Chapter 23

  Rosma left on the fourth day after the events at Prax, when her wounds healed enough for her to travel. She departed without ceremony, emerging from her tank and stealing one of Jeronimy’s spare aircraft in the early morning. She stopped only long enough to find Derxis and remind him of her blood oath.

  “And tell Anthea I regret having had to kill her,” she said.

  Derxis had puzzled out a rough chronology of events at Prax and concluded that Rosma had killed Anthea just before Emmius had managed to put the mother stone back to sleep. If Rosma had waited just another minute, killing Anthea might not have been necessary at all. He didn’t say any of this. Rosma’s regret was pure. There was no guilt; Rosma had never felt guilt about anything in her life. But she felt bad about what happened to Anthea, and that was a start.

  Her departure left seven of them dwelling in the uncannily sepulchral husk of the godlike machine called Nonpareil Nescience. Rasmus followed shortly after, citing duties at the temple of the Thunder God. His true motivation was concern for Acarnus, who had neither appeared nor contacted them ever since Prax. That left six.

  Emmius wandered around the Iterator knocking things over and getting yelled at by Jeronimy. He was adapting to the mechanical arm that Jeronimy had made for him, and the twanging of his guitar sometimes echoed down the dark and musty corridors that laced the interior of the Iterator like a vascular system.

  Zayana had recovered quickly; her injuries, though numerous, were mostly superficial. She spent her days here mothering over Fiora and Anthea. Fiora was convalescing, though she had yet to awaken. She had been drained nearly dry of both blood and arda; both needed time to recover. Even Catch, who had lent his power, spent his time resting. They kept Fiora in a hangar bay that opened onto a magnificent vista of the Prismatic Sea. This was because Catch refused to go any further into the corpse of the Iterator, and when they initially tried to bring Fiora in, he had put up such a fuss and racket that they relented. Derxis himself had carted out a greenrad bed for Fiora to lie in, and had found blankets for her. It was cold on the mountain. He checked on her frequently.

  The Iterator called Nonpareil Nescience was embedded into the mountain like brick shoved into a heap of clay. One long side of it protruded, which gave the mountain an odd, angular appearance from several directions. This Iterator had died decades ago. According to Jeronimy, it had committed suicide—the only known Iterator to have succeeded in doing so. Nonpareil Nescience was famous in Iterator lore (apparently there was such a thing) for broadcasting “the triple affirmative” shortly before its demise: affirmative that a solution to the Prime Problems existed; affirmative that said solution was accessible by conventional means; affirmative that it had accessed this solution. Then it killed itself. Or, according to some, the solution killed it. Or perhaps it had been slain by some other entity because it had found the solution. Debate raged on the comm channels between Iterators as to what exactly Nonpareil Nescience had meant, and about why and how it had killed itself, but since its data had been completely wiped (by means unknown), no definitive answer could be ascertained. Derxis found this whole tale irresistibly amusing. A modern parable, no doubt about it.

  Jeronimy had been operating in the husk of the Iterator for a long time. He claimed it was haunted, and Derxis was not inclined to disagree. Something did linger here, something he could almost hear, could almost feel, could almost taste. Perhaps Nonpareil Nescience was not quite as dead as supposed? Or was its murderer still around, guarding its secrets? Maybe the Iterator had left a restless ghost behind to haunt its own corpse? Scrumptious speculations, but unimportant.

  Jeronimy invented things and built telescopes by scavenging the wealth of parts and technology within the corpse of the vast machine. He had dropped what he was doing and taken his fastest aircraft directly to Prax when he had learned that something had happened to Anthea. Was his haste the product of immense respect for their leader, or something more? Hard to say. Jeronimy’s emotions were muddled at the best of times. Not that it mattered anymore.

  Anthea had lost her Song.

  Derxis found Jeronimy lurking outside of Anthea’s room, stalking back and forth in the darkness. His arda glowed black with an agitation that neither he nor Derxis understood. He stopped when Derxis approached. He seemed to fade into the shadows and darkness of the dusty hallway, metallic and cold. Somewhere in the distance, an out-of-tune guitar twanged.

  “Have you spoken to her?” Derxis asked. He adjusted the blankets he had brought under one arm and debated whether to put on a mask. He decided to leave himself maskless for this.

  Jeronimy mumbled something incomprehensible, but Derxis read the negative in his mind. “Well, then,” said Derxis.

  Jeronimy stepped between Derxis and the door. He spoke in a low whisper, as though Anthea might hear them through the three-inch-thick wall of metal that separated them. “Did she really fucking lose her Song?”

  Derxis nodded. “She really died, Jeronimy. I guess not everything came back with her.”

  “‘Came back?’”

  “From beyond the void. Just…see for yourself.” Derxis waited for Jeronimy to move, then heaved the door open into Anthea’s room.

  It had been a medical supply storage locker. Cabinets containing expired medicinals lined the walls. They had brought her here, fairly deep within the Iterator, because this room contained a random whiterad bed. It produced a white light mixed with a cocktail of radiation and inaudible sound waves designed to stimulate the healing of white arda. Acarnus had once told Derxis that the science behind radbeds was sketchy, but no one had argued about putting Anthea on one.

