Erron was delayed in getting back to Arionidis’ city center, so he and Tyritha didn’t have time to discuss his meeting with Petr Onager before they had to meet Krishna for dinner. The weight of the news was crushing, at least as Erron saw it. The cost was overwhelming. The logistics of getting Tyritha back to her people would be near impossible, not just on their end getting her out, but somehow, even if they managed to smuggle her aboard a contact vessel and conceal her body throughout the year-long transit, their co-conspirators would need to find a way to get Tyritha off the ship and back to her people on Heinan. All of this without being discovered. Onager’s price was non-negotiable, outrageous, and came with no guarantees. The likelihood of failure approached certainty, and the result of that failure would leave Erron exposed as a criminal by his society’s standards. And what life would follow for Tyritha in Alysida after that if they were caught?
Erron struggled to act normally as he and Tyritha greeted each other outside the Arnur Villa in the heart of the capitol. Krishna was his usual exuberant self. Erron did his best to remind himself to act normally, to smile and laugh. He was there with his future bride to celebrate.
What to celebrate? he asked himself.
Celebrate the day, he answered. Each day was a gift, and there was much to be grateful for and enjoy, regardless of the weight Erron was carrying. That single thought shifted his focus, and suddenly, he could hardly take his eyes off Tyritha. Instead of thinking about their troubles and the impossible task before him, he couldn’t stop wondering what was different. Was anything different? She had always been beautiful to his eyes. Was it the light? Her dress? The way Naomi had done her hair? It might have been the sense of wonder in her eyes. She was clearly taken with her new surroundings at the family’s villa in the capitol.
As they progressed from the courtyard outside the house into the receiving room, where they were greeted by the house’s servants, Erron could see the wonder in Tyritha’s eyes. She had told him she was from a humble place. He’d known the Arnur Villa from a young age, so nothing about the villa surprised Erron. But for Tyritha, the marble, the wood, the artistry of the architecture and décor was a notable step up even from the Archon’s palace in the Arnur cylinder. This family home in the capitol was clearly designed to showcase the family’s standing alongside the other major houses of Alysida. Tyritha didn’t have anything to compare it to, but she couldn’t imagine an entryway and greeting area being any more magnificent.
Tyritha became suddenly aware that her reaction to the reception area had drawn the attention of everyone else in the room, not just Erron and Krishna but also Krishna’s wife Liandra, whom she’d only just properly met in the family’s private tram car to Arionidis. And there were two servants as well who found her sense of wonder equal parts amusing and endearing. Tyritha joked that it was becoming her signature quality—that wide-eyed joy of discovery and awe. She had to resist the urge to speak the truth of it as she knew it to be: It was miraculous, the things human beings could make; and that was a gift given to them from God, a touch of his genius that venerated his glory with every use, whether they knew it or not. She smiled and laughed with her new family and spoke of how clever people could be, the beautiful artistry of the walls, the pillars, the art.
Liandra took her by the arm and smiled, genuinely it seemed to Tyritha. She got the sense that novelty was a treasure in Alysida; new people, new ideas, they didn’t come around so often. And Tyritha was someone new to Liandra. Krishna’s elegant wife couldn’t pull herself away from the young newcomer’s energy.
After they were offered drinks and had their needs seen to, the servants escorted the party down the front corridor to the great house’s central courtyard, where the Archon’s representative and his wife were waiting to formally welcome them to the Arnur Villa.
MeiKasse was a great uncle of Nima, the Archon, a trusted mentor and friend—nearly three hundred years old, Liandra whispered to Tyritha as she was reminding her of her cues. The formalities were becoming more natural as the days passed, but Tyritha did appreciate the reassurance as her bows and steps became crisper and more like the Dodonna siblings and their spouses each day.
Beside MeiKasse, his wife Anäas smiled a different way. Tyritha detected a hint of mischief and perhaps a glint of wry humor in her eyes. She immediately noticed that Anäas fully smiled with her whole face, her eyes as well, something that wasn’t always common in these immortals and their formal greetings. Tyritha thought that in Anäas she might have found the first of these strange people who might actually be enjoying her endless life, however objectionable that idea seemed to Tyritha.
They were shown from the courtyard to a dining area that Tyritha could only describe as opulent beyond her wildest imagination, and as much as she hated the idea that the doctor had placed a neural adjunct in her head without her consent, she was grateful for it in the moment, as each of her instincts about etiquette at such a table would have been embarrassingly wrong. Courtesy dictated that as much as they might have enjoyed her sense of wonder at her surroundings at the greeting area, at the dinner table, those surroundings were to properly be put into the background, and the faces of her companions now became paramount. The menu, the place settings, the food, the table—all those incidental items were just that—incidental. Only the people mattered. Eyes met eyes. And as Tyritha lifted hers to meet the others at the table, it became clear that each look was a measurement every bit as incisive as the doctors who’d judged her chin unworthy, who’d straightened her teeth, who’d taken the moles off her back. She had some sense, and she couldn’t be sure what marginal ideas needed to be removed from her person, but Tyritha had little doubt that’s what this particular assessment was designed to identify.
