Wincing at Light

<– Chapter Eighteen / Chapter Twenty –>

Sunset. Evening. Streaks of orange and molten gold stretching out like fingers, like tentacles over the city of Blackheath Grange from West to East, continent to sea; sun dipping beneath the tree and cliff line, casting long shadows over this tenuous human habitation. One by one, lanterns spark and candles light, a sudden sea of stars twinkle in the gloaming until it is exactly that–a sea of stars and constellations and galaxies unknown and unnamed, and the spaces between the flickering are fraught with shadow and peril and loss.

Ray and Emma stand beneath the Grange portico, beside the idling limousines, surrounded by retainers and domestics, Dag Maoudi and Trust children. The house behind them is dark except for the candles guttering in the windows and a brilliant lantern like the lens of a lighthouse in the window of the Faery Tower. As the city springs to life for the evening celebration, the welcoming of the Dao, they watch, awaiting some signal Ray cannot guess.

He doesn’t care to guess, and would be just as happy if the signal never came. He feels the threat of this evening and the next and the one following throbbing in his bones, humming through his flesh like he’s standing too close to high voltage lines. And Emma, all he has to do is look at her, eyes nearly closed, head down and shoulders slumped, to know what she’s thinking. Not a celebration for her, but an ordeal; not a joy, but something to be endured.

In the house, when she had finally come down, presented herself to Amah and the aged, wise Dag Maoudi women, wearing a deep purple gown, long as the robes of a Babylonian priestess, her face occluded by veils sheer and fine so that only her eyes and her slender, white hands were visible–after the cackling and head-nodding women were done with her, she had come to him. Nervous, face averted as though she could not bear the sight of him, all of her lost behind veil and fabric, she had whispered to him.

Are you sure you want to come? No one will think badly of you if you stay, if you choose not to witness this.

Not a chance. He’d said so to her, and taken her hand in his, and the smile he could not see on her lips blossomed glorious and shining in her eyes.

There’s no one else like you, she said, not in the whole universe.

And he thought, that’s what people keep telling me.

Stay close to me, Ray. I don’t want to lose you.

As if there was anything else he could have done.

It’s what he’s doing now, all but clinging to her, all but throwing his arms around her to shield her from harm. And he can hear the elder Dag Maoudi click their tongues at him. He can feel Amah, heavy arms over her chest, boring her stares into his back, trying to slither an awareness of her disapproval into his skull. Fuck them and fuck her and fuck this Dao. Only Emma matters; Emma who is strong according to her mother, strong enough. But Charles and Fram and the great line of Whiston men had believed Juliet was strong, too. Fuck them all.

They had given her over to the hands of the shed, and she didn’t even know it.

Now he sees it, a sudden leap of flame, a surge of light in the center of the city where the green would be, the signal they’ve been waiting for. The limousine doors open, people begin to clamber inside. Ray follows Emma, and is not surprised to find Amah crowding in behind him. First Amah, then others of the ancient Dag Maoudi, what Ray supposes would constitute the tribal elders, each of them doddering, hands trembling, leaning on canes. Each of them tattoo scarred, ebon eyes blazing, lips tight.

Ray and Emma sit in the back, and though there’s room beside them, the Dag Maoudi sit on the opposite side, glaring like a silent jury. Emma says nothing and peers out the window. Gathering herself the way a soldier does in the hour before a great battle, thinking death thoughts and fear thoughts and rehearsing the small pieces of the battle plan that are actually known to him. At least so Ray imagines. He doesn’t know what she’s thinking, because she doesn’t speak to him. He chooses to believe she is silent because she doesn’t want to talk openly in front of the Dag Maoudi.

He has no good reason to believe this. They’ve seen it all before. They know exactly what is going to happen next. He’s the only stranger here.

After a time, four or five minutes along the way, Amah says, “She has no awareness of you. You clutch her hand as though you would hold her, but she is not there. She is the vessel, and the mhuruk-a has filled her.”

“I promised Emma I would stay close to her.”

“The mhuruk-a does not care what promises were made. She will exercise her own will.”

Ray smiles, cold and evil. “We’ve talked already. The mhuruk-a knows she doesn’t particularly impress me.”

There is a flutter of Dag Maoudi conversation, elder whispering to elder. Ray can guess what they’re saying. Amah frowns at him, her expression stony, fierce.

“You mock what you do not understand.”

“And I think you know exactly what I understand. Don’t you?”

“You have comprehended nothing.”

“My grievous lack of knowledge must be why Freddy tried so hard to kill me. He didn’t want me to embarrass the family.”

Another flurry of hushed conversation. Ray goes on, “This is why you brought her back, isn’t it? Back from Strat in such a hurry. It had nothing to do with Juliet’s health; that was just a story you put out there for the press. Juliet has been crazy for years. But you needed Emma for the Dao. Because she’s the vessel, and she’s strong…and you didn’t have time to train anyone else to take her place. So you forced her to come back and do something she hates, to submit herself to this for family and colony and the glorious future you people are always going on about. Oh yeah, I can see why she cares so much about this fuckhole planet. You all treat her so well.”

At last, they’re silent. He doesn’t know if he stunned them, or merely made them too angry for words. Amah only shakes her head. “And what will you do, Mr. Marlowe? Will you stop the mhuruk-a from doing what it is she chooses to do? Will you pit your will against hers?”

“I’m not going to let her hurt Emma.”

And when this is done, I’m going to make certain she’s never in the position to hurt Emma again. That you can never hurt her again. I’ll take her to a place completely beyond your reach, and I’ll keep her there forever while you dry up and blow away. You and your whole world.

He wants to say these things to her, to shove his defiance in Amah’s face where she can see it and know it, drown in it. But he doesn’t, and it’s just as well. They’re out of time for vitriol. The cars decelerate on the edge of the city, and they’re no longer alone. Not just a procession of Whiston wealth and finery anymore, but streets crowded with onlookers, standing in near silence, lined up as though they’re waiting for a parade. It is a parade; a parade of one. Just Emma, teetering on the edge of possession by the mhuruk-a, by the shed.

The limousines roll to a stop, the doors open. On cue, a swarm of Eyelens cameras swoop and hover to document the glory. Emma reaches out, touches the door handle, pauses, looks back. Looks at him, and her eyes are wide, brimming with apprehension that is spiraling toward terror.

“Ray?” Ray.

And for a moment, he isn’t sure if she has spoken aloud, or directly into his mind, but he hears her, almost tastes her in that split, burning instant. She is inside him, touching his consciousness, and he is immersed in her, feels her, knows her like the unfolding of a familiar and beloved country beneath him. Her need, her fear, her exultation. She is vast and splendid; she is the scent of cinnamon and the taste of vanilla on his tongue. She is the echo of memory and place and experience that he has forgotten or never shared or only imaged with such deep and longing clarity that it is indistinguishable from truth.

Then she’s gone, and in the wake of her is darkness and emptiness. A hole in the fabric of himself.

She climbs out, leaving him to scramble after her. As she emerges, there is a cry from the audience like a cheer. Like a cheer, but something else. It is heavier, limned with hunger and savagery. There is an alien touch to it, and a feel that is brutish, mammalian, predatory. It is the mutter of lions on the edge of an African savannah watching the antlered and meat-laden herd pass by.

The cameras withdraw to a discreet distance, wide angle shots for better footage, or because their operators are still wary of Ray’s reflexes. A heartbeat of silence, then another. Emma stands in the center of the street, her head turning side to side as though she lacks orientation. Ray is aware that the Dag Maoudi, the Whiston surrogate clan, have melted into the crowd, behind the garland vines strung along the way. They are alone; he and Emma and the greedy thousands watching.

And so the Dao begins. A sound like the approach of a million starving locust, a buzz and hum, crashing through the canyon streets like a wave. A chant rolling toward them from the distance, begun a kilometer distant, taken up by the assembly–one voice, one throat, one person at a time until it grips them all.

Sha-oa con kiri ton! Mhuruk-a tala miri-ya! Kiri-ya!

Emma listens, hears, hearkens to the song. She is a being made of stone, unmoving and unmovable. Then arms rise, twine above her head; body moves, languid and supple, sinuous like a serpent. She is hips and thighs, head nodding around and eyes closed, an unconscious dervish. Gradually, the rhythm with which she began slips into harmony with the chant and stomp of the gathered crowd.

She dances for them, flinging herself in a wild and gyrating frenzy, spinning down the middle of the street. They sing, and when they reach their refrain, their frenzied Kiri-ya!, Emma cries out with them and springs into the air. As she moves, the throng follows, some along the sidewalks, some venturing into the street, some drawing up from behind until she is the center point of a vast and moving circle. Ray is drawn along with her, a short distance apart. He scans the faces around him, darker and more shadowed as the sun vanishes, sinister in the flickering lamplight.

So they move, tracking her, bodies piling along the edges, echo of chant and song deepening, thrumming, howling until it fills his head, deafens him. It’s ear-splitting and consciousness numbing all at once. The roar of ecstasy, or verging on ecstasy. They wend through the streets, along a path delineated with garlands and lanterns, pale flowers and blazes of light. The audience brings out their own lamps, their own candles, and suddenly they’re a progression of pilgrims climbing the hill toward the middle of the town and the tump of the green. And Ray is aware of a dissonance, a stumble in the chant wherever he goes, a buzz like anger in the voices. Once or twice, people reach out to him, try to grab his arms, his shoulders, pull him back. But he shakes them off, remains in Emma’s circle of protection, chasing after her.

