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CHAPTER 41

TRANSFIGURATION


My first, new breath brought pain, sharp and cold. I was naked, shivering on a cold metal floor. My eyes focused only slowly. Chest heaving, I rolled onto my back, stared up at the black roof with its pale, round lights. There was something familiar in those lights, in that black metal, the brass plating on the fittings, on the control plate by the doors—and on the door itself.

I was on a ship. That black and brass . . . I would have known it anywhere, the telltale style of a Sollan Imperial warship. The dream was ended. The dark city of Llesu with its dying sun was gone. I was alone, without even the white noise of the drives for company.

All was silent as a tomb.

Struggling to rise, I rolled back onto my side, felt every limb ache with cold. The memory of Ragama, of the touch of the Judicator’s sword, flashed like lightning across my mind, and I raised my hands to my face.

Do what must be.

My hands.

Were they really my own? I held them out to look at them, though they trembled like leaves in the wind. They were pristine, without mark or blemish, smooth as hands of marble. The loop of cryoburn scar about the left thumb had vanished, and the marks of Irshan’s sword were gone, nor any sign was there of the surgery Elkan had performed on Nessus, when he restored the fingers Dorayaica had consumed.

They were not my hands, but the hands of one who had known no violence. Or whom no violence had touched. Still, I clenched them to stop them shaking, felt the bones ache. A shock went through me, and I gripped the left with the right.

Metacarpals. Phalanges.

They were true bones, not the hollow lattice Kharn Sagara had given me. Still in shock, I touched my face, feeling for the mark of Syriani’s talons on my cheek.

They were not there.

I sat up sharply.

Black hair fell across my face, fell almost past my shoulders, longer than it had been in centuries, long almost as it had been in the pits of Dharan-Tun.

There was not a thread of silver in it.

“How?”

Scrabbling by then, I felt my chest, my stomach, reached round to pad at my back. The thick scars of the lash were gone, and the wide, flat scars where the Cielcin had peeled the skin from my thighs. The wounds of battle and torment alike were gone, and the skin that had begun to spot and leather with age was taut again and clean. I willed those hands to stop their shaking, clenched them into fists, screwed shut my eyes. I found it was possible to ignore the cold, that with a force of will, I might drive away the feeling.

I stood, wavering on bare feet. I was standing in the vestibule of an airlock, the inner door at my back, the hatch that led deeper into the ship just ahead of me. The walls to either side were lined with the lockers that ought to have held environment suits, but they stood empty, their doors nigh all retracted, revealing the bare compartments within. The vague notion that I should clothe my nakedness chewed at the back of my mind, but I found that I could banish the concern as readily as I had banished the sensation of bitter cold.

I stood there a long moment, head cocked, listening.

Some idle motion of my body must have tripped the door sensor, for the hatch that opened on the hall slid aside. The need for clothing asserted itself once more, and I turned to examine the open lockers. There might be something in one of the lower compartments I could use, or beneath the bench in the center where the shipmen might sit to pull on their suits or lace up their boots.

I crouched before one of the lockers against what I guessed was the forward bulkhead, found the emergency kit. The expiration date on the beta applicators within read ISD 17479. To my knowledge, the year was seventeen four thirty-eight, but these medical kits were built for long-term storage.

It seemed likely then that Ragama had returned me to the proper time. For all I knew, it was the same day—the very hour—that I had expired upon the bathroom floor. The memory of that death was like black fluid in my lungs, and I coughed, choked back my bile.

A moment later, the horror faded like the cold.

Fear is a poison. The mantra rang.

Both of those hands tightened on the frame of the emergency kit, knuckles argent. “Thank you,” I whispered, a pitiful sort of prayer. “Thank you.”

Do what must be.

The Quiet’s unheard voice seemed to resonate in my chest, in my very heart. A memory? An echo? Or was he there with me, in that moment? In that place?

I found what I sought in the bottom of the kit.

The foil blanket was light as tissue, fluttered and clung to itself as I shook it out. Its surface reflected light, but it was no mirror, and the image that shone in its surface as I held it up like a washerwoman at her line was muddy and blurred. Still I recognized the knife-edged face, that sharpness of nose and cheekbone, those twin amethysts that were my eyes.

With unsteady hands I draped the garment about my shoulders, fashioning a cloak for my nakedness. I felt better almost at once, and so clothed staggered for the open door.

The ship felt as much a dream to me as the Well and the unreal city after it. Those hands that clutched the blanket to me were not my hands, those bare feet—shorn of the thick and horny calluses I had known since childhood—were not my feet. My knee no longer pained me on every odd step, my shoulder no longer ached or clicked with use.

Surely there must be someone on this ship, I thought. They will see me on the cameras. Send a security detail. At the very least I will encounter someone. One of the crew. Or I might be alone on the vessel. The ship could be impounded, or derelict. It was surely not under thrust.