The diners didn’t talk about Tyritha’s reasons for being in Arionidis. Everyone knew, and it wasn’t proper to talk about such things at the dinner table. For a while, Krishna asked Tyritha about the art she had seen that day. He and Liandra made several suggestions about places to visit while she was in the capitol for the first time. And those things seemed small talk to her, pleasantries. Then, as the dinner progressed, Krishna and MeiKasse began to speak about politics, the family, the house.
Tyritha could only barely follow some of the conversation. She did her best to seem interested and not overtly confused. Still, Liandra noticed her face, putting her hand on Tyritha’s forearm to reassure her.
“These politicians can’t talk about anything else, dear,” she whispered. “It’s all Krishna ever talks about.”
“I’m sure it’s very interesting once you understand the city,” Tyritha replied.
“It gets less and less interesting the more you know,” Liandra joked. “But I’d never tell that to Krishna.”
“He seems very passionate,” Tyritha whispered, trying simultaneously to not be rude to Liandra while also not disrupting the ongoing discussion between MeiKasse and Krishna across the table.
Krishna noticed, though.
“Is my wife trying to educate you on our political system, young Tyritha? If so, you might consider another translator. Liandra has many strong points. Grasp of Alysida’s power structures is not one of them.”
“She was just telling me how much she enjoys how passionate you are,” Tyritha said.
“Who doesn’t love passion in her man?” Anäas asked, that sly smile appearing to broaden ever so.
Tyritha noticed a similar grin appear on MeiKasse’s face, as though she might have been missing some sort of inside joke.
Erron reached over and put his arm over her shoulder. “Passion, in my opinion, isn’t nearly as useful as the wisdom to apply it where it matters.”
“Such sage words, my dear young brother,” Krishna said. “I’d love to know where you intend to apply your passion once you and Tyritha take the rites.”
“For now, our passions are fully invested in applying the whole of ourselves to the process. Nothing could be more important than setting a proper foundation for our journey together.”
“No wonder you all think so highly of this boy, Krishna,” MeiKasse stated. “He’s a future Archon for sure. I can’t tell whether he’s as naïve as he seems to be or twice a sly as Dreima. He’ll be a killer on the governing board in a century or two.”
“I tell you I know his true nature no better than you, MeiKasse,” Krishna joked. “Though most of us lean toward naïve.”
“That is almost better,” MeiKasse replied. “The sly ones can be dangerous if not properly managed. The naïve ones merely need to be nudged.”
He looked over at Tyritha, who was doing her best to look bemused by the direction of the discussion. MeiKasse’s eyes narrowed as he examined her face.
“That one. She’s sly. Innocent and somehow sly at the same time. We’ll have to watch her.”
Anäas laughed. “Oh, that sweet girl, husband! She’s a dove. As gentle as a garden breeze. Can’t you see?”
“I see better than you think,” he protested.
“Politicians,” she smirked as she spoke back. “They manage to see shadows in the dark as well as the daylight, even when there are none around. Don’t take him too seriously, dear. No one else does.”
“Yes, yes. Very amusing, my beloved wife.”
“I think we should have dessert,” Anäas said. “All this political talk is boring our guests, dear.”
“So you say,” MeiKasse replied, calling then for the servers.
Tyritha noticed his eyes measuring her again, and though she could no more know his thoughts than he could know hers, she had the sense that something had been discovered that she didn’t faintly comprehend. She was not wrong. She just didn’t know who was learning what.
Tyritha was back at her guest suite at the estate of Tokken and Anneila, yet another uncle and aunt of the Dodonna family, who’d been gracious enough to host Tyritha for her stay in Arionidis. Naomi was just preparing to get Tyritha undressed and ready for bed after Erron had seen her to her door. She hadn’t even had a chance to sit and begin to decompress from the long dinner when the door chimed.
Tyritha could tell it was someone important by the way Naomi bowed, inviting the visitor into the guest suite’s anteroom.
“Leave us,” a woman’s voice commanded Tyritha’s servant.
And with that simple command, Naomi seemed to vanish into the night. Tyritha turned to focus on the entryway, and around the corner of the doorway, Anäas’s figure appeared. She grinned as she saw Tyritha standing inside.
“You’ve caught my attention, little dove. I’m so glad you haven’t gotten undressed yet. You’ll come with me.”
Even the Archon back in Arnur hadn’t commanded Tyritha with such absolute authority. She was taken aback for a moment. It wasn’t that being commanded with such certainty felt so foreign to Tyritha, but it did feel old. And it did feel different coming from a relative stranger. Her mother and father had spoken to her that way when she was a child, but they’d never had cause to once she’d matured and knew to do without asking.