The crowd is impossible, thousands upon thousands, a suffocating wall of breath and heat and oily sweat. In the square, between the brownstones, they pack the open spaces and trample the lawn, disperse into the buildings where they hang out the windows, congregate on the roofs, a hive of mammalian greed.

Emma leads him along the concrete berm, secure in her bubble of space, around the back of the mound and toward the sea. Here there are steps in the hill, a long climb to the crest and winged statue. Beside the statue is a great bonfire, axe-felled trunks stacked two meters tall, flames licking the night air, leaping as high as the buildings which surround.

Emma climbs and Ray follows two steps behind. She rises to the crest of the hill where in the days before she had shown him the tent and he had heard the construction of the stage. He can see the stage now, a thing of raw wood and gray stone, whole slabs of rock dredged out of the ground, stacked shoulder to shoulder, bored with runlets and holes, shallow depressions like the footprints of gods. And in the center, a square dais, narrow blocks of stone carved with symbols stained black, symbols that dance in the uneven light, shudder with meaning and depth that is almost known, but utterly impenetrable. Atop the dais is an altar of square, planed edges, looking older than the stone around it, time worn and age chewed. And beside altar is another thing, rounded at the top, tall as a man, black as volcanic stone, but reflecting the bonfire’s shimmer as though it is burnished. It is etched with rings, line upon line, rings and figures and carvings so ancient they appear as only vague suggestions on its skin.

Monolith. Plinth. Totem.

Ray sees it and almost falters, sucks in his breath. The stele from the chamber last night; the stele from his dream.

But this is not a dream. This is the flesh and bone of nightmare.

Altar and stone and Emma rising toward it, ascending the stage as the crowd gathers around, stumbles up the hill until they crowd the edges, pressing close. Ray stops at the edge, uncertain, unable to go nearer. There are too many eyes, too many hands, too much that can happen which he isn’t able to guess.

With a final, resounding Kiri-ya!, the chant ceases. There is a rustle of motion, the sense of ten thousand drawn breaths, a moment of confusion. The crowd parts, divides like a cancerous cell to create a wide swath of empty space. From this corridor emerge torches, tall like pikestaffs, clutched like shepherds’ crooks by dark Dag Maoudi. A slow procession climbs the face of the hill, laboring up slick grass to the stage, to stairs in the front, up to the altar and Emma beside it. A dozen young men, hale and strong, smiling and tense, brave before the congregation, yet exuding a palpable terror. Standing in a line, clad in short robes, white and purple, their backs to the crowd, their faces to the altar.

And leading them, Amah. Dour, fervent, stiff, Amah.

She steps away from the procession, midway between the young men and Emma. She bows deeply with her hands clasped together against her chest.

“Mhuruk-a,” she says, and the assembled audience leans in to hear her. “Great mhuruk-a, spirit, being, immensity, one to whom time and space and distance are naught, we greet you as our kind have done for generation upon generation, in welcome and in hope, seeking blessing. Seeking blessing and bringing offering, because your hunger is great, and your hunger is known to us.”

She speaks, and Emma turns her head slowly, drawn from the crowd to Amah. Even at this distance, well wide of her path of vision, Ray can feel her, the weight of her scrutiny, the terrible and flashing intensity of her gaze. His knees weaken involuntarily, and he knows that if she looked at him that way, if she focused completely on him in that moment, he would fall. He would tumble and fall and continue falling forever.

Because there is nothing of Emma in her gaze. It is pure otherness, pure mhuruk-a.

But Amah does not wither beneath her. She only averts her eyes, fixes her jaw, continues. “It is you, mhuruk-a, who brings wind and wave, tide and rain. It is you who carries the sun high into the heavens and gives strength to our limbs. It is you who makes us vital and brims us with power to do, and to will and to beat down the enemies who would beset us. You are the harmony between body and soul, man and beast, spirit and season. You moor us to the cycle of seasons and teach us when to plant, when to harvest, when to dig and when to rest. You are all things to all who are faithful. You are, and we exist, and we are one with you.”

The mhuruk-a answers in a voice that is not Emma’s, but is dry, creaking, the sound of old bones. “What is this that you bring to me?”

“Your offering, mhuruk-a. For your hunger.”

“I do not hunger for these.”

A pause, but there is no confusion in it. Amah nods confidently. “They have been tested and instructed according to the ancient ways. With them, you may share your lost communion.”

“They are not the one.”

“No, they are not the one, but they may suffice.”

Silence. The mhuruk-a waits, draws her gaze away from Amah to the offering, the milling young men. Barely a glance, then a snort of derision. She turns her head away, and the crowd utters a gasp.

At Ray’s back, someone whispers furiously, “She’s rejecting the offering!”

But she turns her head toward Ray, and not just her head, but her body follows, stepping across the stage, leaving the offering behind her. A rustle like alarm passes through the audience, watching the mhuruk-a do something they did not expect. Alarm and anticipation. To Ray, she tilts her head, curious, blinking. She comes to him, and Ray can’t move away, doesn’t want to move away. It’s Emma who approaches him; Emma in form if not in spirit, and he promised her…

…but there’s something else inside him, surrounding him, a drawing and a dawning and a quickening. He feels his heart thump slow and thunderous in his chest, and there is a new sensation that fills him. He remembers Emma, the vanilla taste of her essence, but this is not Emma. It is complete substance. It has weight and magnetism. Even as he stands there and trembles, he senses her vastness, the mhuruk-a, a place of sinew and strength, of distances beyond the comprehension of human mind, of knowledge and age and…and a taste like meat, coppery with blood, firm between the teeth and full of warmth and lust and joy. He feels her and knows her, is known by her.

“You are the one,” she says to him. “You are the one, but you are not the offering. You are known to me. You are known to the vessel. We long for you. We long to be one.”

Without understanding, Ray thinks, Yes!

“It has been long years since I have known the one.”

Yes.

“Long years since I have had communion, since I have been sated on other but table scraps.”

Yes.

“Do you know this hunger?”

He does. He feels it, welling up from a great and secret depth, a dark place in his mind, deeper than his mind, something and someplace ancient, untouched, dense and spinning like a singularity. It is place filled with the chill of space and icy, brackish water. A place of neglect and darkness, of emptiness and loneliness. The place of the outcast and the far flung. The unhomed and the robbed of habitation. Dispossession in favor of lesser beings, weakness, stolen birthright.

Ray barely breathes. His body is wracked with shivers, temblors, the shifting of sacred plates of being.

He peers into the eyes of the mhuruk-a, the ageless, the alien, and there is darkness there. Darkness and light, a faint, but brilliant spark like naked lightning. And in that light is joy and communion, knowing and being known, power and hunger and everything. The whole universe in a pinpoint of light, offered to him for possession. For habitation.

She says to him, I am and you are, and we are One. Do you will it?

Yes!

But he says, “Emma? What are you doing to me?”

Commune with me, Brother. You are known to me. You are known to us. Come and see.

And he wants to. He wants to touch the longing inside him, to feel this hunger and meet it, to share it and fill the empty space. He wants to be one.

Where he should be confused, stunned, emptied of himself and borne to the ground by the will and the weight of the shed, he knows only clarity. He has ascended to a great height, the pinnacle of a mountain, breathing air crisp and new, where the sun shines on him alone. He could step off this cliff and tumble into a golden morning, an eternal fall into light and air and the embrace of joy.

But behind him is Mikhail Brezhnaya and the twisted corpses of Ba’dai.

Kilgore and Rodriguez and Ziggy.

Becker and Sorensen and the sacrificial lamb that was Paraclete.

Micah.

The fear in John Robert’s gaze, and the horrors of the Dag Maoudi chamber.

Their breath is hot on his neck; their presence is dense and tangled; their touch is the rot and stink and grappling humidity of jungle, of flesh, of body. They promise pain and loss, struggle and failure and death. They are everything the mhuruk-a is not. They are the antithesis of communion. They are isolation and faulty knowledge. They are impotence. They are touch and sense that are meaningless. They are duality of being.

And they are Emma. Emma alone. Promise and duty and responsibility.

“What are you doing to me?” he asks again, helpless to understand.

“Commune with me,” the mhuruk-a says, and it is Emma’s voice he hears.

Her eyes flare in the dim light; her gaze pours into him like liquid fire. “For you I am vast. I am impenetrable. I am a creature of mystery. I am the earth goddess and the spirit that moves through the air. I am joy where you’ve borne sorrow. I am delight where you have known pain. I am light in your darkness, brilliance and incandescence that you alone can see. I am the secret places where you run to hide when the shadows shriek overhead. I am everything you do not yet even know that you need.”

Ray swallows, his throat thick, parched. “I don’t want you. Only Emma. Emma alone.”

Distant, through a deafening screen, there is a roar, angry, like breakers crashing against a far shore. Human voices entwined with an ancient shriek of loss.

“Faithless,” the vessel growls, jabbing a finger of accusation at him. “You are faithless and lost. Alone. Cut off from the congregation of being. Lifeless, empty, banished.”

She goes on, focusing energy, clawing at him with fire, with frenzy, with outrage. And it licks at him, touches his nerves, spirals along his limbs as though it would peel the skin from his bones. Ray remembers this part. They haven’t learned any new tricks.

He raises his hand, shows her his ring “You haven’t been paying attention. Brother learned a new lesson. You can’t touch me. And if I give the ring to Emma, you won’t be able to touch her, either.”

And he expects her to erupt, to bellow and hiss and do everything but burst into flame. But the mhuruk-a studies him, the circle of his ring. She smiles, and there is no malice in it, as though she expected it all along. A game of wits.

“You are wise and clever and worthy. If you were not clever, you would not be the one. But your knowledge is limited. I am the vessel, and the vessel is myself. To touch the infinite of contemplation is to lose us both, vessel and being. Is that what you wish?”

