Another messy draft

Finding agency in a scene beyond your control even when you're a god is hard

It’s a process. I don’t think Our Heroine is there yet. I don’t think this draft is there yet. But here it is: disturbing and vivid, hopefully. Messy and drafty, definitely.

Missing a goal for the protagonist… yeah, pretty much. Working on finding her center. It’s there. Somewhere.

Chapter 1

(On the voyage to Nuala Erta, the drumbeat pulse of the krov was a siren’s march, ever-louder, urging me to evolve as Nate had, into the krov’s beating heart. To become a vault of memory, the divine conscience for an entire race. Simultaneously, creator, construct, and sword.)←—text that won’t go here I’m leaving here for now

***

I knew the shuttle that took us off Feldelroy had once been part of a Unity fleet, for it was stamped with their sigil, that stinking triarch’d olive branch. But its template was the common, flat-topped ovoid found all over the Milk: the type popular with some syndicates for easy maneuverability through atmosphere. It had a bandoliered sail slanting across its bow, and propulsion vents like gemstones set along its stern. Even from the outside I could tell by the way it listed on the ground that it had no hyperspace engine to properly counterbalance its hulk, and I knew that most of its interior would be hollow, fashioned for cargo—or in this case, passengers. Indeed, I saw a flock of ’em loading as we passed the freight bay doors—a few human faces dotted among what looked almost like scores clad in armored chitin. I turned my head to peer closer as someone called out and those doors slammed closed.

“This way, Lady,” my antlered escort said. “We’re to ride atop, for our journey to the Two.”

“Who rides down there?” I hoped they’d pressurized the hold properly.

“Our agents,” Antlers said. She had a real name that was long, but I’d already asked twice. “Settlers that we intended to leave behind. You wanted all gone, so this will be a crowded flight.”

“Well, make sure to check the stabilizers,” I said. “And the seals… we’re going to a larger ship?” I knew she’d already said, but as long as I kept asking pointless questions, I could hold back the maelstrom of confusion, anger, and grief currently ripping me in twain.

“We ride to the Two,” Antlers said. She looked past me, at Mureen. “Our Lord warned us…” She sighed. “You’re to explain things again to her again, Ken’ri. Keep doing it until she understands.”

“The Two is your converted dreadnought, Lady.” Was that a touch of acid in Mureen’s voice or was she treating me like an infant, too? “The ship formerly known as the Happy Elyse.”

Riding to the Two, too, I thought a little hysterically, and considered I might be a little off, a fact reinforced by the way the entire pack of them and this planet kept dissolving down into their molecular particles in my vision, until the weight of the green star low on the horizon held more presence than any of this scene. “Was she?” I addressed Feldelroy’s sun, staring right into it as my vision whitened. “Happy?”

“Who?” Mureen’s brow furrowed. “Stop it!” she hissed. Her fingers dug into my freearm, as her hand moved my face to look into hers. Second had already overridden my attempt to blind us, dimming the combination of flesh and wire receptors in my eyes to almost nothing.

“Careful,” murmured the dead man whose insubstantial corpus kept overlapping Mureen’s. “What was that bastardized phrase from your smuggler? Cognis minty? The Ifr Council doesn’t require you to be compos mentis, either, Lee.”

“Leave Polla out of this!” I said.

“She is,” Mureen said. “You said she was before--she’s well?”

“Married,” said I. “And she hates your guts.” One of our first conversations had covered that territory. She’d asked about Davad and Rathe, too, but I hadn’t answered—maybe from a desire to twist in the knife, maybe just distracted by the way the Feldelroyan ground beneath my feet kept dissolving, leaving me standing in the infinite with the clamor of all their voices no more substantial than dust.

The larger question of what I’d become—and what came next—was staggering. But I could hardly collapse screaming about it in front of all these people—especially when they kept smiling at me like eigthday cultists. There was that white-furred girl again, nearly on my heels when I looked back—in my face, grinning. After I’d killed Nate, this crowd of Faege had chanted my name like I’d won the Biscayne (or become their new messiah.