“Where are we going at this hour, Mistress Anäas?” Tyritha asked as softly as she could shape the question.
“We are going wherever I take you, young one. Have no fear. You may very well be in danger—I don’t know—but I do know you have nothing to fear from me. Come along now.”
Anäas lifted up her hand, gesturing for Tyritha to fall in with her. To say no was not an option. That much was clear.
So Tyritha took a deep breath, straightened her back, and took two steps forward, and reminded herself that her obligations called her to them on their own time, not hers.
The walk through the capitol was brief, and the dynamics of her orientation continued to update as they turned corner after corner into the official chambers in the governmental sector, passing through doors Tyritha never would’ve dared to approach on her own. Anäas strode with the same certainty she’d commanded Tyritha. She wasn’t sure who Anäas was beyond MeiKasse’s wife, but Tyritha had the sense that in this city there wasn’t a servant’s head that wouldn’t bow nor a door she wouldn’t approach with the expectation that it open at the sight of her. Anäas didn’t speak along the way, which made the long walk all the more unsettling, with one exception as they turned to step through a long corridor underneath the capitol chambers.
“You’re different,” Anäas stated, gesturing to the corridor. “I know someone who appreciates different.”
They walked side-by-side down that dim hallway, their footsteps echoing back to them through an otherwise silent, vacant building.
As they reached the far side of the capitol chambers, Tyritha’s mental map reached its limits. Or so it seemed. It was an odd feeling, as though she had a memory for the layout of the city and the buildings around her, even though she’d never been there before. That collection of spatial memories told her that the cylinder ended there—that the capitol’s walls abutted the Arionidis cylinder’s outer hub. But this was not so.
Anäas continued to direct Tyritha down a corridor that shouldn’t have existed, not according to her neural implant’s layout of the city. Tyritha couldn’t guess where they were going, but she could tell it was important.
On the other side of that passageway, there was an entire section of the city that didn’t appear on the open layout of the cylinder. A secret kingdom, she thought. And who resides here amongst these self-appointed demigods?
When they climbed up from the stairwell to ground level, Tyritha noticed a certain austerity about the place. The architecture wasn’t showy, but it certainly wasn’t plain. Stately and simple were the two words that came to mind as Anäas continued to escort Tyritha down a street that seemed to be made up of large residences. Still, Anäas didn’t see fit to tell Tyritha where they were or where they were going. Tyritha knew better than to ask. She just walked.
As they turned from one street to the next, Tyritha’s sense of orientation wasn’t adjusted to her implant’s inner map. She was doing her best to keep track of it the natural way, until finally, they appeared at a door beside a large gate, which, unsurprisingly to Tyritha now, opened automatically for Anäas.
Inside the gate, there was a large residence built of stone. That detail wouldn’t have been notable on Heinan, especially in Ceronka, where there was little in the landscape but dirt, sand, and stone, but here on Alysida, such volumes of natural stone constituted a sign of tremendous wealth.
Inside another opening door, the servants parted and scattered before Anäas. To Tyritha, there was an entirely different feel to the place, as though they’d crossed into another nation with an entirely different culture.
On the second floor, there was an empty sitting room, and when she saw it, Anäas flagged down a servant hiding around another doorway. She didn’t even have to ask the question.
“Up on the balcony, Mistress,” the servant declared, without even enquiring her business.
So Anäas took Tyritha up two more flights of stairs. There was a man seated in a large chair looking out onto a perspective-warping scene that took Tyritha’s mind a moment to process. They were at the side-wall of the cylinder hub, and the entire wall—kilometers in distance, her eyes told her—was a clear pane of polymer glass, so it looked very much like a starry night sky to her right, while on her left, the austere neighborhood stretched out quite naturally to her mind’s sensibilities. To her left, a city. To her right, deep space. And before her in the middle, was a man in a chair who lifted his head, looked over his shoulder at her, and nodded, gesturing to an empty seat somewhat diagonally across from him.
“The girl you asked about, Ladd,” Anäas said. “Don’t keep her all night. She has a busy day tomorrow.”
Tyritha wondered how Anäas knew about her day.
“I’ll call for you,” he replied, gesturing for Anäas to leave them.
Tyritha had questions, but she’d gotten good at holding her tongue and letting the answers present themselves naturally. Sometimes they even did.
She smiled and sat.
“I’m Tyritha Sian Ilanova,” she said, sitting, as it seemed more appropriate than an unsolicited handshake.
“So I’ve heard,” the man replied. “People who know me call me Ladd.”
“Is that your real name?” she asked.
“Yes. Partly. One of my surnames, actually.”
“What’s your first name, if you don’t mind sharing it with me?”
“It’s Chyron. Nobody’s called me that in a long time, though.”
“May I?”
“You may call me as you like, Tyritha. Also, I should say outright, I would very much appreciate it if you spoke truthfully with me. I understand that may be a hard thing to ask of you, requiring of some faith. This must be a strange place for you.”
