I glanced away at the last of the signers putting their seal on the official record, to applause that sounded as artificial as static. It was done, something in my head insisted. It was done, and there was nothing he could do to change that, nothing more he could do to hurt anyone I cared about, not even me.… I searched the crowd, trying to catch Perrymeade’s eye, or Ronin’s. I saw Naoh staring back at me, at Borosage beside me, as if we were magnetic north.
“I’m still in charge here,” Borosage muttered. “And while I am, no freak will ever feel safe on this side of the river. And that includes you, boy. Especially you—” He raised his hand.
I backed up a step, my fists clenching, and hated myself for it.
(Borosage—)
It wasn’t until I saw the sudden rage fill his face that I realized I’d only heard someone calling his name in my mind.
He turned around. Naoh was standing right there beside us, her eyes slit-pupiled. “I told you, never do that to me, you Hydran slut—”
Her face didn’t change. “So you are still in charge, then? Everything else is a lie…” she said, out loud this time. “That is the Human Way—destroy your enemies before they can destroy you.”
He smirked. “You know it, sweet thing. You know me … real well.” He reached out, touched her cheek with a thick finger. I saw her barely stop herself from cringing away. “So now I’m safe, and you’re forgiven. It’ll go back to being the way it was, business as usual, between you and me, and your people.…”
A tremor cracked her control.
“Naoh…” I whispered. “Don’t.” I thought that she’d ignored me, except that suddenly I couldn’t move.
“No,” she said, her gaze still on Borosage. “I will never be forgiven. And you are not safe—” I felt the power shift focus inside her, felt it building as the pressure turned to pain inside my head … saw terror fill Borosage’s face as she invaded his mind and took him over. A high, thin whine started in his throat; he began to drool.
(Miya—) I called, with blind desperation. (Miya!)
Naoh glanced at me distractedly, as if she’d heard me, and an odd smile played over her lips before she looked back at Borosage. (Are you ready to die, monster?) she said, inside his mind and somehow inside mine. (Feel your brain … feel each cell in it begin to—)
“Naoh!” Suddenly Miya was there between us and inside our heads. Her hands closed on Naoh’s shoulder like she was trying to physically drag Naoh out of her homicidal rage.
Naoh’s fist shot out, caught Miya square in the face, dropping her like a stone with the unexpectedness of the attack. Naoh looked back at Borosage, whose face had turned a mottled purple. He was making a sound now like somebody being gutted.
I stood there, helpless to do anything but watch, the pain abcessing in my head. Miya struggled to her feet, blood running down her chin. She looked away toward the place where the crowd was still going through the motions of the Human ritual. Abruptly the empty doorway held a figure—Hanjen’s.
(Help us—!) I couldn’t tell if he even heard me. I saw his eyes widen, but before he could move Sand was standing beside him. Sand laid a heavy hand on his shoulder, murmuring something in his ear. I saw Hanjen’s face slowly crushed by emotions I couldn’t feel as he stood watching us, but doing nothing at all to stop what was happening.
Miya screamed with anguish and frustration, but only inside my head. She stood paralyzed by Naoh like I was now, helplessly watching her sister turn Borosage’s brains to jelly in front of our eyes. I saw blood and something worse start to leak out of his nose. His eyes rolled up in his head; his body spasmed in the air like an epileptic puppet, when it should have been writhing on the floor.
Naoh’s eyes flooded with tears; her face contorted as she embraced the agony I felt echoing through my soul.… Borosage screamed, and it was a death cry ripped from a living corpse. Naoh screamed with him as his death fed back through the circuit of insane rage that joined them like lovers. I felt my own heart stumble, suddenly realizing Miya and I were trapped with them inside the circuit—
My vision strobed, black/white … and then suddenly the horror in front of us was happening to someone else. Borosage pitched forward on his face, no longer a prisoner of Naoh’s vengeance. When he finally hit the floor he was only a sack of meat, lying facedown in a spreading pool of blood and body fluids.