  She lay on it when they entered, illuminated from below by a warm white light. That bed was the only light source in the room. Anthea’s form cast a huge misshapen shadow on the low ceiling, and fading layers of reflected light bathed the rest of the room. She was unclothed, curled onto her side facing them. She hugged her own knees and stared blankly at nothing. The blankets that had been piled atop her the last time Derxis had been here were pushed aside. The shattered stumps of her wings had stopped leaking, and her two mortal wounds were now mere scars thanks to Fiora’s healing. She looked thin and frail, helpless and naked and afraid, and seeing her like that made his stomach twist. Where was the Anthea of three years ago, who had found him and challenged him to a game beneath the stars on a cold desert night? They had bested the sphinx together after that, and Derxis had known at once that this was she, the one of prophecy, whom he would trust with his life and follow to the death.

  Jeronimy’s shock and horror stank in Derxis’s mind, so he left Jeronimy standing by the door and added his blankets to the discarded pile. Last time she had been shivering with cold; now cloudy sweat beaded all over her body.

  “Anthea,” said Derxis, doing his utmost to keep his voice casual and pleasant. “How are you doing?”

  She uncurled slightly, turned her pale eyes toward Derxis. He could hardly bring himself to look into those eyes. They were haunted, sunken, afraid, wet with tears. They were eyes that horror had kept awake for days. She spoke, and her voice was a thin whisper. “I keep seeing them, Derxis.”

  “The, uh…?”

  “The books.” She looked past him into the distance. “The Burning Books.” She curled tightly in on herself, squeezed her eyes shut, and whimpered. That sound was as terrible as the screaming he had heard at Prax. A giggle leaked out of him before he could stifle it.

  “It’s okay,” he said. He stepped closer, unsure whether to risk a comforting hand on her shoulder. “This is Jeronimy’s place. No books here, I’m sure.”

  “Oh, fuck you,” said Jeronimy, but his heart was not in it.

  “What books, Anthea?” asked Derxis. He pulled up a nearby chair on which Zayana had placed a meal. It was untouched, so Derxis put the tray on the floor and took a seat.

  Anthea hid her face in her hands and sobbed softly. “I saw…” she whispered in-between gasps, “…the books…”

  Burning books. Had he heard that before, somewhere? Derxis made a note to look it up later. For now, he saw it would be best to change the subject.

  “Jeronimy’s here,” said Derxis. He scooted the chair so Anthea could see the door.

  She sniffed, wiped limp silver hair from her face. “Jeronimy?”

  “Uh…yeah,” Jeronimy said. Derxis laughed into his hand.

  Anthea stared at him blankly. Jeronimy shifted, awkward. He was holding something, Derxis noticed. A white crystal, though he hid it from Anthea’s view.

  “You were right,” she whispered to Jeronimy after a long, uncomfortable silence. “There is nothing for us. There is no…I saw…I saw…” Then she was sobbing again—delicate, soft little weeping sounds that might have belonged to a child.

  Derxis chanced a look into her mind. He didn’t dare peer deeper until Anthea had stabilized and he knew more about what was wrong with her, but for now a casual glance would do. He found despair laced with fear. Despair was something he had never caught so much as the faintest whiff of in Anthea’s mind. Now it grew there like an infection. What in the hells had happened to her? Was this what happened when a daimon lost their Song? Derxis could not avoid a peek at Anthea’s flute, lying on the floor under the bed. Zayana had brought it to Anthea in an attempt to cheer her up. That was when they had learned about her Song.

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  “Okay, we’ll be going,” said Derxis. “Do you need anything?”

  She thought for a long moment, then said, “Is…Acarnus?”

  “He’s not here now,” said Derxis. He burst into a random peal of laughter. Gods damn it, Acarnus, what could you possibly be doing? He refrained from mentioning to Anthea that no one had had contact with him for several days.

  “Oh…” She looked even sadder than before. “I…I’m cold…” She reached for the pile of blankets.

  Derxis had to leave. He marched from the room and dragged Jeronimy behind him, closing the door maybe a little too violently. He staggered across the dark hall and collapsed against the cold metal in a fit of giggles.

  “The fuck did she mean I’m right?” asked Jeronimy. He could hide in the dark, but he could not hide how shaken he was by seeing Anthea like that. He also couldn’t hide the fact that he’d taken a piece of Anthea’s broken arda from the sands of Prax.

  “Don’t worry,” Derxis said. “All will be well. All will be well. All will be well.” He repeated it several more times, like a mantra. But who was he trying to convince? What had Anthea seen across the void? What books?

  “I just, fucking, man it pisses me off.” Simple anger. Impotent outrage: the Jeronimy Classic. Derxis fell to his knees in laughter.

  “And you fucking piss me off. Look at you, just fucking laughing when she’s… And Acarnus—what the hells is he up to? That fucking flake, is he just gonna run off and be a little bitch at a time like this? But what I hate the most about all this, what really just fucking makes me wanna bring down the docks, is that the piece of shit who did this is just sitting somewhere safe and sound, just making fucking paper starcraft and thinking she’s the hottest shit in the gods-damned galaxy, probably just laughing it right the fuck up like some psycho—like you, you fuckin heartless bastard…”

  He went on for a while, but Derxis was not listening. Derxis was thinking about dragons.

