Sun-Daughters, Sea-Daughters Read online

  Atuale’s claws press into her own thighs. She needs him. Saareval needs him. She can’t hurt him, so she hurts herself. Through those ten tiny points of pressure, the viciousness drains out of her words, leaves them empty. “The Mzo Ma are free of the Greatclan Lord’s holdings. I’m glad for you. For them. But the Greatclan and the Prequ are still shedding blood over that broken promise.” So many promises were broken when Atuale went to the land. She hates herself for even being angry. Hadn’t she and Yanja so often spoken, hadn’t they wept, over the abasement of the lowclans? She would have helped them if she could. She would have sworn herself to Yanja’s plan.

  If she had known it. If she hadn’t been just a Greatclan princess to be used up and cast aside by a Witch on his way to his own better world.

  She makes herself take a long, deep breath. She makes herself think of Saareval, and of calm. The two walk ever hand in hand, for her. “Your people have their independence. The Greatclan is no longer great. Do you still need my thanks, with all that accounted between us?”

  “It’s a start.” Yanja smiles. “So what is it that brings you back to me, after all this time? And all that dreadful bloodshed?” He flings one arm up over his eyes, and peers at her from beneath the bend of his elbow. “Your father still lives, by the way. Is that a relief or a burden?”

  “I know.” The seas give off rumor and gossip like they give off mist. The Lord of the Greatclan still rules, the last she has heard. Though of course his holdings in the northern and western clans have been greatly reduced since Atuale’s time. And his dignity, as well. Atuale’s lips thin in something between a smile and a frown. She turns away from Yanja’s smug invitation to anger, picking her way over the soft mossy floor. “We aren’t completely cut off from clan news up there. The lowclans still take our trade, and the western ones sometimes too.”

  “We! Our! So you really have gone native.” Yanja rolls over onto his belly for a closer look at her. “How are the mods working out for you? It looks itchy, having your old fur poking out all hither and thither and yon. It’s not itchy, is it?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “I certainly hope your mods aren’t starting to break down after all this time. Not least because the gene-eaters are long since out of warranty, and I don’t imagine you could afford a new installation.” His enduring smile sharpens. “You couldn’t even afford it the first time around.”

  Atuale stops beside a driftwood table. It takes her weight when she leans on it with both hands. “I thought you were helping me out of kindness. Out of friendship.” Yanja wasn’t her only pillow-friend, of course; all the mateless girls in their cohort took turns with one another, teaching each other how to enjoy their bodies in between the loveless ministrations from the young males of other clans. But it was special, the time she had with Yanja, their quiet hours together, when Atuale could escape her father’s shadow for a spell, could intoxicate herself on otherworld wines and Yanja’s body. Her dry tongue scrapes the roof of her mouth. She hates her old self, and loves her too, soft and far-dreaming thing that she was. “I thought—”

  “I’m sure you thought a lot of things.” She can’t see his face now, but she can still hear that smile. “Not new mods, then. What, then—has the shine started to wear off with what’s-his-scales? Do you need some attraction pheromones? Does he? Or maybe something for your darling in-laws to finally welcome you into the clan? A little oxytocin hybrid vapor, perhaps, to induce that desperately needed family bonding? Or—oh! A mouthwash to take the edge off that egg-eater breath?”

  “I came because of the plague,” Atuale snarls. The curl of her claws leaves shallow scores on the tabletop. “You know that.”

  Yanja clucks. “There’s knowing, and there’s knowing. He’s got it then too, your little lordling?”

  “We don’t have lords. It’s not like the clans up there.” Atuale bites her tongue against more. Yanja knows all this, too. “They need your help.”

  “Then they should ask me.” On that, Yanja’s voice flattens. Atuale turns and finds him sitting up now, elbows on knees. His silver-dark eyes are on her. He’s from the lowclans, who have always been the turret fodder for seaclan skirmishes against the Vo rather than the instigators, but there’s no reason to expect Yanja wastes much love on the Vo. Isolated up on their mountain by will as much as by geography, the Vo do not constrain themselves with obligation. Loyalty and duty bind together family and community, never outsiders. We make our own way, the Vo tell themselves. Yanja’s services are dear and the Vo seek out the Witch only when they muster enough money to buy a single shipment of precious off-world steelica or seeds.