A vision fills his mind with perfect clarity. Him springing toward her, slipping the ring onto Emma’s finger like a token of love. A shriek of agony, Emma frozen, rigid. The shed drawn away, sucked from her like marrow from bone, caught in the ring…taking Emma with her. The essence of Emma so that only the flesh remains. And Ray is left alone, with nothing.

Amah’s words recalled to him: If it is Emma Whiston that you want, you must want her above all. Above duty and friendship, loyalty to your profession, dedication to all that has pushed you to this place and this time. You cannot have Emma and anything else. It is Emma or those other things. To love her, to cling to her, is to accept the destruction of all else that has made you who you are. The family demands it. Emma’s nature demands it.

“The nature of the vessel is to welcome the mhuruk-a. Separate the vessel from its nature, and the vessel ceases to be.” She claps her hands together and bows deeply to him. “Kiri-ya, Brother. You are worthy, but you are not yet ready. I will satisfy my hunger in other ways. Perhaps on the morrow you will show me joy.”

She strides away, and the abruptness of her withdrawal nearly drops Ray to his knees. He stumbles after her, after Emma or the mhuruk-a, he can’t tell which. As he watches, she lifts herself onto the altar, spreads her legs wide, thumbs clasps he cannot see. The assembly of New Holyoke roars their approval, and she, Emma and mhuruk-a is nude, glorious, exultant. She waves to the first young man, and he approaches, tripping over his own feet, falls into her embrace.

Ray wants to look away, to not see this. This man’s hands on Emma’s body, his erect penis splitting the front of his robe, the mhuruk-a closing about him, pulling him near, pulling him inside herself. And her cry of pleasure as she takes him. And takes him. And the crowd chanting, cheering, deafening in the background. Shouting the young man’s name in encouragement.

It only takes a few seconds, a handful of vigorous thrusts. The young man groans into her, and Emma pushes him away, his tumescence already fading. He lifts his face to her, grinning and stupid, eyes dulled. He watches her for some signal Ray does not understand. Emma spreads her knees apart, wide until the joints of her hips pop…and those nearest to her and in the front row peer and see, bend toward her. As the viscous white fluid of his ejaculate runs out of her, drips down the side of the altar.

Emma, the mhuruk-a frowns. Disappointment.

In a loud voice, she proclaims: “His seed is rejected. He is not worthy to make the communion.”

Stunned, the crowd slumps, mutters. A collective moan of grief.

The young man, rejected, dejected, lets his shoulders sag and hangs his head. Dag Maoudi take him, one on each arm, lead him off to the side. They stand him before the stele, shoulder against stone, where he raises his eyes to scan the crowd. He nods at something, someone he sees there, but his expression is impenetrable.

Then knives, a grunt like agony, blood. The people of New Holyoke howl, a sound that is part outrage, part joy.

And Ray stiffens, watching. All these people, this gathered congregation, they watch with him, and they do not protest. They welcome the sacrifice of the Dao as though they yearn for it. What he witnesses is completely beyond his comprehension.

The mhuruk-a, arms and legs spread to receive the next offering, whips her head to him. The voice that speaks into his mind is sibilant, hissing, vindictive. As cold and arid as the dark reaches of space.

This was your choice. You could have spared them this offering.

“No!”

Amah–massive, solid, ponderous–turns, points her finger at Ray. “Remove him. He has betrayed the spirit of the Dao.”

He can’t think fast enough, can’t do anything. Ray surges toward Emma. “Emma, no!”

But there are people in the way, a wall of bodies, obstructions. He lashes out with his fists, connects with jaws he hardly sees, rushes forward. They grapple with his limbs and he shouts, kicks, struggles.

Someone he does not see hits him. He staggers back, and he is struck again. A sharp blow to the back of his head with the jarring, blotting force of a brick. He’s still bellowing as his knees fold, as darkness rushes at him. Powerful hands grab him, hoist him into the air on his back, bear him away from the stage unable to move.

And over the heads of the congregation, carried aloft like an offering to the gods, he can still see her, mhuruk-a and vessel seated on the altar of sacrifice. He cries out to her with a voice that makes no sound.

The last thing he knows is Emma welcoming another candidate for communion into herself.

***

Voices.

There’s nothing inbound for another three weeks, and that’s assuming they don’t decide to alter their course in light of recent events.

Well we can’t just keep him here. We’re lucky they didn’t kill him. You’ve got to do something.

Like what, exactly? I don’t have anything with an interstellar drive.

Then you’ll just have to hide him out until something does arrive.

You’re overreacting. There’s always a frenzy during the Dao. It will pass. It always passes.

That’s the bloody problem, isn’t it? It’s so easy to overlook the madness when it’s just a few days a year.

I’m not in the mood to have this discussion again.

Ray opens his eyes. Big mistake. Light stabs at him like ice picks directly into his brain. A thermonuclear device detonates inside his skull. He rolls onto his side, shattering bones that seem to be made of glass, vomits into darkness.

He coughs, and there is just the rattle of his lungs. Nothing else seems to break.

Tries again, slowly, first one eye and then the other. He stares down into a pool of his own bile on a spot of bare wood floor. The throb in the back of his skull starts up, and he gingerly probes the spot where there seems to be the most pain. Winces. But it’s mostly a lump, matted hair, only a little hot and sticky blood still seeping out.

You should have given him a more detailed briefing.

How could I have guessed he was going to do something like this? And it isn’t like he’s one of mine. I have no control over him.

How could you not have guessed? Use your brain, man! It’s obvious that he can’t keep away from her.

You’d think she would have warned him.

And how would you have handled that if you were her, eh? ‘Oh, darling, by the way, once a year I have to fuck a bunch of strange men on a public stage, and those who don’t make the grade are sacrificed in the name of community spirit or fertility blessings or some other lunatic explanation. I don’t properly understand it, of course, but we’ve done it for so long, it hardly seems appropriate to start rocking the boat now.’

We should have put a stop to this a long time ago.

Onto his back again, blinking at the ceiling, at the dim lamp beside the bed, the faded paper on the walls. To his left is a door hanging ajar, and beyond it a hallway that appears just as worn and dingy as the room itself. A room stacked with yellowed paper, folded newspapers, dirty dishes.

His mouth tastes like vomit, sour and hot. Bile and ash. Head full of gauze, packed tight and desiccated, like an Egyptian mummy tastefully seasoned with about a ton of sand and a thousand years of baking sun.

He’s not going to be able to accomplish anything, not after this. No one is going to help him.

You’re helping him. I’m helping him. We can’t be the only two sane people on this planet.

If you don’t find a way to get him home, he’s a dead man. I can promise you that.

I told you: three weeks at the minimum. There’s nothing else I can do.

He’s up, on his feet, using the wall for support. The room spins about him, but it’s a slow, leisurely spin. One he can negotiate if he concentrates. He sets attainable goals. Two steps to the door, hugging the wall of the hallway, trying not to do anything clumsy like knocking the picture frames awry.

Finally, the end of the corridor. Thomas Malcolm and Colonel Ritchie in the front room of Malcolm’s living space. Ray recognizes it. He was here, what, yesterday, seated on the chair where Ritchie is sitting now. The memory is hazy. He doesn’t remember what he and Malcolm were talking about.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he croaks at them.

Then falls flat on his face. A few seconds of missing time. Feels like seconds, could be hours, but when he’s conscious again, his cheek and the back of his head ache. His neck is sore too, but that seems to be mostly because it’s lolling his head at a terrible angle against the back of the couch. And the rest of his face is numb, because they’ve packed ice against his jaw, beneath his skull, over the bridge of his nose.

He says, “Ugh.”

“Stubborn fool,” Malcolm responds, studying him over the edge of the ice pack that obscures Ray’s vision. “You should have stayed in bed.”

“I have work to do.”

“Oh, like inciting another public riot? It took the full planetside EED force to get you away from the last group of your fans.”

“That’s not saying much,” Ray points out.

“You must be feeling better. You think you’re funny again.”

“You called out the troops?” Ray lifts his head so he can face them.

“Of course. I couldn’t very well let them haul you off and murder you in the street. We have enough of that during the Dao without adding to the body count.”

Ray remembers. It’s like poking at a fresh wound with a needle. “They killed him.”

Malcolm shakes his head like someone who’s trying to explain basic concepts of advanced physics to a hedgehog. “You should have done your homework before plunging in, Commander Marlowe.” He glances back over his shoulder to Ritchie. “I told you, he doesn’t know anything. You should have briefed him in more detail.”

“I don’t understand,” Ray says. “The Dag Maoudi…they murdered him and the people just watched. They wanted it to happen. They anticipated it.”

Malcolm places his hand gently on Ray’s shoulder. “Welcome to New Holyoke.”

“You just let it happen. All of you.”

It’s Ritchie that looks away, but he says nothing.

Ray goes on, feeling outraged, feeling emptied. “Is this what you meant when you said you tried not to interfere with colonial affairs, Colonel?”

“What would you have me do, Marlowe? Tell me that. The Dao had been established long before I took command of this outpost. And what if I did complain up the chain of command, eh? Who would believe me? If they sent me more troops–which is highly unlikely, and you know it–who would I go after? Who would speak out against the Whistons? Anything I did would look like the EED directing military pressure against the Whiston family because of their proprietary charter, plain and simple.”

“Excuses,” Ray snaps. He rounds on Malcolm quickly enough to make his throbbing head spin. “And what about you? You don’t care either? Even though you know it isn’t just the Dao? You know they’re murdering the Trust children, too. Just like Martin Schmidt. To feed the mhuruk-a.”