Meet the new boss, I thought hysterically. Not really the same as the old boss, but you don’t seem to care--

I thought some of the folks in that cargo hold had looked Feldelroyan, but that couldn’t be. For there’d been a brief period after the killing and name-chanting when I’d received some assurances—the biggest of which was that we were leaving the people of Feldelroy on Feldelroy and withdrawing our forces completely. “We’re taking all your people, right?” I raised my voice to remind Antlers. “You promised if I came willingly.”

“As we said before.” Her antlers had fuzz on them in patches over the polished bone. Above our heads streaked other ships, a motley collection of shapes. Some looked made from bone. Some of the Faege had pendants around their necks that looked like bone, too—looked like that comm of Virmarr’s from long ago. I had to trust they’d communicated my orders somehow.

We ascended the ramp, me somehow leading the vanguard of a pack of dozens, some more and some less recognizably bipedal. The variety of Faege anatomy took my breath away. They were winged, antlered, scaled, feathered, and furrowed. Some wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Grass Priest choir pit or one of Ma’s Grange meets. Others were impossibly small, or four-legged like Virmarr, although he was the only centaur. A beaming figure with six arms beckoned for me to enter the ship first, their four breasts encased in chitin that could have been armor—or skin.

I did, half-expecting to hear harps sing, but all I heard was the familiar sound of mechanical circulators, hitching a little, as if their filters needed to be changed.

Tn my starboard, the cockpit was half covered by a barricade of leaves, and that seemed the only strangeness until the smell hit: musky, animal, and something like the sea. Similar to the way Lia smelled, but sharper. Something in the base note made me recoil. Foul, where Lia had been clean.

Thinking like a pilot, I turned starboard, pushing those leaves back, and came across my first real horror.

[Error!], Second flashed, as my blood froze.

As if from a distance, I heard myself whimper.

Behind that ruined door, lay a canopy of leaves and vines. The space was thickly covered by a coating of gray-green moss, which squelched unpleasantly under my makeshift sandals. Navboard and chairs had been removed and the token transparency window was black with mold, blocking the view.

And where at least one navchair should have been--

I heard my breath catch. The thing embedded in the floor had human, once, still retained the contours of its face and the general shape of a body. But what remained was mostly bone and sinew. On what had once been a navarm, wire gleamed brightly, with stems branching into roots that extended like bound wings on either side of the corpus. The effect was that of a flattened insect. Second’s spark of recognition and revulsion only showed me what I already knew: this was a made thing, a union of flesh and wire that should never have been born.

I recalled tales of the first pilots from the Second Exodus, those whose bodies were bound to the first primitive chairs, only to be scraped off and replaced by another when their meat was through.

This thing’s human eyes were open and rolling, its irises so light they looked blind. What remained of its face was smiling. That was the worst part. “Lady….” it whispered through pinkish lips. Those teeth were perfect. “Lady Ledasss…”

It knew me? I almost backed into Mureen in my rush to exit the room. Her hand closed on my freearm. “Steady,” she breathed, as I jerked back.

“What is that?” Unbalanced, I reached for the wall, felt my fingers sink into what should have been solid deckplate. When I withdrew my hand, my skin felt sticky and disturbingly warm.

“That is one of our pilots. Or do you mean who?” Virmarr had overheard from the entry on my aft, his hooves clattering on the metal deck. “Probably a newer recruit, but no one we knew well… and you wouldn’t know them at all, now. Does it matter?”

“Does it know what it is?” I turned to the antlered Faege. My impression was she was in charge, for she’d given orders to arrange our departure, called for others to dress me, after my own clothing had burned. “Did you do this to it?”

She sniffed. “Of course not. The stars are your dominion, Lady. You’d have to ask Ulok about how pilots are made. He is in charge of our flight program.”

“Who?”

She gave me a tired look. “Ulok.”

“Where is he?”

“On Skye, of course.”

The lifeless moon, your cold voice whispered. At least I thought it was yours. There was a deepness of tone, an edge different from your usual jaded weariness, but in the moment, I was too jangled to parse. The room seemed to brighten. It wasn’t until Mureen took a step back that I realized my skin was glowing again.

Covering her skin like a faint mist, the dead man I was trying to ignore gave me a grim smile. “Ulok,” he repeated mockingly, and I realized it had been his voice, not yours. “Our only Aemercy convert.”