  He interrupted Jeronimy when he had reached a decision. “I’m going to bring her to justice, Jeronimy. Do not worry.” He said it like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

  “Oh?” said a new voice. It was Zayana, coming at them with a ball of light and a limp. The ball of light was a shining fragment of blue arda that drifted in the air over Zayana’s shoulder. “You know where she is, Derxis?”

  “I do,” he said. “And I will bring her to justice. Not Rosma’s justice, of course.” He laughed.

  “You think you’ll bring her in all by yourself?” Zayana asked. She reached them and stopped. Her blue light source floated ahead of her for another pace before slowing to a halt. Her eyes flicked to Anthea’s door, obviously concerned they would be overheard.

  “I have contracted…assistance,” Derxis said.

  “But not me?”

  “You are injured.”

  She folded her arms sternly. “Hardly. And it doesn’t matter, and you know it.”

  “This,” Derxis withdrew a mask from his cloak and fastened it over his face, “is a job for a color priest.” It was not his usual Watchful mask. It was the Grave mask, its expression stern, grim.

  “No,” Zayana replied, unflinching before that mask. She looked him right in the eyes, violet against orange. “This is a job for her friend.”

  Derxis noticed that Jeronimy had slipped away from behind him at some point. Possibly Zayana had not even seen him go. “She is not walking away from this, Zayana,” he said. “She must face judgment.”

  Zayana nodded. “I agree. But I want to be the one. If it’s me…” If it was her, Akkama might not put up a raging fit of resistance. They might not have to take extreme measures. Akkama might even survive the encounter.

  He nodded at her. “Fine. You come. You talk to her, try to make her see reason. I was also considering Acarnus—that is, if we can find him…”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t know what he thinks he’s doing right now, being elsewhere when Anthea needs him, but it’s too personal for him.”

  “And it’s not for you? That’s an awful lot of naysaying for someone face to face with the mask of judgment.” He laughed. “Fine. We’ll leave Acarnus out of it.” That might make it easier with Akkama, too.

  Easy, D-man? With Akkama? Who are you trying to fool?

  Myself, Derxis. The only daimon I can ever fool 100% of the time.

  They left Anthea’s part of the Iterator together. Zayana tried to pry about Derxis’s ‘assistance,’ but he would tell her nothing except that it was a ‘special guarantee of success.’ She didn’t need to know. Not until it was time.

  Derxis took a moment to wash and clean his priestly robes until the kai threads glistened with radiant colors. Those threads, harvested from vake larvae, would never fade. It would not do to mete out justice in shabby robes. Then, splendidly arrayed in the holy habiliments of his ancient order, and with the mask of judgment dark and deadly upon his face, he led Zayana to their vessel.

  They checked on Fiora before leaving. They found her awake and mostly lucid, huddled as usual against the sleeping vesta. “Derxis!” she said when they brought her food. “Zayana!” Her words were slurred. She was groggy, but she smiled at them, and that smile did uncomfortable things to Derxis’s heart.

  Zayana set down the tray of food she’d been saving for the moment when Fiora awoke. It consisted mostly of the vacuum-sealed nutri-packs available here, but she had somewhere located some fresh fruit. A much larger basket sat nearby for the vesta.

  But of course, food was not Fiora’s first concern. “Anthea?” she asked.

  “Alive,” said Zayana without missing a beat. “You saved her life, Fiora.”

  That made Fiora content. She snuggled against the vesta and set to nibbling on the fruit.

  “We’ll be going out for a while,” said Derxis. “We’ve got to deal with Akkama.”

  Fiora paused. She gazed out the huge hangar bay doors at the distant purple sky. She nodded slowly. “Don’t kill her?” she said. “Please?”

  “Of course not!” Zayana assured her. Derxis remained silent.

  Fiora took turns looking at each of them, pleading with her kind green eyes. “There is so much that is good inside Akkama. She can…” She floundered for words, then simply said, “Please believe in her.” She looked at Derxis when she said that, and the memory of her crouched on Anthea’s body came back to him. Believe in me. And they had worked a miracle.

  Could he believe in Akkama? “I will try,” he said. At the same time, Zayana said, “I believe in her, Fiora.”

  Fiora accepted this and returned to her food.

  The vesta, whom Derxis had thought asleep, raised its head and looked upon Derxis. Derxis got the sense, perhaps given by the vesta, that it wanted him to read its thoughts. Apprehensive, he did so. He saw exactly what it wanted him to see, like a prepared screensaver on a computer screen. Concern. For Anthea. A question.

  Derxis sighed. No hiding it from the vesta. He focused, and with a pulse of his arda he sent a single paired idea: she lives / she has lost her song.

  The bugling of the vesta startled all of them. The sound started low, reverberating through the metal alloy tiles beneath their feet. It rose up into a long, keening wail of mourning. Somewhere else, deep in the bowels of the dead machine, an eerie siren echoed in reply.