“And what would you have done? Stopped it somehow?” Malcolm says softly, neither angry nor defensive. “As long as there has been a New Holyoke, there has been a Dao. As long as there has been a female vessel, there have been public sacrifices of the unworthy. Can’t very well have all these men who have been sticking their reproductive bits into your wife or daughter hanging about to brag of their conquest.”

It’s unfathomable. The expressions on the faces in the crowd. Neither shock nor surprise, just a sort of savage glee.

“It’s not that simple,” Ray rasps around the ache in his head. “It isn’t what you think it is, and it isn’t just about social manipulation. Malcolm, they’re murdering people in the public square! Why hasn’t anyone stopped them?”

“Because the people want it, Ray. The Whistons want it. Oh, it’s not so bad as it seems on the surface, I suppose. Shocking, yes, if you haven’t been adequately prepared.” Malcolm stabs an accusatory glare at Colonel Ritchie, but continues without a pause. “The candidates were volunteers, applicants who would take the great risk of being rejected rather than miss the opportunity to be elevated by the mhuruk-a. To be the one to father a Dao child, with all the social benefits and financial considerations that follow–that is an awfully tempting offer to just reject out of hand. There has been no shortage of applicants, believe me.”

There’s a coarse, gratuitous mockery in Malcolm’s tone. Sarcasm so tired he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. “This is the way they negotiate the balance of power on New Holyoke, Ray. On the first night, the community puts forth the young men they have chosen, the ones the people deem worthy for inclusion among the pantheon of the powerful. The ones they want to be the next media moguls, the next Forum representatives, the next directors of Whelemat.”

“And then they watch while the Dag Maoudi kill them,” Ray says, flat and angry. Because the shed demands blood. The blood of martyrs.

“It is the way things have always been done.”

And Ray understands, even if Malcolm and Ritchie do not. They don’t carry the knowledge he does about the nature of the shed. They do not share his context. How much influence could a shed exert given a constant diet of blood sacrifice? How many minds would it have to change, control, bend to make something like the egregious bloodshed of the Dao sensical? So much power. It is beyond his comprehension.

“It has to stop.”

Malcolm only shrugs. “Perhaps one day it will. Emma has done her part to see that it does, you might say. She has never found them worthy. In the old days, when I was a child and Juliet was the vessel, there were more selections. She bore the children of a great many men, and she accepted the seed of others. It gave the people hope, a sense of vibrancy. But Emma is different. She has changed everything. The candidates chosen by the community have rarely been accepted. The candidates she chooses herself, as she will do tomorrow night…well, they call out to her and she rarely hears them. It’s never the eight or ten or twelve that her mother used to take, but one or two. Last Dao, she wandered the streets of the city all night long without accepting anyone. Thus, some say that the Dao is failing, that Emma’s unwillingness to choose will turn people away from tolerating it.”

Ray leans forward, elbows on his knees. He buries his face in his hands. Malcolm squeezes his shoulder again. “I know this must be hard for you to accept. But it simply is, Ray, as entrenched in the public consciousness as Terran Forum elections or the necessity of organized religion to mediate between man and God. There are always people willing to take great risks for fame and glory. On New Holyoke, if you cannot be a Dao child, the next best position is that of a Dao parent. And once or twice in a generation, there is the grandest opportunity of all–the chance to be grafted into the Whiston clan itself. For a chance at that future, many are willing to sacrifice themselves. You, of course, have thrown a wrench into the whole process. You have exacerbated the uneasiness about the whole legitimacy of the Dao, because you were the one that Emma was going to choose. She had finally selected an heir.”

“Not Emma,” Ray growls back.

Malcolm waves his hand impatiently. “Whatever. Why do you think the crowd was so angry with you? The colony has been waiting nearly four years for the selection of Emma’s mate, practically from the day she came of age and assumed her role as the vessel. You were chosen, and you rejected her. You rejected the assurance of the colony’s future well being by condemning the Dao as an illegitimate transaction between the people and the Whistons. You turned your back on all the blood that has been shed in the name of the Dao. People don’t want to think they’ve been wrong.”

“There’s so much you don’t understand,” Ray says quietly. “Why would they want to be controlled by the mhuruk-a?”

“There is no mhuruk-a, Ray. It is fantasy, illusion, religious trapping. Certainly, some people believe, the same way some people are Presbyterians or Catholics or Muslims, but not all of us. We recognize the Dao for what it is: social engineering. That’s what it is, what it’s always been. It is the great Whiston experiment. The Dao is a public seal of approval for certain elements and individuals whom the Whiston family decides are most beneficial to the colony’s future, and the chance to legitimately remove those who might be perceived as a threat to Whiston control. They learned the technique from the Dag Maoudi long ago and put it into practice here on New Holyoke where no one could speak out against them. It’s how they maintain power.

“The people of New Holyoke maintain the illusion of belief because the power the Whistons do have has never been more precariously held. Since Fram passed and left us with Charles, and since Charles could leave us no better hope than Frederick, the family has slowly faltered. All that stands between this colony and the departure of the Whiston largesse is Emma’s womb. If she will not provide a Whiston heir, New Holyoke’s days are numbered.”

“You don’t believe in the mhuruk-a.” How can he warn them if they don’t believe in the shed?

“Of course not.”

“Emma believes. So do the Dag Maoudi.”

Malcolm snorts. “Does it really matter what they believe?”

And it’s too late to begin explaining such things. He focuses has attention on Colonel Ritchie. “Have you located Frederick Whiston?”

Ritchie appears relieved to have the Dao trajectory of the conversation over with. “Not yet, but we’re still looking.”

It doesn’t matter. “Do you have a car? I need to get back to the Grange.”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Ray.”

“Why? You think they’ll try to kill me? I’m the chosen one, remember?”

“You’re the chosen one who has just made it abundantly clear that you don’t place much value on their traditions, Marlowe. I know you want to get back to work, but what do you think you can accomplish? You have no cover left, you have no standing with the community. You’re moving in completely hostile territory from this moment forward.”

“On the contrary, Colonel. I’m only about a dozen bullets from wrapping up my mission and alleviating you of this nasty command albatross of the Dao.”

Malcolm: “You’re not going to save her, you know, no matter how badly she might want to be saved. She’s a Whiston. There’s no escaping that destiny.”

Ray levers himself to his feet. “I don’t believe in destiny.”

Malcolm sighs. “Did you talk to Juliet like I told you?”

“Yes.”

“And what did she tell you? Did she go on about how she didn’t want to be the chosen one either? About how she believed they wouldn’t harm her? How one day she was a bright a precocious young woman and the next she was mad, twisted, Whiston thew and bone? Did she?”

He changed my mind.

“I know what happened to her. This is different.”

“They’ll destroy you if you go back there, just like they destroyed her. Don’t you think she believed that she could change things also, that she could stop the Dao?”

She didn’t know what I know, Ray thinks. She wasn’t able to protect herself from the shed. She didn’t have–

The ring. Bane of the shed, symbol of Solomon, infinite of contemplation.

He looks at his finger. Bare, empty, unprotected. For a moment, all he can do is gape.

But he’s just like Emma, naked to harm. Emma, who he promised to protect above all.

Ray climbs to his feet, unsteady, ready to topple. “I’m going back. Now.”

Ritchie rises, spreads his arms as if he’s going to stop him. “Ray, come on.”

But he’s done with reason, done with excuses. “You should have stopped this a long time ago, Colonel. I’m just cleaning up your mess.”

It’s completely unfair. Ray knows all the excuses: the small outpost, the power of the Whistons, the fact that the community doesn’t just tolerate it, but participates. And the shed, the astounding power and influence of the shed. But the accusation is enough; it stuns Ritchie long enough for Ray to get past him and to the top of the stairs.

With a curse and a shrug, Ritchie follows him out the door.

Over his shoulder, all the way down the stairs, he can hear Malcolm shouting after him. “You’re not going to save her, Marlowe! She’s a Whiston! She doesn’t want to be saved!”

***

She returns after midnight, plodding up the stairs of her Faery Tower with a slow and steady gait. She opens the door to her private chambers, here at the very top, but does not bother with the lights, because the candles in the windows are sufficient. And he can see her for a moment, a creature of shadow, thin shoulders drooped, gown in disarray, silhouetted in the golden light from the landing. She hesitates there, leaning her full weight against the knob and the door, and he can hear her breathing, shallow and tinged with weariness. Mournful, as though she’s been sobbing for hours. And he can smell her as well, not the clean vanilla scent he has come to know as hers, as her own personal aroma, but something else. Sweat, sex, a vaguely rotten and decadent tang.

He wants to speak to her in this moment, to comfort her, but he waits. Waits.

Emma moves inside and closes the door behind her. She navigates the darkness with practiced ease, following wispy trails of moonlight filtering through the windows and the guttering uncertainty of the candles, a path of silver and gold. The argent moonlight is so much like the Terran moon, almost indistinguishable, really. New Holyoke is like another Earth. Raw and fertile, teeming with life and abundance and hope. So alike, but Ray senses only the distance, the difference.

She stops near him, hardly three meters away from where he sits in the chair next to the door to her bed chamber. He’s been here for hours, it seems, watching the lights of Blackheath Grange glimmer beneath the cool seaside breezes. Watching the great bonfire on the green gutter, shrink to embers, fade to black.

“I can smell you,” she says quietly. “You smell like blood.”

“You smell like–”

“Don’t. Please, Ray. Just don’t.”

He sighs. “I’m sorry. That was unfair of me. I didn’t come here to hurt you.” You’ve been hurt enough.