“Who is Ulok?” I echoed the name like a muddled owl.

“Ulok,” Antlers repeated. “Ulok Mardis?” Her eyes were dark green. Her arms were furry. While most of the other Faege seemed to regard me with reverence, this woman’s tone sharpened. “He is your scientist who lives on Skye, which is the sphere that orbits our world.” Her lips pursed as she turned to Mureen. “How can she not recall basic facts? Our lord swore there was something left—”

“As I told Nate”--my former companion was twisting the edge of her sleeve, a gesture I’d seen before when she was too unsettled to lie—“and your council: brain tissue was regrown, but she’s not the same person. She can’t be.” Her gaze went to mine with an expression that I couldn’t parse. Did she still believe that herself?

Was she covering for me?

***

(Stars, I still don’t know. As I mentioned before, there are parts of our story—specifically parts about Mureen—that remain forever beyond my ken.)

***

“Whatver she is, the lady’s had a busy day.” The front half of Virmarr poked through the leaf canopy, one of his hands slipping to my shoulder, pulling me back. “That might be… Marion on the floor, I think.” His tone was light. “Looks a bit like… yes. Marion. He was in our original Company. From Luna, I believe. He liked playing darts, although not with us, of course. We cheated.” His fingers tightened, as he backstepped, dragging me with him. “Especially you, Lee. No scruples whatsoever.”

“Marr’s still bitter.” Nate’s ghost sounded laconic. “Watch him carefully, my love.”

“La-dy…?” the thing on the floor sounded sad I was going, all that melting skin twitching. “La-dy. Input?”

“What does… Marion want?” I asked, but oh, I knew. Input. Like a junior pilot asking for directions.

“Want? It just likes to fly, now.” Virmarr said. “It isn’t Marion anymore, Lee. Step aside so a supervisor can give it coordinates.” With his centaur’s height, his head almost brushed the ceiling. He pulled me to him with an aggressive grip, arms wrapping around my rib cage. He leaned stoop-shouldered over me, as an ordinary-looking human man pushed past us, clad in Unity white. I watched as the newcomer knelt beside the thing on the floor, whispering. His metal-laced hand stroked that broken flesh, and I heard the chant of numbers.

Second flashed them on my retina. The coordinates demarcated an orbital ring above—no doubt where our ship awaited.

“She’s confused him!” the pilot in white looked annoyed, the metal on his arm brightening defensively. “He’s frightened Petal isn’t with her.” His eyes were white-rimmed, his form cadaverous as if he’d been holding back the river for years. “What have you done with Petal?” That last was for me. He pointed at my navhand, his own sparking blue. “And tell whoever that is, to be quiet! Second isn’t a name--”

“You be quiet,” I snapped. “Second can do whatever it pleases.”

“Reassure the shuttle, please, Dabney.” Antlers seemed to be losing patience with all of us. “Use the herbs if you have to. And you--get her seated in the back.” That last was for Virmarr. “And you, watch her.” That, to Mureen. “And, you Lady Ledas, tamp down your ___!” The last was to me, an unintelligible word that Second suggested might mean “chi” or “magic,” but some inner sense of mine insisted wasn’t either—

“Krov,” the man who wasn’t there murmured. It was impossible that I almost felt his hot breath in my ear. “This is krov. You don’t know enough to hold it back, do you?”

Fuck you, I thought.

Alien amusement, like poison seeping from that ghost. “Oh, Lee. You gave up trying long ago.”

“Are you all right?” Mureen again, worrying.

“Should I be?” I was grinding my teeth. Had I said ‘fuck you’ out loud again?

Aside from its mutated pilot, the rest of the shuttle that took us away from Feldelroy was ordinary. I was bestowed a seat near the bow, with a clean transparency view of Polla’s homeworld spreading out below us. A smiling, white-furred girl brought me refreshments unasked, all sealed in Feldelroyan packaging.

“You mustn’t eat our food,” the girl said. “It would hurt you, Lady.” Behind, Mureen hovered, clutching her own bright pack of crackers and a fizzy drink that I recalled Polla hating.

“Don’t call me ‘lady.’” They were making the word a title.

“Yes, my Lord.”