Naoh collapsed on top of him, her eyes wide and staring. Her pupils were pits of blackness; blood ran from her nose.
I swayed, barely staying on my feet as I suddenly got back full control of my body. Miya staggered forward. She collapsed in my arms, sobbing. The sound was hard and pitiless, and at the molten core of her mind the same white-hot sun of fury that had destroyed her sister was still burning.
“I love you,” I mumbled, holding her close, trying desperately to reach her. (I love you, Miya! Please, please, don’t leave me …)
She raised her head, her green eyes like an emerald desert, even though her voice still sobbed out grief. She took my face in her hands. And then her mind filled me with tenderness/yearning/love as pure and limitless as if the two of us existed only in our souls, looking down like the an lirr, untouched by anything earthbound, even the blood pooling around our feet.
(I can hear you. I can …) I thought, with incredulous joy. I realized then that in the split second before Naoh had died with Borosage, Miya had broken free, protecting us from the feedback of their deaths.
But she buried her face in my tunic, as if she could never shut it all out: the room, the horror, the truth.
A mob of guards and gaping strangers were already gathering around us. We held each other up, held each other together, held on to each other like drowners in a nightmare sea … like refugees.
“What the hell happened here?” Sand was standing in front of us now; his indignation was almost believable. Behind him a dozen Corpses were pointing their guns at us.
“Like you don’t know,” I said thickly. “Like you didn’t let it happen.” Sand glared a warning at me. “They’re dead. She killed him … and it killed her.”
“‘It’?” Sand snapped. “‘It’ what?”
“The feedback,” Miya muttered. “It’s what happens when a psion kills.…”
“It’s what happened to me,” I said.
He went on looking at me; only the muscles in his jaw told me that he’d kept himself from saying something. He lifted his hand, brought it down; the guns disappeared, the ring of guards backed off, taking the crowd with them.
Sand stayed where he was, looking at us, looking down at the bodies of Naoh and Borosage. “I see,” he murmured, at last. “There is a certain dreadful symmetry to this, I suppose.…” His mouth curved up in a cryptic smile like the one he’d shared with Lady Gyotis.
Miya lifted her head, glaring at him, like what lay behind the smile was perfectly clear to her.
As he met her eyes Sand’s body tautened the way hers had, and I saw a totally unexpected emotion fill his face. It was one I actually recognized … fear. “No further questions,” he murmured, and turned away. “Natasa!” he shouted.
Natasa pushed through the wall of stunned faces, carrying Joby. “Yes, sir?” He looked as grim and tense as we all probably did. He stopped short, like he was protecting Joby from what he saw, even though I could tell from Joby’s face that he’d slipped into a fugue state when Miya lost control to Naoh. Perrymeade stood behind them like a worried shadow.
Natasa’s face was expressionless as he moved forward far enough to glimpse the bodies, like so many conflicting emotions were filling him at once that they canceled each other out. I wondered where Hanjen had gone, whether he was breaking the news to the Hydran Council members or whether he couldn’t bear the sight of this.
“Some bad news, and some good news,” Sand said. “It appears District Administrator Borosage was the victim of a murder-suicide committed by the former leader of HARM. So it seems that you will become Riverton’s new District Administrator
, after all. Odd, isn’t it, how justice is sometimes served by the strangest means.” He glanced at the bodies, back at Natasa and Perrymeade. “Since you and Agent Perrymeade will be working together closely in the future, I suggest that you begin now, by dealing with these bodies. I will expect your report.”
Natasa stood where he was, looking as vacant-eyed as his son. Perrymeade laid a hand on his shoulder; Natasa started. “Yes, sir,” he murmured.
Miya freed herself from my arms. “I’ll take Joby,” she said softly, her voice almost steady. She was using Joby’s need to pull herself together one more time, focusing on the one fixed thing left in all our lives. Joby blinked and shook his head as she gave him back control of his senses.