  Atuale, however, will gladly tie whatever chains of debt she must around her neck. Yet another reason to suspect she is not truly Vo at her heart and never will be.

  Yanja smiles sharply, as if he can read her thoughts. “They should do a lot of things. Shouldn’t they? But you’re here.”

  She will not be made to feel a foolish child again. She squares her shoulders, raises her chin. “I need your help, Yanja. The Vo need a cure and you can bring it to them. Ask your price. And don’t tell me this time you’ll do it out of the kindness of your heart, because I know that you haven’t got any.”

  “No kindness? Or no heart?” Yanja drawls. “Now, Atuale. If you’re so desperate for help, why not go to the other side of the island and find Star-Hunter? Or the Greatleap Marcher? It’s not really me you need. Is it?”

  Because they cut corners and skirt the edges of interstellar law, but Yanja’s reputation is unscratched by unlicensed contraband and legal red tape. “I’m here,” she says simply.

  Yanja’s face relaxes. “All right. Lord or not, I know our dear Saareval is contract-maker for Keita Vo.”

  Atuale’s back-scales bristle at the words our dear Saareval on Yanja’s lips. “He’s on the committee.”

  “He runs the committee. Titles don’t make the man, my coral.” Yanja’s tongue flicks behind his teeth, caged behind a hungry grin. “I want an exclusive contract. I can get building materials from off-world cheaper than the Naraqui can offer, or the Haabian Vo either, even with the cost of fuel factored in. Or make me a middleman on the existing deals, I don’t really care which; I’ll see to it my cut comes out the same.”

  “You know I can’t promise anything in his name.”

  He stands and crosses the distance between them. “There’s knowing,” he says. He’s taller than her now, or was he always? Memory breaks and blurs. “And then there’s knowing.”

  She holds his gaze as long as she can, then jerks away. “Fine. If a little ill-earned coin is the best you can dream of? It’s yours.” She bites off a What else? No need to give Yanja an opening; he will take one or make one as he wishes.

  “Typically I require something a little more solid than dreams. Coin will do nicely, thank you.”

  “You could have asked me for coin the last time. Instead you took blood. Without asking.” Not Atuale’s blood, either. That, she might have known how to forgive.

  “There’s one more thing, too. A personal favor, let’s call it.” He reaches out to finger the knotted blanket over her hip. Her haunches tighten, but she keeps herself from stepping back. “Looks like you packed lightly for a long trip. Or is your luggage currently being battered into pieces on the rocks?”

  “What?” She shakes her head, but it does not clear. “I can’t go with you.” She already has one otherworld, that’s all she needs. And she has someone waiting who needs her too. But dizzying images of far-off suns dance across her vision, the spices and songs of otherworlds she has only dreamed of.

  “A seal-eyed, earnest, just-about-widow? You’ll knock at least twenty-five percent off the asking price of any antiphage. This isn’t a request, by the way; it’s a condition. My world’s not any worse without the Vo in it.”

  Saareval needs her. But a cure is what he needs most of all. She can bring that to him, and nearly convince herself it is only for him that she does it. Atuale left the sea to kiss
the mountains and the sky. Of course she wants to embrace the stars as well. Desire steals the air from her lungs, suffocating the only answer. She nods instead.

  He smiles and moves past her; his shoulder bumps her on the way by. “I need to get my ship ready. You’ve got two hours, give or take; make yourself at home and try not to break anything.”

  She slides into the chair beside the driftwood table and stares at her open palms.

  It was never really a decision at all.

  * * *

  Atuale can’t possibly remember the moment she was spawned, but she does anyway.

  Or perhaps she only feels like she remembers it, and isn’t that how brains work anyway, what you believe you remember is just as real as what you truly do?

  She drifts. Galaxies of bubbles swirl over her head, borne upward on warmer currents. Light splinters on dissolved particulates with the wisdom of a thousand ancient suns. Her mother’s nearness, pulsating close and warm. Dark nebulae of blood and birth-fluid embrace one another in knots and clots. Atuale was born here. She needs to go back.