Tyritha gestured toward their surroundings as if to ask whether he was referring to the secret neighborhood behind the capitol grounds.
“Oh, this place too,” he laughed. “I was more referring to the civilization writ large. This is where the oldest of us come to hide from the society we’ve built.”
“I figured you might be one of the older ones,” she replied, nodding. “I don’t suppose it’s as rude to ask an immortal his age as it would be for a human elder?”
“Where are you from, Tyritha?”
“Do you mean ...? You know I’m not from here, right? I’m from the Battery.”
“Yes. Quite so. I wasn’t told exactly where.”
“I’m from Ceronka. An enclave in Jarir on Heinan, near a city called Kmeno if you’ve ever heard of it.”
“Heinan? So you’re Trasp then? Of great stock. Some of the hardest working people in the Battery. Brilliant engineers.”
Tyritha shrugged. “My family is more Charran than Trasp, I would say. None of us have ever been to Charris, but our people come from there.”
“Who are your people?”
“We’re called Tenŏs. And you never answered my question, Chyron.”
“I’m sorry, what was your question?”
“How old are you?”
“Right. Well, I’m older than the ones who took you by a good five centuries at least. I’m not sure a number means much once you get as old as I am, but I am nearly seven hundred years old if you count the days by twenty-four-hour increments and years by three hundred sixty-five of those days. You have to go crazy for about a century and then come back from it again before you start to see things clearly.”
“You see clearly now?” Tyritha asked.
“I suppose so. I’d like to think I do.”
“Congratulations on that. It’s quite an accomplishment.”
He grinned. “Anäas was right about you, Tyritha. You have a spirit about you. I thank you for not concealing it. Everyone hides everything around here. They think I don’t see, but they can only see what’s before their eyes. They have no idea. They run around and act according to the rules they see in their houses. They see their grandparents and parents and the occasional aged uncle from generations past. And they almost never ask: what are the really old ones doing?”
“What are you doing, if you don’t mind my asking? I’m sure it’s against the etiquette I’ve been told to abide by, but, Chyron, you’re the first seven-hundred-year-old being I’ve ever met.”
“Being? Human being, I presume you mean?”
“I don’t know,” Tyritha stated, looking him over. “How old can a person get and still be a person?”
“What did you call yourself again? Your people?”
“Tenŏs.”
“Charran? A religious sect?”
She nodded.
“Charris is a remarkable place. I’m from Athos myself, originally. Athosians are surprisingly monochrome. You might think a society so vast would develop significant cultural differences over centuries’ time and such distances. On Charris, though, the people are astonishingly different in their mindset from city to city.”
“You’re not from here?”
Chyron shook his head.
“Wait? Are you? You’re one of the builders?”
“You might even say the architect.”
Tyritha looked around for some reason. “Isn’t he called ΘeoTechnus, though?”
“I’ve been called a lot of things over the centuries. That’s one of them. It’s not my name but a moniker. One of the battles you stop having after a while is with your own identity, Tyritha. You know that phrase ‘to make a name for yourself’?”
“I do.”
“Something I realized in my first hundred years is that you don’t get to decide how other people see you. No matter how much you try to shape your identity, the other people you interact with get a say, perhaps the lion’s share even. Everything we are is a negotiation with the universe, and you can’t bend something that big to your will.”
“Funny. I was going to say the very same thing.”
“Yes? Regarding what exactly?”
“The immortality conceit.”
“Conceit? That’s an interesting way of putting it. How old did you say you were, Tyritha?”
“I didn’t say. And quite frankly, I’m not even sure anymore. Certainly not seven hundred, but I was also put in stasis for however long it takes to get here from Heinan. I think probably I’m twenty years old now.”
“Conceit?”
“I’ve thought a lot about it.”
“And you’re religious, you said?”
Tyritha nodded.
“Well educated I have to assume too by the way you speak.”
“My people read. We also don’t give ourselves over to pleasures for the sake of convenience.”
“I am so glad you came tonight, Tyritha. I can’t tell you how much I’m enjoying this conversation. I almost never get a chance to have a conversation with anyone from the Battery. Nor anyone so young. But both? And someone so perplexingly insightful for such a young age. And you’re being truthful as well … as near as I can tell.”
“Do you mind if I ask you some questions, Chyron?”
“Please do. By all means. I hope I’ll have answers.”
“The main thing I’ve been wondering is what you’re all doing out here? I mean, I’ve heard what I’ve been told—that you and your people didn’t wish to have others dictate certain choices to you—the longevity question mostly. My people certainly wouldn’t agree with that position, but it’s an understandable position up to a point.”
“What point is that?”
“Well, what next? I was told that you came out here to get away from the Purists of the Battery who wouldn’t have tolerated your claim to immortality if you’d lived next door. So what do you do out here?”