“Are you all right? Are you…they wouldn’t tell me where you’d gone.”

“I needed to know that you were okay, but I thought, well, I thought that it might not be you when you came back here.” He laughs at his own failure to communicate. There’s too much to process; too many things have happened. “I just needed to see you. It is you, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“And the mhuruk-a?”

Emma shrugs, uncaring. “She withdraws when she’s been sated. For a time, at least. Usually long enough to let me sleep, to get ready for tomorrow.”

Sated. What an ugly, vicious, hateful word. “Emma, I’m trying–”

But she jerks her head away as though she doesn’t want to hear him. “Did they hurt you?”

“I’m fine. I fared better than others.” He should stop there, before he says something he will regret, but can’t seem to let it go. “Tell me how to make sense of what I saw, Emma. Explain what happened in a way that won’t make me want to vomit every time I think about it.”

“It was the Dao. The way it’s always been. For as long as I can remember.”

“And no one ever complains? They just line up like lambs waiting for the slaughter?”

“They know the risk. Those who participate in the Dao know what can happen if they’re rejected by the mhuruk-a. Most of them want that chance, the approval, the possibility…”

Ray nods. “They want to be the one.”

“Yes, they do. They want to be Whiston, and failing that, they want to ascend to power. Perhaps not the one, but still chosen. Some years, as many as half are taken.”

“And how many of them did you reject this time?”

“Not me, Ray. It’s not me.”

You could have spared them this offering.

“How many?”

Rasping, defeated. “All of them.”

Ray hears, grunts. “Because the mhuruk-a was angry.”

“She didn’t want them. They weren’t the one.”

“And you? Was it good for you?”

“That’s not fair, Ray. You don’t know what it’s like to be the vessel. It isn’t like that, not dirty. Not just fucking–you said that, and you were right. I know them like she knows them. When we join, I mean. It isn’t just fucking. It’s feeling, knowing, being. The mhuruk-a measures them and what she finds is shown to me. There’s a depth, an understanding, a…you can’t understand.”

“But I do, Emma. I’ve known you that way. Just you.”

She withdraws from him, lowering her head in the darkness. There’s nothing he can say that doesn’t hurt her, it seems. “While they’re inside me, Ray, I can feel what the mhuruk-a is thinking. Even before they release, I know what’s going to happen. Who is to be chosen, and who is to be rejected. Do you think that’s easy for me, to know?”

“And tonight? You knew she was going to reject them all?”

“After you’d spurned her, yes.”

“You should have stopped it, Emma.” He says it almost as an accusation. He’s out of sorts even after the hours spent alone, completely without equilibrium. In his mind’s eye, he keeps seeing her opening her arms and thighs and naked desire to strangers. Strangers doomed to die. “You should have made them stop.”

She recoils from him, as though she can sense what he’s thinking. It probably isn’t hard. “I didn’t have a choice. I’m just the vessel. Do you think I want this?”

“I don’t know what you want.”

Quietly, almost a whisper: “I want you.”

“Like the mhuruk-a? Is that what you mean? Because I’m the one, because I’m strong, because there’s something inside me that is useful to the Whiston cause?”

“Ray!” She barks his name, outraged. He’s hurt her in ways he doesn’t even understand.

But she, too, does not understand. He’s only told her about Frederick, how Frederick killed Micah, how Frederick destroyed Paraclete to keep from being caught. He hasn’t told her about the stolen Solomonic ring, how it came to New Holyoke, how the Dag Maoudi have spent years murdering the children of the Trust to summon shed for the Dao, to exert control over the entire world. He hasn’t told her about all the blood that has been spilled to make her the vessel, just as her mother was.

How can he save her if she doesn’t understand what he’s saving her from?

For several moments, he sits and breathes, orienting himself in this strange new terrain. Then, as gently as he is able, he says: “Tell me, Emma. Tell me you don’t care what the mhuruk-a wants. Tell me you don’t care that I’m supposed to be the one.”

“Yes! It’s true, all of it. Just you.”

“And tell me you’ll come away with me. Anywhere but here. Run away with me.”

“Now, yes. I love you, Ray. I’ll do anything you want me to do. Just–”

“Just what?”

“Stop speaking to me like I disgust you. Please. I hate this; I hate everything about it. Believe me, in me.”

Save me. It’s there, without her speaking it, as plaintive as a wail. And he responds to it, her need, her desire. He doesn’t think anymore, doesn’t care, just acts. Ray is exhausted with caring about tragedies he cannot prevent. He rises from the chair, meets her in the darkness, covers her in his embrace. She clings to him, warm and soft and desperate. They touch. Finger to finger, hand to face, lips pressed together. Her flesh burns like the naked heat of a furnace, molten and radiant.

“There are things I haven’t told you,” he whispers into her ear. “Vital things.”

But she touches her finger to his lips. “Hush.”

“Emma, please.”

“Not here. Come with me.”

“Come with you?” He looks down at her quizzically.

And she springs away, exploiting his confusion, hiking her gown up above her knees. She dashes off, a kestrel wind.

He follows, chasing after her. Breakneck down the shaft of her tower, pursuing her, taunted by laughter light and tinkling like glass. Through the piazza, with their feet slapping against stone and echoes careening off the dour stone walls of the manor. Plunging into the house, through a wide hall, grand in appearance, then outside again. Rolling down the back slope on dew slickened grass, past the charred remains of the cottage. She is quick, lithe, a darting rabbit in a sylvan wonderland, always beyond his grasp.

He clutches at her as though she is moonbeam and shadow, his hands always returning empty.

On and on, to wall and gate and secret garden, bursting through into bowers clotted with night. More slowly, stepping off the path, ducking low slung branches and willowy saplings strangled of sunlight and nutrients by the towering, majestic oak and sycamore and winter maple.

And at last collapsing into a sea of soft petals and black stems, flowers that would be purple and pink, pale yellow daffodils and brilliant morning glory. He catches her at last, tumbles over her, bears her to the ground. She is still laughing, smiling, her eyes dancing in the light of the moon.

“Take me away,” she says, happily, after she has caught her breath. “Promise that you’ll take me away, just like you said.”

“I will.”

“Anywhere I want to go?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ll stay with me? You’ll stay and you’ll love me always?”

“Always.”

This time he does not stop. Later, there will be opportunity for justice, for vengeance, for all the things he must do. Now, there is Emma, Emma who has chosen him, who has begged him to take her, love her, save her from all that she has ever known. He thinks of nothing but her, firm and soft, precious and willing. Her arms around his neck, her lips against him. He splits the fabric of her gown along its hidden clasps, just as he saw her do before. He is rough, peeling it away like a dark and loathsome skin. There is a tangle of moments, of frenzy as he wrestles with his own clothes, making himself as vulnerable and naked as she is, hating the seconds as they pass.

She is wet, steaming, sultry.

Still damp inside with the rejected seed of dead men.

And he doesn’t care. Doesn’t care at all.

Because when he enters her, she catches her breath and her body ripples with a tension of muscle and anticipation that is pure joy and pleasure and acceptance. She cries out his name, over and over again. She presses her body against him, and knows that it is him, Ray, who she is taking. It is him that she wants above all. His hunger and hers are all that matters, and everything else passes away.

And when he finally releases, it is her mouth pressed against his, eyes closed, consumed by a darkness that is velvet soft and fine like sand, and a depth utterly without end. He could fall into her night forever, completely lost, completely whole.

For a pure, blinding instant, he thinks of all the things he should say to her. That he loves her. That from the beginning he’s been trying to protect her. That he understands this thing, this Dao. That he’s been equipped to understand from the beginning because of Ba’dai. That none of this is her fault, even though he has acted at times as though it was. That nothing else matters, not shed or murder, Lilaikens or rings, Whistons or duty, just her and him and the joy of their joining.

Frederick and his Lilaiken conspiracy can go screw themselves.

He doesn’t care about Paraclete, about shed, about peril beyond his comprehension.

New Holyoke and all of frontier space can go to hell.

None of it matters. He’ll turn his back on everything for her. He was made for her.

After an eternity of knowing her, feeling her, he lifts himself up, rolls of to the side. Crushes flowers beneath his weight. Finally, Ray opens his eyes.

Frederick Whiston, watching from the edges, says to him, “Now you’ve done it, fool.”

***

The last thing that happens before a grim faced sergeant points you into the vicinity of combat, of a legitimate kill zone, is a whole bunch of screaming. Generally it’s screaming over chopper blades, or over the descent rumble of combat drop ship, but it’s carefully enunciated screaming nonetheless. Sergeants take classes in this sort of thing–how to scream clearly and use correct military diction while doing it. They lead you through a whole pantomime of slapping and clacking, patting the body and the load harness in a way vaguely reminiscent of elementary school gym class.

It inevitably starts Boots! Stomp. Stomp.

Tac Helmet, visor down! Slap, pull, click.

Tac Display up!

M-44 Assault Weapon locked! Clack, clatter of the cartridge advance, snip of the safety on.

Extra cartridge ration! Slap, slap, slap, all over the load harness.

And so on, from bottom to top, a final inventory of all the tactical equipment a modern soldier requires to avoid ending up on the casualty list.

These are the things Ray is thinking at this moment, running through his inventory, a pointless exercise, irony at work. Because he has none of these things, tools of his trade for as long as he can remember. He’s wandered into a kill zone without even a trench knife to back him up.

He scrambles to his feet, stands there in the darkness, naked, facing Frederick Whiston. There isn’t even a tree within easy reach to lend him a hefty limb he might forge into a blunt edged weapon. All he can do is stand, glower, clench his fists.