  In dreams, she thinks she remembers her mother’s name, too, even her clan, but when she wakes these false memories dissolve. The only lingering reality is that moment of imprinting, the time and place where she was born, where she must give birth. And the knowledge that slices that truth to ribbons is this: she has never found her way back to that moment, and, it seems with each passing year, she never will.

  * * *

  Atuale’s world shudders and shifts. She startles awake, bolting upright, and finds herself slouched in the chair beside Yanja’s table. This time, it doesn’t take her as long to orient herself in this upside-down world with its ocean for sky.

  Opposite her, Yanja has his hip up against the table. Now he gives it another jolt for good measure. “Plenty of time to sleep between jumpweb gates,” he scolds. He’s put on clothes, from neck to toe, some kind of thick and form-fitting garment. In his hand he holds a folded-over lump of fabric, which he presses into her hands as she staggers up. “Here. Get dressed. You’re not exactly built for warmth anymore.”

  The cloth feels strange when she slides her hands over it, almost rubbery, not at all like the soft and lightweight fabrics she’s grown accustomed to wearing on land. It’s not the harsh light of the sun she’ll need protection from out there. She hurries to put it on, cramming one leg and then the other awkwardly into the tight-fitting tubes of the legs, her arms into the sleeves. Ridges and valleys of cloth stack up at her elbows and ankles; the suit is clearly meant for someone taller and broader in the shoulders. It’s functional, at least—she already feels overwarm in the humid pearlglass dome.

  “Come on, then.” Yanja jerks his head to the left. She scowls at his back as she follows him through the tunnel into the secondary dome. On the other side, she has to crawl through the open jaws of a rust-chewed waterlock to emerge into what must be Yanja’s hangar. She’s never been in here before, though she’s seen his ship arc through the air over Keita Vo now and again. Somehow it seems smaller up close, sleeping atop its platform. A knot of algae drifts through the water above the dome, playing shadows over the little vessel’s steelica hull. It doesn’t matter how big the ship is. It carries hope for Saareval, for all the Vo.

  Whether they want it or not. Atuale sets her jaw, and helps Yanja start carrying packages of food and supplies up through the open hatch into the ship’s belly.

  Once everything is stowed, Yanja works through a checklist of pre-takeoff tasks. Atuale tries to assist at first, but the consoles are beyond her understanding; the Vo have nothing like this technology and she’s out of practice. When she tries to take over reading the list, she struggles to sound out the syllables of cramped, intricate seaclan writing, to make sense of a language she has done her best to forget for twenty years. Finally Yanja dismisses her and takes over both the list and the work himself. “Count bolts or sing a working-song or whatever it is you do for fun up there,” he mutters.

  Atuale wanders deeper into the ship and finds a loose panel cover to pick at. Being useless hurts. That’s why she came to the World-Witch in the first place: because she could not bear to watch her husband die, sitting helplessly and unable to ease his pain as healthy scales peeled away and left oozing pink sores in their wake, as he grew too weak first to cook their evening-meals, then to eat them unaided. And his siblings, his whole damnable clan, sickening alongside him and unwilling to reach out for help. We make our own way: the closest thing they have to a religious belief. No gods to pray to, no friends to reach out to. Atuale doesn’t know what she believes anymore, but she knows that turning one’s back on hope for a cure, while loved ones and elders and children ail and ache and die? With or without gods to weigh in on the matter, that is too great a sin to let stand.

  By the time she’s tightened the panel up, her longest claw serving as screwdriver, Yanja calls her back up to the front. “Buckle in,” he says briskly. “There’s no sea too broad to swim, if you start your journey early enough.”

  Yanja’s chair and its harness show signs of long wear and tear: scratched metal, fraying straps, a small explosion of foam from an overworked seam. The twinned seat beside it shows no such overuse. The buckles gleam, the padding is firm when Atuale slides into it. She wonders how often the World-Witch has shown passengers behind the curtain of his work. Has any other flown alongside him to see how, exactly, he bargains for the trinkets and toys and, occasionally, miracles that he brings back from the otherworlds?