“Just Ledas,” I said. “Or Lee. Please.”

“Ledas,” she nodded. “Laedy Lee—I mean— just Lee-das.”

Not an hour before, I’d dissolved their god to dust—and now I was trying to ignore the way my skin kept glowing, giving far too forensic a view of the systems within.

I burrowed my luminescent fingers farther into the depths of my borrowed garment, and that was when I realized I’d seen the white-furred girl on Moonbase Celestean. Faris had opened fire and she’d vanished in a haze of smoke and explosions.

I’d thought the child dead. I found I was rather glad to see her alive.

“What’s your name?”

“Fabienne.” In my muddled vision, her face abruptly turned into a whorl of bright light that made Second’s sensors flash. “I have been assigned to assist you both.”

“Really? How old are you?” She should be in school, not advising Kamen-lords.

“I am grown to full size.” She sounded hurt. “Mature enough for this task. My father trained me in diplomacy himself!”

“They don’t measure age in years,” Mureen broke in. “Nuala has no rotation.”

I gritted my teeth, trying to ignore the way they both kept looking like branches of fragile fibers, nests of neurons floating in our shuttle’s metal shell. I’d only been trying for something normal to say, something to help me ignore the overwhelming strangeness of everything about this situation. Are you in school, dear? Do you like your classes?

Did Faege have schools?

“Of course they do,” Nate’s imaginary voice shattered my fragile equilibrium. “Children are extremely rare and precious to them. Your Arkan drones killed her father—”

“Fuck you!”

From Mureen’s aghast expression that I’d definitely said it aloud that time.

“Eat something. Here.” She pushed a rectangular package into my hands. “We can’t eat their food.” The nutrapak crinkled.

“Why?” I’d been a captor—or god—of these people for only an hour and already three of them had warned me not to eat any food that didn’t come in a sealed container.

“It starts the change,” she said seriously.

The crackers tasted like nothing, but I’d become used to that. Pilots lost their taste when they’re close to the river, and I hadn’t tasted anything in weeks. I forced myself to chew. We were now well above atmosphere, drifting past wreckage from the recent battle. Beyond the ruins of a Feldelroyan defense satellite, I saw the hulk of an impossible dreadnought—Nate’s ship, the unholy thing he’d named Two.

I had a moment’s panic when I couldn’t recall how I knew its name.

Our shuttle was a tiny shadow against that mottled gray surface. Three rather ordinary-looking vessels also hung close: two chain freighters and a Unity warbird. In the dreaming, I’d fancied Nate’s dreadnought to be made of grass. In reality, it was a knobbed mess that looked like bone, with gaping cracks in its hull and a terrible green light, that made my eyes cross.

Some kind of bioshield, your cold thoughts sounded fascinated. So, Ulok’s theories were correct all along.

“I told you it would work, Lee.” A deeper echo there. I rubbed my eyes, as your cold voice opined Nate’s ghost was naught but a hallucination borne from the death of his navvy that would soon fade.

Ignore him. That was your counsel. It’s never wise to trust people you’ve tried to kill—or people you have killed. And it isn’t truly him. My love is dead—

Your grief would sink me if I let it. I scrunched my eyes closed until my vision turned white again. I was too tired to explain to a ghost chorus how holding back vacuum required insane amounts of energy—and that’s why we human folk used airlocks that stinking sealed. The Two was flying, according to Second’s sensors, at a speed faster than planetary orbit, serving as shepherd to its motley metal flock.

Almost magnificent, you said. Do you remember the play? There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio—

“Fucking stop it!” I screamed out loud.

The cabin fell silent. Mureen patted my hand. “It will get better,” she promised woodenly, but I knew that fixed smile and her fake cheer.

To my surprise, our shuttle made for the metal corvette. I must’ve said something, because Mureen began explaining how the Faege had to keep their living ships separate, lest the krov dissolve the human-made ones. “It does anyway over time,” she said. “You saw--”

I didn’t want to think about what I’d seen.

We docked in the corvette’s hangar, rather like the Great Escape’s where Bedalia had once berthed. It was empty save for one craft. Parked by the blast doors, rested another shuttle, this one made entirely from bone.

