(Please Don’t) Fly Me to the Moon
“Open communications,” Ilare said weakly to the machine above. The luxtruder pressed out a bright, blank panel of light and floated it down to them. “Ilare the sixth, head of House Tehariel, first among Key-Bearers and Warden of the Third Satellite, requests an audience with...with Her Wisdom Virieh. Sixth of that exalted name, Venarch of House Tauhrelil and all bloodlines suppliant, Sage of the Red Chambers, Lady Regnant of the Nightglass Tower and Keeper of the Deepest Vault.”
Virenina made an impatient cranking motion with one hand – go on, go on.
“...And inform my venarch that this concerns her niece’s campaign in the Opaline City.”
The panel hovered just above one end of the glass tabletop, so that all three of them had to half-turn to see it. Light rippled softly across its surface with each word Ilare spoke, before settling into a slower, more rhythmic shifting – a waiting-pattern. Finally the whole panel darkened to pure black, save for two lines of glowing turquoise, one over the other: the bottom line spanned the screen unbroken, while the one above it split sharply upwards into twin tapering tines: the Tauhrelil insignia.
“Tehariel. Speak.”
The voice that gave the order sounded a great deal like Virenina’s – full of easy authority as only a lady bloodroyal’s could be, and possessing a certain raw-edged depth – but where Virenina’s voice was bold and lively, this one was tempered with cool restraint. At the sound of it, Ilare placed her fingers delicately on the tabletop and touched her forehead to the glass between them. Either she was driven by some courtly survival instinct, or else Virieh could see them, even if they couldn’t see her.
Asaau lowered his eyes in polite deference, if only to be safe. From the corner of his eye, he saw Virenina lean forward.
“My lady Virieh,” Ilare started –
“Auntie,” said Virenina, sweetly. The way she spoke made Asaau picture a shark sidling up to be petted as if it thought itself a housecat. Ilare started up from her bow, looking as if she couldn’t believe her ears.
“Nina,” said Virieh’s voice, in tones that reminded Asaau of much the same thing.
Across the table, Ilare now looked at Asaau with a tinge of desperation, as if he were the only sane person left in the room. Asaau kept his eyes averted, grateful that Virieh’s presence gave him an excuse to do so – otherwise, Ilare might have caught a glint of amusement. Don’t you simply adore dealing with Tauhrelils, Lady Ilare?
“I’m in the middle of a rather…temperamental experiment, my dear.” The Tauhrelil insignia glow-pulsed on the screen in time with Virieh’s speech. “So tell me – quickly – why you’re on the Ring instead of in the Opaline City. Is the First Spear with you?”
“He wants to take us both into the Shattered Lands. Lady Ilare is afraid to permit it.”
Like Vene – like so many Tauhrelils – Virieh had taken augmentations for her eyes, that they might better serve her in the laboratory, and had the glowing scarlet pupils to show it. Even the warmest of looks from a Tauhrelil who’d given her eyes to the knife still felt rather like being targeted by a laser sight. Though Virieh was thousands of miles away – though her family’s insignia hid her face – Asaau felt those eyes trained on him now.
“First Spear Seket. Explain.”
“My lady Virieh. I’m sure you remember the incident with the trial chamber.” Your family’s accountants certainly do, at any rate. “Yet Virenina must be tested, one way or another. I’m sure you understand.” He let the words hang between them for a moment. “Had there been any other op – ”
“Is this necessary for my niece’s campaign?”
We interrupted the Tauhrelil family head mid-experiment, Asaau told himself. Count yourself lucky that the only cutting-off she’s doing to anyone is the verbal sort.
“It is, my lady.”
“Then go. Was that all?”
Asaau opened his mouth to speak –
“Just don’t make Lady Ilare pay for it if I die.” This time it was Virenina who cut him off. Asaau closed his mouth, ignored the feeling that rose unbidden of being slighted, reminded himself that her right to address Virieh outweighed his. “She had no part in this until Seket and I dragged her into it.”
“Very well, you have my word. Let the record of this conversation be my oath.” A pause. “And Nina?”
“Yes, Auntie?” Virenina grinned at the faceless screen and sat up straighter, head cocked, hands clasped between her knees in a mockery of schoolgirl attentiveness.
“Do try not to die.”
With that, the Tauhrelil insignia blinked out, and the panel faded away to nothing.