“What we do and what I’d hoped we’d do are two different things, my young friend. I had hoped that we could build something different out here, perhaps even something beautiful. I learned about the technology of immortality in the course of exploring another matter that had to do with my business at the time. I was a builder.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Yes. And when I found out that certain people had become the self-appointed gatekeepers of a technology like indefinite life extension, I’ll confess that it made me angry. Who did those people think they were to decide for every other person in the galaxy how long they should live? Or, not live, as the case was.”
“My people would put it the other way around, Chyron. Who do you think you are to decide such a thing?”
“You were taught to think this way?”
Tyritha nodded.
“That’s good, but it’s also a shame. Because it’s your default way of thinking, you probably have no sense for just how insightful that thinking is. I wish I had. I wasn’t naïve or foolish. I didn’t delude myself into thinking I could build some sort of utopia out here. But your question is also far more insightful than I suspect you even realize. What are we doing out here? Right? That’s what you wonder about, Tyritha?”
“I’d love to know.”
“My goal was to use that technology of radical life extension to preserve minds worth preserving so that they could contribute to humanity over countless generations. The thought was to collect Einsteins and Bachs and Hartsocks and Thunhabhains and Michels and to give them resources. And fool that I was—and am still I suppose—I thought that I shouldn’t be the sole arbiter of who got access to immortality. It couldn’t be everyone, because resources could never be shaped into habitats fast enough if nobody ever died. And that meant somebody had to decide who got to live indefinitely. I knew that sort of power would corrupt. How could it not? To make the call on what constituted a mind worth preserving? Sorting the people we kept from the ones who died? So I made what I thought was a wise and prudent concession—that there should be a committee of wise stewards of the technology. They say absolute power corrupts absolutely? Well, Tyritha, it turns out a society doesn’t need to be absolutely corrupted to absolutely corrupt its core ideals.”
“How do you mean?”
“It’s not unlike charting a course in space, you see. When you allow the slightest change in direction in intellectual and moral conviction to persist, the result is a movement from one trajectory to another. By definition, any such movement carries a momentum with it. Over time, even the smallest of changes changes everything. And you end up in an entirely different place than your initial destination. So now you’ve seen my society spread out before me. How do you like it, Tyritha?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?”
Chyron laughed. “You’re a clever one. Anäas was right about that.”
“I should ask you how you like it, Chyron? I can tell by your tone you seem at least somewhat jaded about what it’s turned into. I’d love to know where you think it’s gone wrong and what you intend to do about it.”
He was nodding almost involuntarily. “You have quite a knack for asking the right questions. It’s a rare characteristic. Most people don’t do that, so they have no chance of getting the right answers to any problem.”
“Well? What about those questions?”
“There’s an old expression that goes all the way back to Earth as far as I know. It posits that necessity is the mother of invention.”
“I’ve heard that one.”
“I thought I was going to come out here with a group of the cleverest engineers I could gather, some brilliant scientists, a few peerless thinkers, a collection of great artists, make them immortal, so to speak, take away their most pressing concerns—the distractions, the pressure of deadlines and the pain of aging, and I hoped that they would continue to pursue their ambitions with the same drive and genius they had in their mortal lives. And as I said, we began with very motivated people. But take away that one most important deadline of all, and without fail, every last one of them—whether they even perceived it or not—they shifted their course. A little each day. And it wasn’t just the urgency either. They asked the same question you started with, Tyritha: what am I doing out here? People who had come here with purpose and creative ambitions suddenly became philosophers who worked out of habit more than desire. That is when I learned what that expression really meant. Necessity has many more meanings than one. Necessity once required that they do something with their lives before they died. It required that they left an imprint on society in a certain time. That was the real mother of invention. We took away that necessity, and suddenly we began to see—not unlike you alluded to earlier, clever girl—that these people weren’t the same human beings they once were, or perhaps, as you say, maybe they weren’t even human beings anymore. That is where the problems originated. Most innovation that happens here, if any these days, it all comes back from the contact missions—Battery inventions, Battery ideas. We can copy, but we don’t create much anymore it seems.”
“If you don’t mind my saying, Chyron, as you asked me for honesty, but in seeing Alysida with an outsider’s eyes, I can tell you I wouldn’t characterize your biggest problem as being a lack of innovation but a lack of humility.”
Chyron smiled at her admiringly. “That is certainly one of the many issues we struggle with here. I am grateful for your vision, my young guest.”
“I’d also like to ask you, Chyron, why exactly you would be telling me all this? It’s not merely curiosity, this conversation, is it?”
“No it is not. You do not miss much, do you?”
“I may only see what’s in front of me to see.”
“And when you look at your Erron, Tyritha Ilanova of Heinan, what do you see?”
“I wouldn’t dare to boil his complexity down to a few sentences. Respectfully.”
“Is he a person?”
“I believe so, yes. But again, he has not gone through your apotheosis yet, or whatever your people call it.”