Frederick, on the other hand, came more than prepared, in dark clothes of the type typically used by men interested in sneaking about through dark spaces. And weapon in hand. Just a small piece, matte finished so the moon barely glances off its edges, but the small ones always look the most wicked when they’re pointed at you because they convey the message that this is going to be personal. Not a blustery, barking gun like Marines carry, absolutely impersonal guns for which one target is as good as another, as long as they knock somebody down. Small weapons say: I’m going to kill you. You. I’m going to spit metal into your vulnerable flesh, and I’m going to hang around and wait until I’m sure you’ve expired before moving on to the next victim.

So he does the best he can, moving slowly, always watching the hand and the gun, trying not to hyperventilate. Trying to place himself between Emma and the likely vector of any projectiles that might come out of the barrel.

Frederick steps from the screen of foliage and into the bower, snapping twigs beneath his feet, crushing the heads of late blooming flowers. He trains the gun on them.

“I think that’s far enough, Marlowe. My sister is more than capable of helping herself up. After all, she’s been rising up off her back for years.”

She does rise, stands beside Ray. She pulls her shoulders back, pale and defiant. “I knew you’d be back, Frederick. You’re too weak to make it on your own. Just a coward; always the coward.”

Let’s not antagonize the gun-wielding madman, Ray thinks, but Frederick Whiston only laughs. “Yes, dear Emma, I’m the weak one. I’m the coward. That’s the way it’s always been, hasn’t it? Because I wasn’t the vessel. Too much of our father’s tainted blood in me.” He edges nearer, close enough that Ray can see his face, read his expression, but in the shadows, his eyes are empty, blank, dark holes punched in the alabaster mask of his face. Still too far away for Ray to do anything. “It is Emma, isn’t it? Not the great mhuruk-a? Bringer of life, spirit of place, bitch of fortune and favor. I’m sorry, that probably isn’t the proper invocation. I’ve forgotten the words; it’s been so long since my Dao with you. Wait, that’s right, I never had a Dao fuck, did I? Ours were all extra-curricular. Even in those days, I was judged the weak link in the Whiston chain.”

“Stop it, Frederick!”

“I think it’s a little late for you to be keeping secrets now, Emma. You have what you wanted. Despite my best efforts, you won again. I’m sorry, that’s probably crass of me, but I couldn’t help but overhear the cries of your victory. What do you think, Marlowe, now that you’ve tasted the forbidden fruit? She fucks well, my sister. She’s had enough practice.”

“What do you want?” Ray demands, cognizant of the gun, trying to sound reasonable.

Frederick Whiston grins at him, a man who has gone just a little crazy. “Well, I had come back with the intention of killing you.”

“Then let Emma go back to the house, and we can settle this between us.”

Another laugh, and Ray realizes there’s actually no note of madness in it. None at all, in fact. Just determination, savagery and a grim sense of despair. “You know, I really do admire you, Commander. I have from the beginning. Your sense of purpose, your courage, your rectitude. It never was personal, this thing between us.”

“Don’t make it personal now. Let Emma leave.”

“You see? I even admire that about you. All of the blundering attempts I’ve made on your life, and it’s still not your own skin that you worry about. It’s all about Emma, about the innocent, about protecting others from harm. You should have listened to me at dinner, Marlowe. I tried to warn you then.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I said it was for your own good. But you didn’t believe. Even after last night, after the terrible things you witnessed in the cellar chamber, you did not believe.” Frederick manages to look sincerely disappointed. “You’ve spoken with our mother by now, I assume.”

“Yes.”

“And still you didn’t put it together? Ah, I suppose it was optimistic of me to assume that mother would remain coherent long enough to give you an adequate explanation. But that’s your one great shortcoming, isn’t it? You’re really not very well suited to your current employment, at least not to the investigative end of it. You’d rather bumble about shooting people and breaking things.

“Oh, wait a moment, that’s right! Those sorts of things are supposed to be secrets, aren’t they? Commander Ray Marlowe, lately Gunny Sergeant Ray Marlowe, agent of the Criminal Investigations Unit assigned to the Goliath class cruiser Paraclete to interdict possible Lilaiken violence. Formerly of the Ninth Army Desert Force Marines stationed in the New Mes combat zone. Three times cited for valor in combat. Koihu, Deben Zah, Tehran. You led the charge up Wehir Taud ridge outside Vahi that salvaged the near debacle that was General Macore’s southern peninsula campaign and opened the gates to Baghdad. And truth be told, you were probably under-recognized. At Keh, you killed thirty-four men, you personally, according to the mission reconstruction files. A flesh and blood war hero is what you are.” Frederick stops there, grinning like a skull, relishing his recitation of secrets.

And Ray, Ray has been holding his breath, making himself dizzy, tasting blood. Even he has tried to forget about Keh, one of those botched hotshot lieutenant escort missions, buried beneath millions of documents, thousands of reports, denied and ignored and disastrous. Keh, which was supposed to be a Russoturk training ground for special mission bio-warfare troops trained to infiltrate the West, infect water supplies, poison lakes and streams. Keh, the intelligence said. Except it wasn’t Keh. It was Kah, three hundred kilometers to the north and west. Keh was just another Russoturk village tucked inside the border of old Syria. An intelligence failure, a poorly translated communiqué intercepted from enemy satellites, an error compounded, a human rights atrocity.

It is impossible that Frederick Whiston could know these things.

But he isn’t done. “And then…and then Ba’dai. After Ba’dai, you vanished. From the official record, at least. Will you tell me what occurred there, Marlowe? Or would you like me to tell you?”

Ray can’t say anything at all.

“You see,” Frederick says, “we haven’t been exactly forthcoming with you, either. Not from the very beginning. Isn’t that right, Emma?”

“No.” Her voice is weary, quiet. “Stop, Frederick. Please.”

“Do you hear that? She’s begging me, Marlowe. She’s begging me to spare you from knowledge. You’re flattered. It’s true love, you think, for her to want to save you from this pain. She’s always been clever that way, at deception. Myself, I don’t mind inflicting a little pain in the name of truth. You’d rather have the truth than a pleasant delusion, wouldn’t you? I think you would.”

We?

The word strikes his mind like a flinch. We?

“Emma?” he says in a voice that sounds like pleading.

She looks away. “It isn’t like that, Ray.”

“It isn’t like that, Ray,” Frederick mimics, sarcastic. “Of course it’s like that. We lied to you with at least the depth, aplomb and frequency with which you thought you were lying to us. Can you believe her now? Which side of the truth, which spin on it, will she give you this time?”

“He’s insane, Ray. Don’t listen to him.”

Frederick spins the gun toward her, frowning. “Now, Emma, up to this point, I had refrained from making personal attacks. You’ve put me in a position where I have a moral obligation to defend myself and my honor.”

“Frederick,” she says stiffly, her tone pregnant with threats. Like she’s scolding a child. “Do not do this.”

He ignores her. “I wonder, Marlowe, has she told you why she fled our idyllic colonial estate for the fast life of Stratiskaya Daransk? I’m certain she has. Probably something to do with the Dao, yes? The terrible strain of the Dao. It broke our mother, you know. Because she wasn’t pure enough; because she was a means to an end rather than a true vessel.”

Ray hears her, Juliet Whiston, inside his head. He changed my mind. But instead of outrage, all he feels is the sudden pressure of ominous revelation rising in his throat. Suffocating.

Frederick is done laughing, mocking them. The gravity of his demeanor only makes it worse. “You know it’s all lies, don’t you? Everything you’ve been told about the Dao is a lie.”

“I know about the mhuruk-a,” Ray responds. I know about the shed.

“Yes, you met one of them at Ba’dai, under different circumstances. The first time, at least. But that Dao, so barbaric, so primal, tricky to understand, really. It’s interesting as a cultural artifact. We’ve been practicing it for years, for whole centuries together, my family. We learned it from the Dag Maoudi, of course, as we learned so many other things. They taught us to touch the mhuruk-a, to draw upon her essence, to feed on her. To give her offerings of blood that would sate her hunger, keep her fat and willing and bound to us through rites so ancient their source has been forgotten. She who resides within the Stone. In return, she made us powerful, destroyed our enemies, just as she had once done for the Dag Maoudi before they became weak. That’s why she was brought to us. Stolen by elements who wanted to revive the old ways, who had vision beyond a simple island.

“What the Dag Maoudi were, we attempted to become, at least for a time, before we too became fat, indolent. Poor stewards of the Stone. What do you think of the Dao now that you’ve seen it, Mr. Marlowe?”

“I think it’s a lousy way to control your population,” Ray says, slow and careful. He suspects it is what Frederick wants to hear. “And an even more screwed up way to abuse your children.”

“Then you’ve missed the entire point. You’ve mistaken the trappings and rites for meaning, shadows for substance. That’s what you get when you go to the disgruntled tabloid muckrakers for information. For all of the anonymous Trust children murdered, all of the Dao sacrifices to the insatiable mouth of the mhuruk-a, it has never been just about the shedding of blood.”

Frederick bares his teeth. Not a smile, but something feral. “What you’ve been told is that the Dao exists in order for us to channel the mhuruk-a, the daemon, the ancient spirit of the Dag Maoudi Stone. In channeling the mhuruk-a, we bind the community together, both to one to another, and the collective to ourselves. But it wears on the vessel, this bottling of the eternal and the sublime in human form. Is any of this sounding familiar to you?”

“What sounds familiar is the part where you let this stupidity ruin your mother’s life, and now you’ll do the same to Emma unless someone stops you.”

