Playing God (16 page)

The arms-sister swore and shook her head. Praeis leapt. She grabbed the gun with both hands and struggled to wrench it out of the arms-sister’s grasp.

“Run!” she screamed to her daughters. “Run! Run!” She grasped the arms-sister’s ear and yanked on it hard. Third-Sister shrieked in pain, and her grip loosened just enough. Praeis tore the gun free. Praeis let go of her ear and brought the gun butt smashing down on her head. Third-Sister sprawled backward, blood gushing out of a split in her scalp.

Praeis stared wildly around. She saw the bus, saw the chaos of the melee, but she didn’t see Res and Theia.

A whine and a crack split the air. Her right shoulder jerked. Praeis whirled around, threw the gun up to her left shoulder, and fired back.

Idiot! Standing around in the open! Where are my daughters? Get behind the bus, you idiot, before you get shot down! Where are my daughters!

Praeis doubled over, folded her ears, and ran toward where she last saw the bus. Shots whined past her. Her left elbow jerked. She staggered and almost lost hold of the gun. Her shoulder hurt now. Her elbow would hurt like all the pain in the universe in a minute. The bus’s brown metal sides loomed up in front of her, she dodged left. Hands grabbed her. She bared her teeth, and saw her daughters.

They ran behind the bus. Good girls, smart girls, the best, the best in the world
…She let them pull her forward behind one of the bus’s rear wheels and crouch her down.

“You’re hurt, Mother. You’re hurt.” Theia tried to climb into her lap.

“Who did this?” Res bared her teeth. “I’ll kill them! I swear, I’ll…”

Praeis dropped the gun and threw her arms around her children. Her wounds burned like fire, but she pulled them as close to her as she could.

“No, no, my own. We’re here. We’re all here. We’ll get away. I swear we will. Together. Our mission now is to get away.”

“Obedience first,” murmured Res against her shoulder. “Mother…”

The roar of engines rolled over the sounds of fighting. Praeis jerked her ears toward the sound. Two frame cars full of arms-sisters in body armor tore up the road and screeched to a halt. Praeis risked a peek out from behind the tires toward the melee. All the passengers were involved now. No one had run. Everyone had stayed to protect or revenge. There was no one else behind the bus. Not even one daughter. The arms-sisters in their black armor waded in, swinging out indiscriminately, knocking apart combatants, rounding them up at gunpoint, dragging them away by ears and arms. She recognized Torn Ears in the hands of the arms-sisters.

Adrenaline swam through her blood as she realized what was coming next. Another of the accused t’Ciereth was thrown against her sister. They grabbed on to each other as the new arms-sisters brought their guns to their shoulders.

Pay, pay, pay for what you’ve done,
thought Praeis before she could stop herself. She slumped down against the tire and squeezed her eyes shut. She panted hard and shamelessly, as if trying to cover up the sound of the shots when they came.

“Mother?” whispered Theia. “The arms-sisters killed them. We’re safe now, Mother.”

Praeis stared at her. Her skin shook all the way down to her bones. It had been so long, too long. She hadn’t felt the Burn in twenty years. Not even in her nightmares. Not since before she’d made her deal against the Getesaph.

Dully, she reached down and touched her elbow. Her hand came up with blood smeared across it. She stared at the blood on her palms. She could smell it, sharp and bitter on the wind, like sea air, like gunpowder. The pain burned, too hot, too hard. There were scrapes along her palms, and they were so red, so vitally red with the sharp blood that smelled so strong she could taste it in the back of her mouth. Sharp red. Biting, bitter, blood red…

“Mother? Mother? We need to go, now. They’re calling us. Mother?”

Praeis lifted her gaze from her palms and blinked, slow and stupid, at Resaime’s wild eyes.

“Mother?” Someone slid her hands under her good arm. She knew the touch. Theia. “Are you good?”

The world opened again in a rush. Praeis gulped air and tore her gaze away from her palm.

“Yes.” She staggered to her feet. “Yes, I am good. But I am hurt. Who is—”

“Praeis! Praeis Shin t’Theria!”

“Neys!” Praeis ducked around the end of the bus. Neys and Silv, armored from neck to ankle with guns slung over their shoulders, hurried across the concrete toward her, careful of their footing on the slick aftermath of the battle.