  “Where will we go?” she asks as he coaxes the ship to light-blinking, gentle-humming life around them. The front-facing window clears with the charge running through it, and sunlight trickles down onto her face. “And how long do you expect it will take?”

  “Two days, round trip. Takes a little while longer going than coming back, thanks to jumpweb orientation.” Yanja frowns at a panel, taps another. “Think your best-beloved can hold on that long?”

  She answers with half her mind, the remainder left accounting Saareval’s time. Two days is forever, but she hopes it will be short enough. “The Vo are stronger than you think.”

  “Egg-eaters,” says Yanja, though there’s no venom in the word. “Are you buckled in? I’m not stopping mid-flight to nursemaid you if you smash your head open on the glass.”

  She pulls a face, but Yanja isn’t looking at her. She gives the restraints a grudging tug. They hold firm. “I’m ready when you are.”

  Yanja presses a button. A deep groan from the dome outside nets Atuale’s attention; the metal lock clangs as it clamps shut. Then a cascade thunders down onto the window, and she has to smother a cry: the dome has parted overhead and given way to foaming seawater. Atuale sits up straighter against the seat and does not check Yanja’s expression for a reaction. He says only, “It would have been less impressive at low tide.”

  The engines fire, blasting steam skyward, and the ship breaks free of the water. Atuale cranes forward to watch the surface of the water skim by beneath them. Here and there she thinks she can just make out the dim structures of clanholds before Yanja tugs on the pilot’s yoke and turns the nose skyward.

  “Fifteen minutes till we break atmosphere.” There’s something harder underlining his usual drawling disinterest. Perhaps he’s darkly amused that she still carries some awe for the magnificent, ancient clanholds where she grew up. Atuale is what she is, but she also was what she was.

  A tinny voice jolts out of the frequency crystal in the ship’s console. “Unknown vessel, this is the Greatclan Watch. You will return to sea level immediately. All off-world travel is interdicted by order of the Greatclan Lord.”

  “And since when must we all dance to his tune?” mutters Yanja, before he tunes the frequency crystal for input. “Greatclan Watch, this is the Unfortunate Wanderer, as you know very well.” His voice is somehow both loud and languid, a contrived tone that Atuale remembers well from their days in her father’s halls. “I have license from six different clans to
come and go at my leisure. So, kindly eat my wake.”

  “Return to sea level immediately or we will fire on you.”

  Atuale’s lungs crush under the double weight of acceleration and alarm. “Yanja,” she says, and her sharp teeth slice into her lower lip. The vulnerability of this tiny vessel, and with it her mission, is suddenly overwhelming. She wishes she had the sample case to hold close to her heart, but it is safely stowed in Yanja’s radiation-proofed hold. A single kinetic pulse from the Khelesh station turret and this ship will drop out of the sky, never to lift again. Saareval will perish, perhaps his entire people too.

  Yanja’s eyes flick over her like the tongue of a rock lizard, testing and tasting. “Greatclan Watch,” hshe e says, “I have the Greatclan Lord’s own daughter with me. If you bring the Unfortunate Wanderer down, she’ll die with me.”

  An airless moment. The frequency crystal flashes. The Watch warrior says, “The Greatclan Lord has no more daughters.”

  Yanja curses and fumbles with the pilot’s yoke. The cold of the warrior’s words are slow to penetrate Atuale’s heart. Before she can either freeze or push them aside for the space she needs to thaw, the ship drops out from beneath her.

  Below, the ocean pitches wide as they free-fall—in sudden silence. The roar of the engines no longer fills the background of her attention. She would have rather crashed onto land. Returning her body to the ocean is a surrender she would never have chosen. But there is so little land on this world, and so very much sea—

  A vicious vibration shudders the tailspinning ship. “Ha!” Yanja crows, and slams his palm on a console. The engines scream as he yanks back on the yoke. Atuale expects the ship to wrench apart under the opposing forces of thrust and gravity—or if not the ship, then her own straining rib cage. But instead the Wanderer’s course levels off and it cants skyward once more. Atuale’s nails rake her thighs through the thick fabric of her suit as she waits for death or answers, whichever comes first.