“Yes, yes. That’s exactly what you were made to believe. And it’s true, after a fashion, I suppose. But only in part. The rest of the story is about us, our family, the long years of neglect and failure. How we bred ourselves carelessly, and not in the ways instructed by the Dag Maoudi. How we neglected the duties that were expected of us, so that the spirit departed from us–at least, as far as the Stone would allow. How with each year that passed, each taint added to the bloodline, the touch of the mhuruk-a became more distant, more difficult, so that there was no communion.”

Frederick fixes him with a stern expression, the hooded glare of a predator stalking through tall grass. “Where there is no communion with the mhuruk-a, other rites must be brought to bear. She is mighty, Marlowe. You know this as well as we do. Her power to build, influence, destroy is beyond comprehension. The Whiston empire was built on the strong back of the mhuruk-a of the Dag Maoudi. It was founded on the true purpose of the Dao.

“These are difficult things to explain, you see? There is a sprawling gulf between the past and the present. In out time, for all the gifts the spirit gives, it takes its bounty in return. Not only in blood, as you have seen, but also in strength from the vessel, if the vessel is weak. Humanity is not constructed to suffer possession lightly, and our mother was weak, faulty, poorly built. Father and the Dag Maoudi recognized her raw potential, but they had to make her strong enough if she was to be the vessel they intended. There were surgeries, drugs, rites and rituals both modern and ancient designed to simulate the chemistry that was lacking. They had to shape her mind to bear the unbearable, in the hope that he would pass to her, this modified vessel, the remnant of the Whiston glory. Alas, his firstborn, his only son, was an imperfect creation. So he tried harder with his daughter.

“He realized that it was not just the vessel that was flawed, but himself as well. The true Whiston essence was too many generations removed, too diluted. So there were physicians, genetic specialists, trained in the arts and lore of the Dag Maoudi, and they tampered and spliced, made the necessary adjustments, reversed the damage wrought by all those generations of imperfect breeding in his very genetic structure. It was too much. He couldn’t endure the testing, and it destroyed him. But before he was lost, he succeeded in part. He suffered the mhuruk-a as a vessel. A truly horrid and abominable vessel, indeed. Cracked and misshapen, his flesh bulbous and running with sores from radiation, his cells wracked by mutation. Monstrous, he mounted our mother during the Dao; monstrous, he summoned glory; monstrous, he channeled all our lost might into his seed.

“And together they made Emma in the image of her forbearers. Mother’s genetic raw materials coupled with father’s, all the impurities and faulty, diluted genetic tags removed. Together they made the perfect vessel, attuned to the will and way of the mhuruk-a. Emma was supposed to be the pinnacle of Whiston accomplishment. A pure vessel, yes, but not only for communication as others had been, but one who hearkened back to the distant past, to the ancient Dag Maoudi, who could commune and harness the might of the mhuruk-a without the shedding of blood.”

“And yet you kept on killing,” Ray says, almost growling.

“We have forgotten much. Not just we, but the Dag Maoudi who taught us, who once embraced the mhuruk-a as genius, guide, mother. They had counted themselves as surrogates to the eternal because they had learned to construct themselves naturally–through genetic selection, mating vessel to Dao offspring, mind to like mind–until their whole race echoed the being and thought and will of the spirit. Until they bound the mhuruk-a to themselves, and themselves to the Stone, so that it made them strong.

“Amah will tell you that in those ancient days, they walked in the darkness of the spirit and knew no fear. But even by the time our great ancestors discovered the Dag Maoudi, that glory had all passed away. They were a people in decline, who clung to their gods, trapped them in stone, manipulated them with ritual and blood. The glory that was transferred to the Whistons in those days was the nadir of the Dag Maoudi, after they had already begun to forget. They taught us to shape our minds, to recognize the signs of other minds like our own, to mate in ways that would make us strong, like the Dag Maoudi had been. The process was long, arduous, ultimately flawed. We could never rise above the need for blood.

“Grandfather Fram saw the truth, after the Whiston Corporation was wrested from his control. He saw that we had become weak, and that the only way to reverse that course was to begin again in a new place, following the old ways as well as they could be remembered. A world of our own, where we could become great once more, without interference. Our father believed he had accomplished what his father had not, that he had made the perfect vessel. But he was wrong. The vessel alone does not suffice. Even the perfect vessel does not commune.

“My sister would have you believe that she ran off because she didn’t want to go mad. She didn’t want to be destroyed as our mother was destroyed. That was her first lie, Marlowe. She is the perfect vessel, in form and mind, immune to the depredations of the mhuruk-a. She went to Stratiskaya Daransk because she was told to go. Because the mhuruk-a said that you would be there, and because she whispered to the Dag Maoudi that you are the one.”

Frederick wants to go on, Ray can feel it, his vicious glee, but Emma stops him. She shakes her head, hard like a shout of denial, like spasm. “It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t. Ray–”

She grabs his arm, turns him, forces Ray to look down at her. “Not like that, Ray, whatever he says. Whatever he thinks he knows, it’s wrong. She showed me, that much is true. She showed you to me, how you were made for me. How I was made for you.”

But Ray backs away from her, from both of them. Thinking about Nomar, the way his binary code, his fundamental systems had been altered from contemplating the shed. Thinking about Juliet Whiston whose mind had been changed. About vessels male and female. And Juliet’s calm, firm assertion that Frederick does what he believes is right.

There’s something wrong here, a subtlety, a lie that he senses, but can’t put his finger on.

How many people would you be willing to sacrifice to have Emma all to yourself, Marlowe?

She showed you to me, how you were made for me. How I was made for you.

What he’s being told isn’t enough. It doesn’t explain Paraclete, Gorgon, Micah, the stolen ring and rending shed. It doesn’t tell him why they pursued him from the beginning, or why Frederick has tried to kill him since.

Emma reaches for him again. “Ray.”

“What do you want from me?”

It’s Frederick who answers him. “I want my birthright, Marlowe. I want what you’ve stolen from me.”

“Your birthright?”

“They would have taken it away from me in time. Spurned me because I’m weak, because there wasn’t enough of my father in me, enough Whiston to make me worthy of the name. The Dag Maoudi rejected me from birth. But there was still hope until they found you, because even a weak link was better than no link at all. They’d created a barrier for themselves, you see. By making Emma perfect, they made perfection a requirement. They needed another just like her to take the last step away from rites of bloodshed. The mhuruk-a would accept nothing less. It is my birthright she would have given you.”

Horror, tingling like the taste of copper in his mouth. “You destroyed Paraclete to stop me from coming here?”

“I’ve committed many sins in your name, to prevent you or to drive you away. But you were too stupid, too resilient, too blinded. But not for selfishness, not just to save my birthright. I want you to understand that. I’m not an evil man, Marlowe, despite my failings.”

It’s there. He’s almost touching it. “Then why?”

“Because you are the one. Because you can commune with the mhuruk-a, just as Emma can. You are created in the spirit’s image. The mhuruk-a flows in your blood.”

Frederick pauses, angry, betrayed. “And through your seed.”

Unthinking, as if unnoticed, Emma’s small hands touch her stomach, a cover of protection. Ray stares at her.

“Now you understand,” Frederick says, bitter, his tone as dry and wasted as the desert winds. “For centuries, the mhuruk-a has been just a tool to us, something we could control with enough blood, enough murder. We needed it, and we detested it. But there was no other way to touch her fathomless power. As we became known, as we amassed our fortune, it became complicated to practice the Dao in secret. We already had our empire, and it was decided that in order to protect what we had already gained, we should allow the Dao to falter. We turned our back on the source of our might, and we saw our fortune wasted, our power and the things we had built wrested from our control by malcontents.

“We believed it was because we had failed in our diligence. But Grandfather knew differently, that it wasn’t just us. It was the mhuruk-a also. Bound for so long without communion, the tether between us grew thin and tenuous. Without communion, the spirit faded. Without the spirit, the family failed. He returned us to the old ways, to blood and ritual and sacrifice to bind the spirit to us again and revive our waning strength.

“You’ve changed all of that. Emma is the vessel; you are the one. But your child will be another thing entirely, a creature human in form but mhuruk-a in spirit. One of them, a new race of being, heir to the fundamental power of the universe, able to create or destroy at will, able to commune with not just the mhuruk-a in the Stone, but with all the mhuruk-i. Without the Dao and without mediation. Not a child at all, you see, but one step beneath a god. A Whiston god to raise us up, destroy our enemies, give all of human space into our hands. Do you see what you have wrought? Your seed will open the door to chaos through which the mhuruk-a and all her kind will enter and devour us all.”

But Ray shakes his head, denies it all. “No.”

Except Emma had placed her hands over her belly, where their child would grow.

It isn’t enough. It’s all speculation, fantasy, rationalization for the things Frederick has done. But it doesn’t explain anything.

“There never were any Lilaikens. It was just you, from the very beginning.”

He does what he believes is right.

“Do you suppose they’re aggrieved by the things that have been done in their name? I wonder sometimes. It’s hardly fair that they should be the ones who suffer for our crimes.”

“Our.”