The black lens of one camera peered at me, but it was the eye of a machine, as glassy living as dead. I held its gaze a long moment, but it won the contest between us. I was the one that blinked, and blinking moved on.

They were all the same, these Imperial ships. Whatever their size, the holds would be on the lower decks, probably to aft. Unless this were a carrier. Carriers were all hold on the lower levels. The cubicula would be higher, as on the Tamerlane, the bridge forward.

I stopped suddenly, realizing that there would have been a naval plaque in the airlock with the ship’s name and layout for use by teams boarding in the case of an emergency. There would be another before too long, surely, and I would be able to get my bearings. I had the sense that I knew this vessel, had been aboard her before, but my memories from . . . before were like shadows cast by guttering candles. By contrast my memories of Llesu, of Ragama and old Saltus, and of that airlock and this corridor, were bright as laser light.

It was as if those experiences alone had been real, as if all the remainder of my life, all my hundreds of years were but the memory of one horrible dream. Still, I could call that dream—those memories—to myself, hold them in my hands at will, as I have done in forging this account.

A door I’d hoped might be a second airlock proved to be a stair, and barefoot I shuffled across the threshold and began my careful descent, both hands gripping the crackling foil blanket for warmth and to gird my nakedness.

I met no one, and descended—as I had expected—into another corridor. The doors that led inward opened without protest, mechanisms chiming faintly to alert any passerby to their operation. Feeling no fear, though perhaps I should have, I passed through a short accessway and into the hold.

The piercing cold returned, deeper than that of the airlock, and frost crunched and melted beneath my feet.

The whole of that vast hold was filled with sleepers, with the cold, blue-glass cylinders of fugue crèches, slumbering bodies floating in suspension within, electrodes taped to head and chest, a drip line in the crook of every elbow.

It was a cubicula, and its place here, in the bowels of the ship and not above, meant that these bodies were cargo, not crew. I was on a carrier then, and wondered. I had but rarely sailed upon a carrier. Where then was I? And why had Ragama sent me here?

Where was Cassandra?

Curiosity banishing even the bitter cold, I padded toward the nearest crèche, at the corner of an avenue that stretched to left and right, running the length of the great ship. Sleepers lined that avenue, dozens of them, each in stacks half a dozen high, and still more avenues ran further ahead. There must have been thousands of them, men and women both awaiting the command that would stir them to new life from their beds like graves.

A woman floated in the crèche nearest me, her face serene. I smeared the rime from the glass to peer at her. Her head was bald, and the code tag of her Legion shone tattooed black upon the side of her neck. Not for the first time I was struck by the wrongness of that place and the process, human bodies in cold storage like sides of beef, without concern for modesty or human dignity.

My own face peered back at me from the dark glass. The curve of that glass stretched my visage, and the condensation and fast-reforming frost obscured it further. Still I saw the smooth cheeks, the long and tangled hair—did not see the scars Dorayaica had put there, nor any mark of Ever-Fleeting Time. I longed to see myself more clearly then, but knew I must seek elsewhere.

Some alarm chimed in the middle distance, and I returned to myself. Turning from the woman’s undead face—and from my own newly made one—I moved to check the side of the fugue crèche. The pods were all designed to be removed from their moorings and carted individually to and from medica on portable power supplies, even removed from the ships. I found the rim of the crèche unit, saw the embossed plaque on the right side, just above the dormant screen of the medical monitor. Gold letters on black. I used my thumb to chip away at what I guessed was decades of frost.

I laughed when I saw the plaque plain and clear.


PROPERTY OF THE IMPERIAL SERVICE VESSEL

GADELICA | MTC-10459

RED STAR FOUNDRIES, HERMONASSA

ISD 16009.04.26


I was truly home.

The map of my surroundings filled my mind a moment later. Had I not walked these halls a hundred times in the years between Sabratha and Forum? The great hold in which I found myself ran nearly the whole length of the ship, a stretch of perhaps two miles. I knew how to reach the bridge, but sensed that to try for it would be fruitless. The Gadelica had been at dock in orbit about one of Forum’s sixty moons, mothballed for the duration of my stay on the capital. If she was there still, she was not likely to be fueled, and even if it was, I could hardly commandeer her alone, defy the safeguards that were doubtless in place, unmoor her, and fly her through Martian security.

And again . . . where was Cassandra? She had been on the surface, and Neema and Edouard with her. Edouard . . . belatedly I remembered that Edouard was to be transferred, that Aurelian intended to spirit him away to maintain the security of Operation Gnomon from the Chantry.

How long had I been dead? I could not have remained in Llesu for more than a day, and yet my experience of time in that other time and the time here in my own proper place were not necessarily correlated. For all I knew, years might have passed, or only seconds. When I had died fighting Aranata Otiolo, mere minutes had passed, though it seemed I had dwelt in the Howling Dark for long eons.