Silv grasped Praeis’s good hand and saw the red on her skin. “You’re hurt, Arms-Sister.” She turned her head. “Hey! Help over here! Wounds!”

“I’m scratched,” said Praeis, although the pain told her it was more than that. “What did we get caught in here, Silv?”

Silv shook her head. “We’re not sure. We got a runner in who said there was trouble with a bus on the road, and we came out as fast as we could. Might be those t’Ciereth were trying to make an intelligence run across our border.” She shook her head. “If it’s not your blood, who knows what starts the fight?”

“Then they were t’Ciereth?” asked Resaime.

Neys smoothed Res’s shoulder. “As far as we know they were. They are now, however, soaked into the ground and explaining themselves to their Ancestors.” She spit. A pair of sisters with medical badges on their chests arrived. They sat Praeis down firmly, probed her shoulder, and checked her elbow. Messy, they decided, but not much more than glorified flesh wounds. She was lucky. They bandaged her up and ordered her to get care-takers to pack and stitch her shoulder before the day was over.

Praeis swore she would. So did Res and Theia.

The medical-sisters seemed satisfied with this and hurried back to grimmer tasks among the dead and dying.

Praeis turned her back on the scene. “How soon can you get my daughters out of this?”

“Right now,” said Neys. “We can commandeer one of the cars. Come on.” She offered one hand to Praeis and another to Theia. Theia took it somewhat hesitantly. Resaime took her sister’s other hand and crowded close beside her.

The frame car didn’t run any more smoothly than the bus had. Each rattle and jounce sent fresh flashes of pain up Praeis’s arm. She wanted to ignore it and talk to her daughters about what they’d been through. All she could do, though, was stare at the green, hilly country with its fortifications and compounds and think about the strange, frightening moment when the world had entirely narrowed down to her body and her immediate sensations. She’d come down from the Burn dozens of times when she was a young arms-sister, and it had never felt like that.

Don’t think about it. You’ve got so much to worry about. If it’s happening
…she swallowed.
If it’s happening, then it’s happening, as it must, and I have less time to work with than I thought.

Resaime stretched her neck up and shouted in Praeis’s ear. “We were not afraid, Mother. Of any of it.”

Praeis turned her head. Res was so close, her face blurred in front of Praeis’s vision. “I wish you had been, my own. What you saw was worth fearing, and worth avoiding.”

“I don’t want to sound childish, Mother,” said Theia, leaning as close to Praeis as she could without touching her bandages, “but they started it.”

Praeis sighed. “‘They’ generally do,” she bawled over the noise of the engine and the rushing wind. “But notice, my own, you were the only ones with the good sense to leave the fight. This makes you the only ones with whole skins right now.”

Praeis’s cheek twitched. Neys had turned around and was staring at her.

“Is something wrong, Arms-Sister?” Praeis shouted.

Neys hesitated. “No, Sister. Nothing at all.” She faced forward again.

Praeis closed her eyes briefly.
Yes, Arms-Sister, I teach my daughters to be detached, to be cowards, to long for peace above blood. To be like me.

The Cesh compound lay just outside the Charith city walls. Over the years, it had become an unoffical checkpoint and barracks. The yards were filled with arms-sisters in the uniforms of the Great Family and assorted near families. Arms-sisters marched across the lawns and the tops of the walls. Outbuildings that had once housed livestock now housed mechanics’ stations. The livestock looked on from hastily constructed pens that some third- and fourth-sisters in bad grace with their primes repaired and shoveled out.

Neys and Silv’s inner home was a sprawling dwelling under half a dozen peaked roofs. It had been continuously added on to for the past four generations. Four little daughters ran around the yard, playing games of tag with laughing arms-sisters.

At the door, three servants hurried to set out cold drinks and help Neys and Silv strip out of their armor, but no other sisters came forward. Praeis bit her tongue. When she had last been here, there had been nearly two dozen Cesh, counting aunts, mothers, and sisters. She looked at the empty room and wished desperately for a way to go off and be quietly sick with her daughters.

If the horror of her realizations showed on her skin, Neys and Silv gave no sign.

“Shall we take your daughters to meet ours?” asked Neys as she handed Praeis a glass of sweet, scented juice.

Praeis took her greeting sip. It tasted marvelous, and she wanted to gulp the rest of it.

“It will have to be later,” she said. “I need my own to be here for this.” Resaime’s ears pricked up with pride, and she squeezed her sister’s hand. Thieareth just looked solemn.