Natasa passed Joby to her, self-consciously but gratefully, under the gaze of every Human and Hydran who’d just seen their worst fears for the future acted out in their midst.
Joby wrapped his arms around her neck and kissed her cheek, beaming, oblivious. I wondered where in the nine billion names of God she found the strength, the control, to let him see and hear the world around him right now without seeing it through her mind’s eye—a world bloodred with pain and ash black with loss. Maybe she found it in his smile.
The near silence of the crowd broke like a wave into murmuring voices, stunned, querulous, wondering.
Natasa smiled at her, at Joby, as if they were proof enough that what had been the past between their people didn’t have to be the future—a smile not meant for the crowd, but one they couldn’t help seeing anyway—one that said with every choice you made you lost something, but maybe you gained something too. He moved forward, with Perrymeade at his side, to face what had to be done.
The two bodies lay still in a blur of red, silent witness to the end product of all prejudice and hatred. I started as I saw Hanjen suddenly kneeling beside Naoh, gazing at her empty face and staring eyes. His body shook with soundless grief. He held her limp, lifeless hand like somehow she could still feel his presence, his anguish, a parent’s love that no amount of bitterness or disillusionment or even death itself could destroy.
Miya came back to my side, and I heard her soft cry as she saw/felt Hanjen. Tears spilled down her cheeks at last.
Joby put his hands on her face. “Sad, Mommy—?” he whispered. His own eyes suddenly shone with tears. She nodded, biting her lip.
I touched Joby’s shoulder, touched Miya’s thoughts, proving to them that they weren’t alone; proving the same thing to myself.
At Natasa’s order half a dozen guards came back to carry the bodies away. But Hanjen waved them off as they would have touched Naoh. He picked her up in his arms, cradling her as effortlessly as a child, then turned to leave. Guards cleared a path for him and for Natasa and Perrymeade as they followed him out. More guards dragged away Borosage’s dead weight. Servo drones moved in behind them to clean up the blood.
The crowd watched them go out of the room, and then they began to close in on us like a murmuring sea, their words as unintelligible as the tangled wilderness of their thoughts.
Miya made a choked noise; I felt the grief that had frozen her to the spot beside me breaking down into panic. She looked toward the doorway that the others had disappeared through. I realized we’d both gone on mindlessly standing there, instead of following the others while we could.
“What the hell is going on? What the hell happened—?” Someone’s hand fell on my shoulder. Ronin.
I turned to look at him, wondering how long he’d been there trying to get our attention. I shook my head, beyond words, while inside me I felt Miya’s desperation begin to take on physical form—the tug, the pull, the beginning of a change that meant teleportation.
(Yes,) I thought, glancing at her. (Go. Go after them.) “We have to go…” I murmured, trying to keep my attention on Ronin.
“Not yet,” Ronin said. His hand gripped my arm. “Not until you tell me what this means.”
(Go,) I thought to Miya again. (Go on. I’ll handle this.) She disappeared from beside me, taking Joby with her, leaving her gratitude behind in my thoughts.
Ronin and Sand both started as she disappeared, their reflexes getting the better of them—like they were both still afraid, deep down, of being sucked out of existence themselves. The voices around us crested in surprise.
Ronin took a deep breath. He looked at Sand as though he thought Draco’s Chief of Security ought to be doing something more about what had just happened here than standing with his hands behind his back.
“It’s being taken care of,” Sand said, answering Ronin’s unspoken question. “I can be of more use remaining here.” I wasn’t sure what he meant by that—protecting us, or protecting Draco’s interests.
Ronin looked back at me, like he knew Sand wasn’t going to give him an answer that meant anything. “What the hell happened?” he asked again, gesturing at the stains disappearing before our eyes as the cleanup crew of gleaming drones erased the last traces of blood.
“Nothing,” I muttered. I glanced at Sand. “Nothing happened that wasn’t supposed to.”