“The Whistons and the Dag Maoudi.” Frederick bows his head slightly, a figure of penitence. “Don’t you understand? Even Grandfather Fram was deceived. He believed that the Dag Maoudi would be faithful to his vision and destiny. But before we existed, the Dag Maoudi were. They owned their world from horizon to horizon through their communion with the mhuruk-a. They cast themselves with us because we were an avenue to power again, a way in which they might reverse their course, possess a larger world. Through us, they sought to regain their dominance in a vaster arena. But the weakened Stone couldn’t grapple with a world so wide and complicated, especially as we faltered. It could only influence, and even that waned with time. But New Holyoke…ah, New Holyoke was new, fresh, simple. It could be designed with amenable elements from the start. All the Dag Maoudi needed was to revive the Stone with a new network of communion. Grandfather believed that the mhuruk-a, given free reign to choose those who would lead with us and beneath us, would return us to power. It’s why he built the Trust, to attract other minds, potential genetic and intellectual raw materials who could be manipulated, bred, trained in the way of the vessel to become those with whom the Stone could communicate. One generation after another, each a step forward toward perfection, toward Emma and the child she would bear. The whole colony has been built for this purpose, Marlowe, for you to come and give the perfect vessel a child who would break down the walls between us and the mhuruk-a. Can you comprehend it? All for the sake of power. Nothing but power.”

“But he was wrong,” Ray says.

“They were all wrong. The mhuruk-a in the Stone was just a shadow of itself. After so much neglect, there is not enough blood in the universe to bind her fully to their will again. She resents us because we compel her, but do not commune.”

” So you brought more of the mhuruk-i to New Holyoke.”

“Yes. A new spirit for the Stone, young and strong and malleable, as in the days of old.”

Archons of strife was what Jack Holcomb had called them. “You don’t know what you’ve done.”

“Oh, I know exactly what the Dag Maoudi have done, Marlowe. They have lied to us from the start, made us believe that their will was to serve the Whiston destiny. Perhaps that was true once, but no longer. Now, they’ve determined that they wish to rule again, and Amah believes they can control the revitalized Stone through your child. The Dag Maoudi have waited centuries to enslave all of us to the will of the mhuruk-i, and they no longer have need of the Whistons to further their goals, thanks to you and the ease with which you walked the path they set before you.

Frederick surprises him by scowling. “And I’m just as guilty, because I watched. I watched as they dismissed me as weak, drunken, failed Frederick Whiston, whom the mhuruk-a had rejected. I watched them claim the container bearing the mhuruk-i from the deserts of Terra to replenish the weakness of the one they had trapped in the Stone. I watched them destroy Fortitude, and claim responsibility in the name of the Lilaikens. I watched them send the mhuruk-i against other ships–your friends and colleagues. Why? Both because the mhuruk-i told them that those actions would bring you to Stratiskaya Daransk, and because attacks on the FSA would foment insurrection on the frontier. Colonial independence will create a vacuum of political authority in which they may solidify their grip on power here after the child is born. With the child to drive the Stone, and the mhuruk-i to enforce their will, the Dag Maoudi can rule the frontier. Knowing this, I still sat by and let them do exactly as they wanted–until they found you, that is, when it became obvious that they would spurn me in your favor. That changed everything.

“Can’t you see? From that moment, there was no birthright left for me. There was no future, because the Dag Maoudi would destroy the Whistons just as they destroyed everything else. I had no weapons to prevent them. My dear friend Townshend Wright has sought to deprive me of Whelemat, robbing me of my economic influence. My sister has become the vessel I do not have the ability to be, by which means I might have stirred the Stone against them. The Dag Maoudi have determined to replace me, heir of my father, with you–my seed with your seed–so that the vessel would be beyond my control.

“I am not weak, Marlowe. I have been methodically stripped of my power. They only believe I am weak, though I studied the same lore as the Dag Maoudi who despise me. Though I was able to steal from the Terran ring mhuruk-i of my own, who could be persuaded to do my bidding. Though I could lay the foundations of my own plans in darkness and secrecy.

“But even the theft of my birthright I could have borne. I would have allowed you to usurp my place in the Whiston line if it would have been just a reclamation of our family glory. But it’s not. I cannot countenance the Dag Maoudi treachery. I cannot endure an entire world under the domination of the mhuruk-a. Next to that, my birthright is meaningless. Evil. Better that the Whiston name be completely erased from memory than allow the Dag Maoudi to open the gates through which the mhuruk-i could enter our universe unfettered. That is what I have attempted to do, Commander Marlowe. I murdered Micah, one of our own children, to bind the mhuruk-i that I carried aboard the ship to me. I called them, held them in readiness, and when I was certain of you, that you were the one, I did all that was within my power to dissuade you.”

Ray stares at him. “You left the body in the storage area because you wanted it to be found.”

“I instructed the mhuruk-a to place the body in the open. I hoped it would warn you off. Given your history, given Ba’dai, it should have been sufficient. You should have seen that you were being manipulated from the start.”

He had, of course, but had failed to understand. All of his conclusions had been wrong.

“But you were too stubborn or foolish. I waited as long as I could, until it became obvious that you would persist until you had mated with my sister and unleashed hell on New Holyoke. I had no other choice. Only then did I send them forth. Against my sister. Against the Dag Maoudi. Against you. To destroy everyone and everything that could make this future come to pass. But you survived. You survived to ruin us all.”

Frederick lifts the gun at him, squeezes it in his hand. “I did all of these terrible things, but you are to blame, Marlowe. It’s all because of you.”

And even then, Ray tears his eyes away from the gun, from death. To Emma. This is too much for him; too much to grasp. All he requires is that she deny it. Just tell him one more time that Frederick is insane, and he’ll believe her. He wants to believe her.

“Emma?” Her name passes his lips like a plea.

But she says nothing. She isn’t even looking at him, but at the ground, and her lips curve in a private, secret smile. Her fingers caress the soft skin of her stomach, as though she can feel, see, experience the cells dividing within her.

“But why me?” Ray asks, whispering.

“Because you are the one.”

“Why? Why me!”

Frederick shrugs. “Who knows? Who cares? If the Dao has taught you anything, it should be that the mhuruk-i have their own ways that are beyond our reckoning. In you, they’ve found something essential.”

He does what he believes is right.

To destroy everyone and everything.

“What are you going to do with Emma after you kill me?”

He gives Ray a small, cold frown, like a child on the verge of tears. “What makes you believe that I have any interest in killing you now? You’ve become irrelevant. Killing you doesn’t prevent anything.”

The gun slides away from him in a slow and ponderous arc–away from him and toward Emma. He watches it turn aside forever, unable to breathe.

No!

Frederick Whiston says, “I should have done this a long time ago, Emma. But I was weak. I let myself love you. I loved you more than anyone, and you should have been mine. Just you and me, the way father intended.”

Ray, too far away, too stunned to be thinking clearly, lunges for him or just into the path of the bullet itself, he doesn’t know which.

And Emma’s head turns to the sound of her brother’s voice. She glares at him, fists clenched, eyes locked, and wails a high and keening note. She erupts with energy, a frisson of invisible, blistering flame. And the note she screams is a word; the word is a hammer, unspeakable, flung with the force of a galaxy caught, compressed, sucked into the pinpoint eye of a singularity.

Ray feels it blow past him, echoing thunder as it splits the air. He is brushed aside, a being of no consequence, battered to the ground. He lands flat on the grass, smothering in flowers, beside the pool of waxy flesh that was, until a moment ago, Frederick Whiston.

Behind him, Emma speaks with the voice of the shed, “Rejoice, brother! The vessel has accepted the seed of your child.”

It’s enough to make him scream. He doesn’t somehow. He lays still, his nostrils full of the odor of Frederick’s steaming remains, his evacuated bowels, his damp and bloody bonelessness. He lays still and lets his heartbeat and adrenaline thunder in his ears until the surge of panic passes.

Eventually, he rises and collects his clothing.

Emma, watching, says to him, “I’m pregnant with your child.”

Full of wonder, of awe, of pleasure, like a young bride to her husband. Abandoned once again by the mhuruk-a. Emma alone. She reaches for him in the darkness, as though her brother isn’t dead a small distance away, wanting to share this moment, this joy with him. He knows this scenario, has seen it played out on vids, in movies, his entire life. It’s a choreographed moment in which he’s supposed to smile, appear a bit dazed, then as it sinks in on him, he should grab her and swing her through the air, laughing–and just as quickly set her down again, his rough hands on her belly, terrified that he might have hurt the baby with his exuberance while she assures him everything is fine. That is the proscribed event protocol.

But Ray only stares at her with an expression that feels like horror until she withdraws again.

“There’s a great deal that should still be explained to you,” she says finally, “so that you understand. Things won’t be so different than they are now. Most people won’t even notice that things have changed. And if they do, they might even be happier for it. There won’t be any more need for blood, for the Dao.”

He already understands. Understanding is where the emptiness has come from. “How much of this did you know?”

“It’s complicated, Ray.”

“How much did you know?”

“He twisted things. It’s not like he said, and he would have gone on twisting things, destroying everything we’ve attempted to accomplish.” She clenches her fists, pulls herself up, straight and proud and rigid. “I’m glad he’s dead. I’m glad the mhuruk-a killed him. He’s done terrible things to me, to others, and what he would have done here would have been worse. In time, you’ll come to see that.”

“How much, Emma?” Ray thunders.

She blanches, stunned by his harshness. For a time, all she can do is look at him, quivering with anger or tears. All Ray can feel is heat, the molten, volcanic flood of betrayal. Slowly, Emma collects her gown–the Dao robe–drapes it about her shoulders, but does not fasten the clasps. As if she’s daring him to forget what they have done.

“Take me home,” she says.

“You can find your own goddamned way home.”

She doesn’t rise to his challenge, only nods. “That you’ve chosen to believe my brother changes nothing. It doesn’t change who you are, what we are. You’ll learn that eventually.”

She leaves him, passes close enough for him to touch, then goes on, vanishing into the trees. Ray watches her depart, but where she goes, he does not follow.

<– Chapter Eighteen / Chapter Twenty –>

Filed under: A Vessel for Offering Tagged: | A Vessel for Offering, blook, Darren Hawkins, science fiction