“There!” Virenina said brightly, and turned to look at Ilare, who rested her forearms on the table as if it were all that kept her from sinking through the floor. “An oath on record, two witnesses bloodroyal – now she can’t punish you for letting us in even if I really do get killed.” She rose, smiling, spear in hand. Asaau rose with her. “That should help you sleep, right?”
Ilare didn’t look up.
“You are – too kind. My lady.”
As he took his first step into the Shattered Lands, Asaau waited for the same fear that had found him on the Ring to seize him anew.
Virenina waited several yards ahead. She’d strode in as easily as if this place belonged to her family, too, and had only stopped when she’d realized Asaau was lagging behind. Asaau closed the distance between them, bracing himself all the while for the same cold, breathless sub-panic he’d felt before. For worse. After all, he’d felt that earlier fear at the borderlands, and now they were inside – it would happen now, or perhaps with the next step, and if not that one, then surely the next…
By the time he’d caught up to Virenina, Asaau was still waiting. Of course he was afraid – but what he felt on this side of the Ring was lighter, sharper, closer to unease than true fear.
He knew, now, another part of why the Ring had unsettled him so deeply. He’d known it had looked wrong, but only now that Shattered Lands air had thoroughly filled his airways with the scents of rain-damp earth, of stone and sea, of flowers and decay, did Asaau realize – the Ring had even smelled wrong.
Did it have any scent at all? he wondered, and felt suddenly, briefly, as if his lungs would never be full. He breathed in again, and again, as deeply as he could manage without making noise; this was one thing he couldn’t stand to have Virenina needle him over, not now. As Asaau’s lungs drank in the air, his eyes drank in plants and sky and the glow of living things. The Shattered Lands, despite their danger, were a relief to his senses. They had crossed over into the great wound on the face of Tei Ura, the charnel-pit of the gods, and somehow Asaau’s heart rate was actually coming down.
Mercifully, the lands didn’t strain his mind up close the way they did from afar; it was easier when he could only see what lay before him. Asaau noticed as they walked that Shattered Lands grass felt no different underfoot than grass anywhere else on Tei Ura. You are wearing shoes, though. He felt a sudden, absurd urge to sit down and remove them, so he could truly know whether grass felt the same on both sides of the Ring –
“Did we have to do it like that?” Virenina’s voice stopped him mid-thought.
“Do – what?”
“Lying to her,” she said. “Scaring her into doing what we wanted.”
Tehariel? Asaau nearly stopped walking. Why in the world was Virenina worried about her? Virieh had sworn on record that she wouldn’t punish Ilare, even if Virenina died. Should anything happen to Ilare, her blood would be on Virieh’s hands, not theirs.
“You’ve never had a problem with intimidation before,” said Asaau.
“Yeah, when it was opponents,” Virenina shot back, “or practice kills, or people who were really asking for it – ” She broke off and ran one hand through her hair, as if trying to comb through her own thoughts. “They all signed up for it. Or at least deserved it.” Virenina pointed back the way they’d come. “She didn’t.”
“But she did.”
Virenina stared at him.
“She’s a Tehariel,” Asaau said. “Born into a vessel house. And you, bloodroyal twice over – firstborn daughter of the Throne Refulgent, niece to one venarch, granddaughter to another – it is her place to fear you.”
“I gave up that throne when I took my father’s name.” Virenina’s expression was stony. The rings of Ai Naa’s anchor clinked. They were walking, Asaau reminded himself – they were walking, the ground was growing rougher – “It’s Orineimu’s now.”
It was – the least relevant part of what he’d said, but the Shattered Lands were no place to hold an argument. Besides, Asaau told himself, you should have known better than to make so much as a sidelong mention of Orisai. Not here. Not now. Virenina’s unshared secret burned brighter in his mind with every step they took. He would not risk her willingness to tell him, not after they’d come all this way.
“We should discuss something else.” The thought of her secret reminded him, and Asaau was only too glad to turn to another topic. Being next to Virenina had begun to feel a bit too much like being near a gathering stormcloud. “Where – ”
“ – Are we going? Where am I showing you?” A certain sharp-edged humor crept back into her voice. “I know what kind of place we need. But finding it – oh, you’re going to love that part.”