Praeis sat down on the nearest divan and kept her daughters on either side of her. Generally, everyone thought Res was the smart one, but Praeis was now sure that honor belonged to Thieareth. She just hoped Res would listen to her quiet sister in days ahead.

“So talk with us, Arms-Sister,” said Silv, as she and Neys sat close together on one of the sofas, now wearing only bleached white shirts over their belly guards. “Tell us how we can help you.”

Praeis nodded. “I need to know what my sisters have gotten themselves into.”

Neys sighed. “That’s a good question. When the Queens-of-All agreed to the Confederation, they didn’t have a lot of support down at the shoreline. They still don’t. Senejess and Armetrethe came out early and loudly against it. The guess is they retained their position under the Council of True Blood so that somebody could keep an eye on them.”

“That and the fact that no one could legally strip their name from them without creating a real ruckus, even after…” Neys glanced at Res and Theia.

“After what Jos, Shorie, and I did,” Praeis finished for her. “We all know what I did, and we all know, Arms-Sisters, I’d do it again.”

“Oh yes,” said Silv solemnly. “We know that.”

“Listen, Arms-Sisters,” Praeis leaned forward. “I have been commissioned by our Queens to start building real support for the Confederation. But there’s more to it than that. There’s got to be some reason they wanted me back in the fleet.” She swallowed and forced the words out. “It may be because I am eminently expendable.”

Both Res and Theia started at her words. Praeis bowed her head. “I’m sorry, my daughters. But you needed to hear that. You are in this with me.”

“Yes, Mother,” whispered Theia.

“It can’t be true.” Resaime’s face was tight and still. “You’ve fit the pieces wrong, Mother. There is another way to make this picture.”

“Maybe,” she rubbed Res’s shoulder.

Neys’s ears dipped and straightened. “There are currents here we can feel but can’t map yet.”

Silv snorted and tugged her sister’s ear. “Thank you for speaking the obvious, Neys. Praeis, let me ask you for a plain answer.” Her ears and eyes focused completely on Praeis. “What do you yourself think of the Confederation?”

“I want it to work,” said Praeis. “I don’t know if it can, but I want it to, and I will do what I can to help.” Her ears flickered back and forth a moment before she could still them. “And you, my Arms-Sisters? What do you think?”

Neys took Silv’s hand and held it tightly. Praeis could see the currents of feeling pass between them in the ripples of their skin. Loneliness burned sudden and sharp in the back of her mind.

“We are dying,” said Neys flatly. “The Great Family, the near families, the ’Esaph and all their hangers-on, all of us together.” She stopped and her ears dropped backward. “I have wished the ’Esaph all dead, but my soul is a good accountant and won’t let me ignore the costs.” She grimaced and swept her arm out. “There are more of us than there are of them. It is possible some of our Great Family will be alive when the plague has killed all of them. But I think the ancestors would howl if we counted on that.” She shook her head. “We need this plague gone. We need the Humans to do that. The incomprehensible Humans will not hear our history with the ’Esaph. Very good. We do this thing for the same reason we have always fought the ’Esaph, because we have to.” One fold in her right cheek jumped. “Those who work to kill the Confederation are working to kill their sisters.”

Praeis dipped her ears. “I hear you, Arms-Sisters, and you have my agreement. I need to know who else shares this view. I need a staff I can trust and whom I can send out in my name with directives that might not stand the light of day. Is there anybody like that left?”

Neys and Silv exchanged thoughtful glances. “Keeia, Ini, Oma Iat,” said Neys.

“Uait and Rai Baeit” added Silv.

“And Ureth Tai.”

“Yes, and Ureth Tai,” Silv dipped her ears in approval. “And they will know more. We can contact them all tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Praeis asked before she could stop herself. “Sisters, we have less than two weeks to change the Council’s mind. They can ruin everything by simply refusing to move!”

“Tomorrow,” repeated Neys firmly.

“Because today, Mother,” said Res, “you need rest and to have your wounds looked after.”

Praeis stared down at her daughters in disbelief. They sat rigid in their unity. At last, she threw back her head and laughed. “I give in! I give in!” She waved both her hands over her head. “I am surrounded by mutineers.”

“At last, she understands.” Silv caught Praeis’s shoulder and shook it. “And for our first act of mutiny, we’re calling in the care-takers.”