“I suppose that’s true. But what I’m asking, Tyritha, is whether you think he’s good. Is Erron a good person?”
Tyritha scrunched up her nose at the question. Chyron could tell she didn’t like something about it.
“It’s all right,” he reassured her. “Please. You can be honest with me.”
“I’m not exactly sure how to put it, but that’s not how I’d put it. I wasn’t taught to think that way. People aren’t good or bad at any given moment; they’re both.”
“So becoming a good person is a process rather than a state? Something like that?”
“Yes. We have to try our best every day. Erron, myself, yourself, if I dare say so,” Tyritha stated, nodding. “There’s no finish line in this life until we die. Only then can we judge, on the totality, not the chapter.
“There’s certainly no finish line in mine,” Chyron offered as a muted joke.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” she said, smiling politely at his attempt at humor. “Why are you telling me all this?”
“Anäas says that Erron will be Archon in Arnur in the next reign. So as surely as the course can drift away from its intention in a negative direction, it can still be brought back to something better than it is today.”
“And I’m part of your plan somehow?”
“This is how an old man like me plays politics, young Tyritha, by moving pieces into position from the shadows. The limelight is for the young.”
“And what would you have me do as you steer from the shadows?”
“We would have you guide Erron. For all the potential his family sees in him, what we see is an impressionable young man who can rise to influence. Simply let that influence be yours at the root of it.”
“Simple as that?”
“Well, we all know nothing is simple in politics. Can we rely on you, Tyritha, to steer Erron toward the good?”
“As far as I can, I will always steer everyone I love toward the good, especially those closest to me.”
“I knew I would like you, Tyritha of Heinan. I very much hope this will be the first of many fruitful discussions and small adjustments to the course.”
“It was an honor to meet you Chyron— ΘeoTechnus. You are not what I’d expected, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to have learned that.”
“I’ll call for Anäas to take you back. May your remediation and recovery go smoothly in the coming days.”
When Anäas dropped Tyritha off at her guest suite, Naomi was sitting up and dozing, waiting for Tyritha to return. She asked her mistress where Anäas had taken her, but as much as she wanted to share everything with Naomi, Tyritha told her servant that it might be best if she didn’t know. “More is at stake here than we ever guessed,” Tyritha proclaimed before asking her to get a message to Erron. It was imperative that they meet before she was scheduled to undergo her surgery.
Tyritha knew it wasn’t going to be easy to talk safely in the capitol. She didn’t have the solution, but she hoped Erron would. She hated to do it, but she asked Naomi to arrange a meeting with Erron for early that morning. Naomi dutifully got up, brushed her hands down her gown, and stepped out into the dark night in Arionidis.
Tyritha did her best to get some sleep, but it was a struggle. She kept going over the conversation with ΘeoTechnus in her mind. Certain things had been explicit, like the fact that the elders were far more important and influential than the younger immortals seemed to understand, but the extent of it she couldn’t guess beyond the feeling that there was a great weight permeating the air in that secret neighborhood. She’d never felt power like that before—intangible but undeniably real. And Tyritha had no idea how that power might react to her escape, presuming it was even feasible for her to successfully escape at all. She was circling around again on almost every word ΘeoTechnus had uttered, over and over, to try and ensure she hadn’t missed anything.
“Mistress,” she suddenly heard Naomi’s voice say; her servant was shaking her arm. “You need to wake up now if we’re going to make the meeting.”
“What meeting?”
“With Erron, Mistress. You asked me to set a meeting. It’s still early, but we’ll have to hurry. It’ll be light soon.”
“Right.”
Naomi helped her dress again, and after hastily preparing to leave, she presented Tyritha with the mask she would come to be much more familiar with in the coming days.
“Now?”
“We do not wish for you to be seen where we’re going, Mistress.”
“I trust you, Naomi,” Tyritha said, slowly bringing the mask up to her face.
“Here,” Naomi insisted. “It’ll be faster if I help.”
Then, after she’d secured the Arrdh on Tyritha’s face, Naomi pulled a mask of her own from her bag.
“You as well?” Tyritha asked.
“If someone sees my face, it won’t be much of a leap to guess who you are, Mistress.”
“I suppose that’s correct.”
Tyritha was shocked at how little the seemingly opaque face-shield affected her vision. She could see almost immediately that after a few minutes she would almost forget she was wearing anything over her face. From behind it, the Arrdh was almost completely transparent; it was light; and if not for the single strap that affixed from the back of her neck under her hair, which she barely felt, she’d hardly have known she had it on. It was less obtrusive than a hat. And, as they walked, Naomi explained that it had features that helped aid their vision. In the darkness of that early morning, it raised the light level automatically to make the causeways clearly visible as they hurried from corner to corner, walking as quickly as two proper ladies of Arionidis could without arousing suspicions if anyone saw them. But it was still early, and no one was about. Within a few minutes, Tyritha and Naomi were in the tram.