Yes, Asaau thought wearily, I’m sure I’ll love it almost as much as one loves the smell of corpseflowers in full bloom.
“For now, just keep up with me,” Virenina was saying as she led them further in, through thickening green and gathering mist that clung thin and wet-glittering to all it touched. Water soon pearled upon his armored gloves, on Virenina’s chestplate, in her hair, even in Asaau’s eyelashes. “We need open air, stable ground.” She pushed aside a heavy, dripping veil of lacelike fronds and waited for Asaau to pass before her. “So we’re going to have to go some place higher up, I mean – just look at this shit, right?”
She gave the hanging fronds a demonstrative tug, and was promptly doused in a shower of collected mistwater. For a moment, Virenina just stood there, her lone eye covered in a fall of sodden hair, one hand still frozen mid-pull among the leaves. Then, with her free hand, she pushed back her hair and looked Asaau full in the face, grimly, as if accepting some bitter fate.
And then let go of the leaves. Another downpour hit her as they bounced back into place.
“I know you know me well enough to pthfthh,” she said.
“Yes, of course,” said Asaau while Virenina finished spitting out water. “I could never pthfthh if I didn’t know you as well as I do.”
“I know you know me well enough to know this already,” Virenina started again, voice now dripping sarcasm in place of rainwater, “but that was completely on purpose. Also, shut the fuck up.” Her lips had been doing their telltale trying-not-to-smile twitch; now she broke into another grin. “Just for that, I’m dragging us back to that thing I said you’d love a second ago. You figure it out yet?”
Why must I be the one to say it? Asaau glanced briefly heavenward. Very well, Seket, just give her what she wants. It’s easier that way.
“You mentioned high ground,” he told her. “That alone makes me suspect it’s exactly as I feared. Especially since we haven’t the time to climb an entire mountain, or to scale a stone table…” Asaau gave a small sigh. “And, of course, you love to amuse yourself by injuring my sense of dignity.”
He paused a moment, if only because he wanted so dearly to be wrong.
“You’re going to haul me through the sky like air freight, aren’t you.”
“We can pretend you’re my navigator if it makes you feel better. Now do you – ” Her mouth twisted. He knew she was trying not to laugh. “D’you want to be carried like a bridegroom or a grainsack?”
“No,” said Asaau, wretchedly.
“Backpack?”
“I think what I’d really like is to kill you for making me think about this.”
“I could try carrying you over both shoulders, you know, like a mantle or something – ”
“I’m curious,” said Asaau. “Is this you trying to help, by coming up with more options? Or are you simply enjoying this?”
“I don’t know,” Virenina said with an open-handed shrug. “Both?”
“Just – ” Asaau touched one hand to his brow. He knew there was no dignified way to go about this. That didn’t make accepting it any easier. “Pick whichever way you think you’re least likely to drop me,” he said at last.
“Alright!” Virenina said brightly, and then scooped Asaau up in her arms almost faster than he could blink. He kept forgetting that she wasn’t just taller than him now, but stronger, too. Stronger than she has any right to be, Asaau thought. She lifted him as if he weighed next to nothing, so suddenly that he let out a startled, indignant noise entirely against his will. For a mercy, Virenina ignored it.
“Put your arms above mine,” she said as she jumped onto Ai Naa’s anchor, which had moved itself to hover, waiting, a few inches over the ground. Asaau expected to feel them both bob up and down when she landed on it, if only slightly. Instead it remained as solidly in place as if somehow nailed into thin air. “And hold onto me tight, you hear? Rather have you strangle me a little than fall.” The spear rose slowly through the air, and Asaau’s concerns of dignity fell away behind it. He clung to her.
“But don’t worry,” Virenina said, and pushed his head down against the front of her armor. Her hand on the back of his head was almost gentle. “If you fall, I’ll catch you.”
Then she accelerated.
Asaau pressed his eyes closed and his face against her as the world vanished in a rush of wind. He didn’t want to see how high they were. He didn’t want to see the terrible speed at which Virenina flew. He didn’t want to see an ocean of empty air, and he especially didn’t want to see how the only thing between him and it was the shaft of a single spear. In fact, he didn’t want to so much as think about those things, and so instead Asaau held onto Virenina tight as he could and filled his mind with the last thing she’d said before taking off.
I’ll catch you. I’ll catch you. I’ll catch you.