“Who’s flying the corvette? Is it like that shuttle?” I’d meant to ask Mureen, but it was the antlered Faege on our heels who replied.

“Many follow the Green Path.” Her lips were pink under the stalks sprouting beneath her nose. “More every day.”

Mureen gave me another nervous smile. I wondered if she thought we were somehow luring all of these happy people into some kind of trap. For the plan to destroy them had been her idea. Create me, use a planet-killer on the Faege planet … and the more time I spent with them, the fact that the Faege were people—human, despite appearances—became undeniable.

When I closed my eyes I could almost feel their heartbeats, and worse, an overriding emotion made me dangerously close to tears.

“Polla?” Mureen, again, asking me something I hadn’t heard.

“Ledas.” I reminded us both.

“Stars, I’m sorry.” Her cheeks flushed. “Of course. Are you all right?”

Was I “all right?” I was upright, my legs moving back and forth, following Virmarr’s equine bim. I watched our escort gather around the second shuttle, the one made from bone. Virmarr’s lean torso twisted, and he beckoned for me to follow. I hadn’t properly noticed his tail before—had I? Not like a horse’s, it was some chitinous, barbed thing that rose over his dappled haunches.

“Am I okay? What do you think?” I was still wearing a robe someone had draped over me, woven from silk like one of Davad’s. The weave was looser, uneven. The color was a shimmering white.

For mourning, I thought. I’ve finally killed you, Nate.

For an eyeblink, I heard laughter. “Surprised, my love? I always knew you would—”

“You’re not real,” I muttered.

“I am,” Mureen said, although I hadn’t been talking to her. Her hand brushed my hair back from where I’d been perfectly happy having it fall in my face. “It can be overwhelming, at first,” she said. “I know. Look at me. Focus only on me.”

My eyes did, despite the fact her face kept dissolving into its elemental particles. “Fuck you,” I said to a particularly pernicious carbon configuration that existed somewhere near her starboard nostril. With a force of effort, I made my vision human. Saw her big eyes, that ruffled hair. She looked nearly unchanged from that day I’d woken from a coma on Earff. “Fuck you,” I repeated. “This is all your fault, isn’t it?”

Her mouth quirked. “I suppose so.”

Teapot, I thought with a pang, missing that stinking android, but he’d gone with the real Polla and my possibly dead brother, and—fuck. I missed them too.

“I’m fine,” I hissed through gritted teeth. I’d killed a god, hadn’t I? What better definition of fine was there? “Was this your plan all along? Us ruling the Faege?”

“No.” Mureen’s voice was barely more than a whisper. “Lee, did Nate… get to you?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I lied. Nate could make you eat your own hand and like it, my brother had said. Was this strange mix of hope and something I refused to categorize something he’d done to me? Before I killed him, had he somehow made me love the Faege?

“Rule us? Does she think she’s here to rule us?” The buzz of amused voices behind us told me what the Faege thought about that.

“You don’t rule us, lady.” Fabienne, trying to explain alien governance now our new ship boarded. “It’s the Ifr Council sets the Green Path…” Her explanation continued, dissolving like her skin into the particles that made it, the waves of sound little different than the pull of plasma wind outside our ship’s hull. I tried to look like I was listening, but the pulse of life around us overwhelmed me.

Nothing felt real.

Was it Davad who’d told me the difference between kamn and krov? Or his stinking sister? Life is louder. One of them had said something about losing the ability to hear stillness. I hadn’t really understood, but now the threads of my garment, the blood in my veins, the thong of people emerging from our shuttle—all vied for my attention. Only the fragility of a ship’s hull protected us from vacuum, but I could feel that, too, metal no longer static as decay ate its hull. I recalled Carolina Station and its Abomination of twisted, frozen flesh.

So stinking fragile. With the objectivity of a madwoman, I considered ripping apart this ship, but then Fabienne turned and smiled. “Do you understand now?” she asked.

“No,” I mumbled.

She looked at Mureen. “Will you explain?”

“I’ll try.” The Kamen-lord looked serious as a Priest.

“Davad might be dead,” I confessed. “Or not. I don’t know. They’re going to execute Rathe.”

She nodded, lips whitening. “Did he die well?”