A few minutes after that, they were stepping out mid-cylinder. Naomi was guiding them through streets Tyritha guessed her servant couldn’t have been familiar with, yet it occurred to her the mask could just as easily project a pathway for navigation as a set of eyewear or a floatscreen. Tyritha suddenly felt silly for all the apprehension and anxiety she’d put herself through about the mask, which she was quickly growing to enjoy wearing. There was a sort of exhilaration about it, sneaking around like spies in the quiet of the morning.
Naomi escorted her to the back of a large building that the signage indicated was the Terrintine Club, seemingly belonging to that family who dominated this area of the cylinder. The club seemed vacant at that hour. Nevertheless, when Naomi knocked on a back gate, there was a person there to greet her, a servant who bowed at Naomi, who explained that Tyritha was the Sepp and she was the servant, at which point the young woman bowed toward Tyritha and began to escort the pair through a series of back hallways, kitchens, and basement areas, until they finally emerged in a lounge where Erron was already seated, waiting for them.
“Some tea?” the young servant offered them, to which Erron nodded and thanked her by name.
“You can take that off now,” Erron stated, referring to the mask.
Tyritha laughed as she sat, fumbling with the strap behind her hair before finally emerging from behind the face-shield. They discussed the strangeness of it for her, and they continued talking about small things until the servant returned with a pot of tea and two cups, pouring one for each of them before leaving to sit with Naomi in a booth on the other side of the room.
“It’s safe to talk here,” Erron said. “We may not be able to talk again for some time after this.”
“What is this place?” she asked him.
“Onager’s compatriot in the contact groups is a Terrintine. This lounge is his family’s.”
“Does your family have a club like this in Arionidis?”
“Yes. It’s closer to the city center, but we don’t want to be meeting there for obvious reasons.”
“Of course,” Tyritha agreed. “Anyway, I had an interesting night.”
“Does it affect our plan to get you home again?”
“It’s difficult to say, Erron. But you met with Onager?”
“Yes.”
“And what did he say about it, the possibility of getting me home?”
“He thinks it’s possible, but the cost is very high and there’s no guarantee it’ll work.”
“What is the cost?” she asked him.
Erron shook his head. “I’d rather not say.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not sure I’ll be able to manage it.”
“What does that mean, Erron? Is it a question of money?”
“It’s more complicated than that, Tyritha. I can’t do it on my own. I’m going to need help.”
“Okay, from whom?”
“From an Odai, from someone with the full weight of the family name. My mother, the Archon, she will not sanction it.”
Tyritha looked at Erron over a long moment without replying. It was obvious to both of them that neither Dreima nor the older family members in Arnur would do anything to help. There was only one possibility.
“Do you think he would help us?” Tyritha finally asked.
“That’s the problem. I don’t know. Krishna has always been friendly and helpful to me, but he’s very hard to read.”
“That’s by design, you realize, Erron?”
“I’m coming to realize that, yes. He’s much more calculating than I’d ever have guessed.”
“They all are.”
“Knowing that doesn’t help, though, does it?” he replied, irked somewhat by her pointing out what now seemed obvious.
“Maybe it does, Erron. He’s calculating, right? So how do we make it a sensible calculation for him?”
“I’m not sure we can. What could I offer Krishna?”
Tyritha shrugged. “You’re the future Archon, Erron. Everyone knows it except you. Is that something you want?”
“I’m not even thinking of such things.”
“Now might be the time. That’s the game we’re playing here—political futures. What we’re doing, if we succeed, it’ll blow back on Dreima, and how will they look at you after? So who’s the future Archon then?”
“Krishna, you think?”
“It would certainly position him better, especially if you ensured him he’d have your support.”
“It’s an interesting thought. I’m not sure it would work, but it’s worth considering. Anyway, it’s not urgent at the moment. We’ll have some time to figure it out in the coming weeks. Onager has a doctor he’d like you to meet here in Arionidis.”
“For what?”
“He’d be the one, Tyritha. He’d put you into stasis—the one to make you disappear. That’s if I can figure everything else out.”
“All right. I’ll have Naomi set up the meeting if you give me the details.”
“Is that what you needed to meet about so urgently? It was a risk to come here like this today. You should be resting before your surgery.”
“I’m not performing the operation myself,” she joked. “All I’ll have to do is lie there.”
“Cute,” he replied. “Seriously, though, why did you need to talk?”
“Anäas came to my suite last night after dinner. It seemed like maybe MeiKasse didn’t know about it.”
“She’s older than him, I’ve heard, but I don’t know exactly. Their marriage is strange.”
“She’s different, for sure. But that wasn’t the notable part of the encounter, Erron. She was just my escort. She took me to a part of the cylinder behind the capitol, a secret ... a city really, I guess you could call it. A secret city. An old one. Very different to Arionidis. She brought me to a house ... his house, I think. But I met with the architect of this place. I met with ΘeoTechnus.”
