavily than the years. *But it was victory nonetheless. There were a handful of us still living then who had been among the first Returned, and we toasted the victory in the lives of those who made us.*

Ember caught the ghost of that memory, half a dozen blades and clevermen and a single queen, circling a band of humans bound kneeling on the floor of an Ancient outpost. Smoke still rose from the broken consoles, and a swirl of dirt blew in through the broken walls. The queen was ripely beautiful, her scarlet hair caught up and back, exalted in her vengeance. The Ancients looked exhausted, exhausted and confused and afraid. Most bore the insignia of scholars and scientists, and the men and the queen paced slowly, savoring the moment as they chose their prey. Ember could taste the Old One’s fierce joy, the life ripped from a gray-beard man, and then fed back, to be taken again — and the Ancient scientist had never known why, he realized. He could feel the terror and confusion that the Old One had felt, and recognized ignorance when he tasted it. He hid that, too, met the Old One’s eyes.

*And so here we are,* he said, and made the words light and rueful.

*Here we are,* the Old One said. *We had our victory, and yet Atlantis has risen again, and the children of the Ancestors dwell within it. We must end it this time.*

*These are not the Ancients,* Ember protested. *They’re — they are strong and clever, but they’re not the Ancients.*

*They are their descendants. They carry their blood, or else the city would not serve them.* The Old One sighed. *That is my message to Guide. There can be no peace between us and these new Lanteans. We are what they made us, their doom incarnate, and we can be nothing else. Let us urge our queens to alliance at least long enough to end this war once and for all.*

Ember shivered. He could not quite believe it, did not want to believe, and yet the Old One’s words carried the touch of absolute truth. He dipped his head again. *I will carry that message willingly.*

*Good.*

The Old One lifted his hand, and the cell’s door opened. Ember walked out between the waiting drones, braced for a shot that did not come. He made himself relax, and looked over his shoulder at the Old One.

*I will leave you where you can summon Guide,* the Old One said, answering the unspoken question. *You have my word.*

Ember hoped it would be enough.