“Does anyone?” I felt adrift.

“I suppose not.” Her gaze went to the floor.

Those who’d come from the planet with us were in Unity and Feldelroyan disguise. In the expanse of this metal corvette, some moved with the ease of soldiers on leave after a mission, stripping off their gear, loosening collars. One woman kicked off her shoes. Her feet beneath were hooved—cloven-hooved. I had a sudden memory of Nate’s, a vision of him that was unbearably intimate: furred, naked, beside me with hooves like that.

In the dark, I hadn’t noticed at first. But I’d hated them, I’d despised what he’d become—blamed myself--

Stop! I told the ghost. I’m not you!

You must be, she said grimly, and worse, like a deeper echo, another voice agreed.

“Lady?” Another gaggle surrounded us, blocking my view, although I heard shouts behind them, and saw another group in that chitinous armor. “Lady!” Fabienne caught my freehand. She was scarcely more than a child, I thought. She pointed out features of our rather ordinary corvette like someone who’d never seen one before.

She’s treating you like a child, your cold voice noted.

Fuck you! I thought again. We were being led to another craft, the shuttle that would have been twin to the one that brought us here, except it was made from bone. We entered without incident. I didn’t look to the bow, or the vines covering the cockpit, thicker than the last ship, and flowering. Our ship of bone was an inconsequential speck as my senses drowned in the roar of life aboard the Two. I felt the moment we docked like an electrical connection. In my skull, Second was a terrified worm, cowering in fear.

We debarked the second shuttle into an immense, crowded hangar. My welcoming party roared with one voice, chanting my name.

“Ledas! Ledas! Ledas!”

“See how much you are missed?” Dazed, I turned to see parts of a man made of dust beside me. A ghost’s hand lay atop mine, and I nearly felt the press of his phantom fingers. I could see Virmarr’s four-legged bulk through his form, like through a blurred lens.

The princeling-turned-centaur caught my eye like there wasn’t a ghost between us. I’d killed their god, and Virmarr—and everyone else on this ship--welcomed me like I was their stinking savior.

“Oh, they forgive everything,” the ghost murmured. “For they are not Kamen.” And then he added almost teasingly. “Or your father…”

Second was splattering my portside retina with alerts about the dreadnought’s offline systems and the impossibility of our orbit.

“Perhaps especially my death. I tried to respect their wishes, but it became… difficult by the end,” Nate added.

They were monsters, the Faege, by any metric I knew. And yet—

The Grass Priests teach us to keep humankind in the Original Garden’s image. The Aemercy take that to mean any imperfect babe should be culled, and the12Fam use a version of that doctrine to make a race of perfect, pure humans, but these Faege designers had gone for other intentions. Sprinkled among chitin-class soldiers were a few unmasked. A dark young woman, nearly human, who smiled at me with pointed teeth. A pale, bearded man with elongated ears who scowled. A cluster of ten whose skin was painted blue--or was it paint? A woman whose skin was definitely green--and here and there, areas of the ship where the bulkheads were covered by that same combination of dark metal and fungus that had infested Natoth’s navvy.

Queasily, I wondered if it was catching.

The hangar that soared above our heads looked the same as any I’d seen in Unity recruitment rolls, although it was paler, and stippled with rot, and my nascent kamn sensed no metal in it. The neat rows of armored ones dropped to their knees as we passed, synchronized as androids, still shouting my name. The shell covering their faces was iridescent and reflective. Beetles, I thought with dread, remembering Lia’s name for us. I caught pieces of my scrawny reflection. My robe had two extra arms that I’d knotted to form a belt in the front, and my fingers fiddled with that knot now. My face was raked by claw-marks and my chest still ached from where Nate’s shaped knife of bone had cut deep. I felt a part of me stir, as if assessing the damage in a passing reflection.

I caught an errant emotion of dismay, as if the damage to our face had stirred the monster within in a way that the death of her husband had not.

“A few words?” his apparition murmured in my ear. “Reassure them their mother has returned.”

I hoped like hell he meant mother figuratively. “They have eyes, don’t they?”

Illcord Natoth chuckled. “Most of them. Still. Yes. I see your point… But you should say something.”

“I’m tired,” I said. For I was.