Clutching the foil blanket tighter, I shuffled on numb feet over the icy floor, willing them not to feel the bitter chill. At the intersection of each aisle I halted, craned my neck and looked round for one of the diode displays that would mark the time and my position in the vast and echoing hold.

“You there!” A man’s voice cracked like a whip from some place over my shoulder. “Halt!”

I did not see the man when I turned to look, nor did I hesitate. If he was one of Captain Ghoshal’s men, I reasoned, all would be well, even if he had to stun me first. If he were a Martian—in league with Aurelian or with the Chantry, it did not matter—it would be better to run.

I ran, left hand clutching the blanket like a brooch.

“I said halt!”

No shot followed me, but I pelted down the aisle toward what I was sure was the vessel’s aft. Edouard had warned me that the presence of Ramanthanu and its kin aboard the Gadelica had been discovered and brought to the Chantry’s attention. That meant the ship had been boarded and thoroughly searched by agents loyal to the priests. For all I knew, the man following me could be a Chantry Sentinel, an agent of Samek’s and the Choir.

Why had the Quiet and Ragama conspired to return me to this place?

I reached the door to the next bay of the great hold well ahead of my pursuer. Ye gods! I felt strong! The door slid open without objection—I could hear the crunch of booted feet on the frosty steel behind. The man was shouting for backup. I heard him slip and fall, but he neither stopped nor turned back. I was near to the rear compartment. Had I heard my pursuer say something about the ramp?

The next door opened without protest, and at once warmer air collided with me. My bare feet slid on the clear metal of the floor. Stacked crates rose in mounds to either side, pallets secured by woven nanocarbon belts, black faces stenciled with the name GADELICA and the hull number MTC-10459.

They were munitions crates, and had I time I might have opened one and armed myself. As it was, I sped past them, and past the stowed floaters and crabbed cargo lifters with their jointed metal arms.

I skidded to a halt.

The great ramp stood open, its airlock doors rolled back, and beyond—the light of day was shining. Not the pale gold of Forum, but a pale, stark white—as I had known on many other worlds in my long life.

If not Forum, where then were we?

A pair of men in the simple black jumpsuits of Imperial Navy shipmen emerged from behind the crates ahead and to my left. Neither one seemed to know what to do with the sight of a tangle-haired, wild-eyed naked man running their way, foil blanket flapping from his shoulders like iron wings. They stood there, mouths agape, neither moving, though the hand of one had reflexively moved toward his stunner.

It was that man I checked with my shoulder as I passed, colliding with one of the munitions crates on my way toward the ramp. Wherever we were in port, I would do better in the streets. I had lived quite successfully in Borosevo for many years. If I had to do so again, I would.

“Hold, sir!”

The sir did not register. My feet had reached the corrugated steel of the ramp, and I was out beneath pale sunlight, and cast my vision to the sky . . . and froze.

There was no sky.

Instead, the inverse towers of a gray and well-ordered city loomed like stalactites from the roof of the world above, and looking to the horizon, I saw it rise to meet that floating city. Moments later, I understood.

We were within the circle of a mighty ship, a great, slender drum whose spin effected the illusion of gravity. A mighty cylinder. The pale light-like-day that shone all about me fell from a fluorescent shaft that ran along the center of that drum, held up by spoke-like towers of glass and gray steel.

Looking up, I spied the antlike forms of men and women moving along streets in the heavens above, and here and there the green of trees and of canals choked with algae.

Shocked, I came to a halt, lost my grip on the thermal blanket. It flew away on a gentle wind, fluttered like abandoned newsprint across the fused plascrete of the yard.

It was an Extrasolarian ship. A Sojourner. Of that I was certain, though I had voyaged on such a vessel but once before. This ship was much smaller than the Enigma of Hours had been, and the ship that had carried us to Vorgossos had not possessed that central axis of false sun, being lit instead by great lamps atop the buildings on all sides of the interior drum. That beam of fluorescent light could not have been more than a mile above our heads, and the far side no more than two. Almost I feared to look into that castellated sky, as if mere looking might cause me to fall up into it and so tumble to my death.

Still, the ground beneath my feet felt solid as the rock of Delos. I did not fall into that tubular city, but sank to my knees.

“Abba?”

I froze, long hair blowing all about me.

There were footsteps on the earth behind. A small shadow in that light forever noon.

“Abba?”

I twisted where I knelt, peered up into that face I most desired to see.

She was standing there, as real as anything, her crimson mandyas fluttering like one lonely wing. She looked somehow older, her face hollow with a grief that shock had but recently displaced. Her emerald eyes were shimmering with tears.

“Es ti?” she asked, words hardly more than whispers. Is it you?

I smiled, and the smile turned to quiet laughter—a barking rasp. “Yes, Anaryan,” I said.

She had recoiled at the sight of my face.

“It’s me.”


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Framed