“Dammit!” Ronin said. “That woman Naoh killed Borosage—or did he kill her?”
“It was a murder-suicide,” Sand said tonelessly. “She killed him; she died. That’s how it happens with the Hydrans. Obviously, she knew the consequences of her act.”
“But, why?” Ronin shook his head. “For God’s sake, we just signed a new treaty. The rights her people were fighting for are finally being given back to them. The members of HARM have been given amnesty.”
“It wasn’t enough,” I said. “For her.”
His expression then said he didn’t know whether to pity her because she was crazy or resent her ingratitude. Finally the look on his face was just incomprehension of the alien.
“It’s not so hard to understand,” I said. “There were twelve treaties before this one … they were all just words.”
“Words can be deeds.”
“Words can be lies, too. You had to make compromises, didn’t you?”
“Of course—”
“One was that Borosage stayed on as District Administrator?”
Ronin nodded. “The Draco Board insisted.…”
I shot a look at Sand. “I’ll bet they did.” I looked back at Ronin. “Borosage would have made sure nothing really changed in spite of the treaty. Like I said, that wasn’t enough for Naoh.”
“He was only a District Administrator—” Ronin protested.
“But he knew where all the bodies were buried,” I said. “I guess now he’ll be buried there too.”
“Still … why would she do something like this, when she knew it would kill her?” Ronin waved his hand.
“Because…” I glanced at the crowd of vips beginning to drift apart, slowly heading back through the wide arch into the larger hall where the treaty table still shone like an altar. “Because she couldn’t see any other Way.”
His face said he still didn’t understand. But then, I hadn’t expected him to.
“It was unfortunate that this—incident had to happen in the midst of the treaty signing, of all places. But there was no real harm done,” Sand said, “to anyone who didn’t deserve it. We’ll assign Natasa to Borosage’s post, as you originally wanted us to. The Hydrans hated Borosage; they can only be relieved by that change.” He smiled faintly. “I expect we all can.”
He looked away across the room, like he was trying to find even one person who’d be sorry Borosage was gone. “And now we’re all free of an unstable Hydran troublemaker as well. As far as the purposes of this gathering, nothing really happened—just as Cat said.” He looked down. The rug was spotless.
Ronin controlled a grimace. I watched him reabsorb his disgust until no more emotion was left on his face than on Sand’s. The scars from his accident at the interface barely showed now, but I knew they must still be on his mind. He did this sort of thing for a living; I wondered how he stood it. “I see,” he said, and he didn’t say anything mor
e.
“Well, then,” Sand murmured. “If everything has been explained to your satisfaction, why don’t we join the rest of the representatives in the banquet room and celebrate the good that has been accomplished here?” He gestured toward the doorway the rest of the crowd had disappeared through.
“Wait,” I said. “What about my databand?” I held up my wrist. A strip of healing skin showed where the bond tag had been fused to my flesh. There was still no databand to cover it up. Ronin’s was safely back on his wrist, but nobody had said anything about mine.
Ronin looked at my wrist. He glanced at Sand.
“It will be waiting for you on the ship that takes you off-world,” Sand said.
“What—?”
“Tau has revoked your passport,” Ronin said, not looking at me. “You’re being deported.”
I shook my head. “What are you talking about?” Suddenly I remembered what Borosage had said just before Naoh had attacked him. “That was Borosage’s idea. He’s dead. I—”
“It wasn’t just Borosage’s idea,” Ronin said, making eye contact finally. “Cat”—his empty hands gestured at the air—”you almost single-handedly set in motion the events that led to this treaty agreement. That’s an incredible accomplishment. But if you think that makes you a hero to the people of Refuge, think again.”
“Do you mean the people? Or the Humans?” I said sourly. “Or just the Tau Board and Draco? Who do you think they really hate more, you or me?”
He frowned, his mouth thinning. “No doubt they hate me, because I represent the power to actually make change happen. But that power also protects me. I can’t guarantee you the same kind of safety.”