Erron looked at Tyritha skeptically. “ΘeoTechnus? The founder of Alysida?”
“I don’t think it’s a common name, Erron,” she joked.
“You don’t suppose he was an imposter, some sort of trick or test?”
“I don’t reckon so, no.”
“What did he want with you? He doesn’t talk to anybody.”
“He talks to Anäas. And I don’t think that’s true, Erron. I think he’s isolated from Alysida, but as I said, there’s a whole city there. Your family has people who seem old, a couple hundred years, sure. But ΘeoTechnus is over seven hundred years old. So where do you think are the other old ones? I think a lot of them are there in that secret place, pulling strings from the shadows. I suspect there’s a whole other layer of control in Alysida that even MeiKasse and your mother and Dreima and Krishna are largely blind to, or at least they act that way.”
Erron was rubbing his chin, taking in Tyritha’s story with great interest while simultaneously lacking any way to process it. He hardly understood the structure of his own house and how it worked. The inner political workings of Arionidis were far more complex and beyond him. Krishna hardly knew such things. And then to think there was something deeper and more obscure behind it? He didn’t know what to think about that.
“What did he say to you, Tyritha? I mean, the reason for even knowing about you? Wanting to talk to you?”
“I got the sense that he’s very lonely. That much was obvious. I don’t think he has a wife or children, or if he did, I feel like he was very distant—like either that was a long time ago or how your siblings have other people raise their children for them. The appearance of family. Only with him, in the brief time we talked, I didn’t see any appearance of it.”
“So he wanted to speak to you out of loneliness?”
“That seemed like a part of it. I’m from the Battery, and so is he. I think he has fond memories of his old life, traveling and building. He seemed like he was trapped here by this place.” Tyritha stopped talking for a moment and laughed an odd kind of sullen laugh. “You know I didn’t think of it at the time—Alysida, the chain—a chain of cylinders, yes, but also a very poetic irony for its creator now, to be chained to his own creation indefinitely. His existence is about the closest thing I could imagine to purgatory.”
Erron shook his head. “Purgatory? What’s purgatory?”
“Oh, it’s like ... You’ve never heard that word before?”
He shook his head.
“You’ve heard of heaven and hell, right?” she asked.
“Of course I’ve heard of heaven and hell.”
“Well, we believe in them, my people. They’re real places, Erron. You know that I believe our souls go on after we die?”
“So you’ve explained.”
“Purgatory is the place in between. Some Christian sects believed that if a person died and wasn’t yet worthy of heaven but also wasn’t so beyond salvation as to be damned, they would go to purgatory to be cleansed of their remaining sins so they can be pure enough to enter the eternal kingdom of God.”
“Do you believe in that, Tyritha? Purgatory?”
“Me? Or my people?”
“Both, I guess.”
“It’s not in our tradition, no. I’d have said no before meeting ΘeoTechnus. In a metaphorical sense I do think there must be something to it, but no, I believe that what you do in your life either prepares you to spend eternity with God or to wither without his love in damnation.”
“So you don’t really believe you’re going to die?”
“That’s a totally different conversation for a different time, Erron. Very deep. The short answer is no, but I think we’ve gone off on this tangent, and I can’t even remember what we were talking about.”
“ΘeoTechnus. Why did he summon you of all people?”
“Right. I think actually it was less about me than you, Erron.”
“Me?”
“Yes. They’re all watching you. I know you know this, but they do view you as some sort of golden child, the future Archon, leader of the House of Arnur.”
He shook his head.
“I know you don’t like hearing it, but it’s true,” she said.
“So I keep hearing.”
“Well, that’s what he wanted. He wants you to be Archon and he wanted me to help direct you in the way you run the house, which presumably would mean taking a larger role in the politics of Alysida beyond that.”
Erron shook his head. “I didn’t even imagine ΘeoTechnus knew my name.”
“I think that’s part of their calculation. The old ones stay out of sight so nobody thinks about what they see and don’t see, as well as what they might be controlling. Or trying to control anyway. That was part of the reason for our meeting. He isn’t happy with his creation, Erron. Alysida has drifted far from what he’d hoped at the outset. That’s what he’s ultimately trying to do—to shift the tides back toward his original vision. He is very ...”
He looked over at her and smiled. She was thinking very hard, and scrunching up her nose as she did. He found it so incredibly endearing he couldn’t help but smile.
“What?” she said.
“Nothing. Just ... Sometimes I find it difficult to believe that anyone could be as beautiful as you are, Tyritha. We’re doing all of this to get you home, as I promised, but I must confess that I’m grateful each day that Dreima brought you here to Alysida. Otherwise I’d never have known you or the way you see the world.”
He reached across the table and put his hand on hers.
She sighed. “We need to focus.”
“Of course. What should we do about all this? ΘeoTechnus? These other elders?”
“I don’t know, Erron. But I know that I needed to tell you right away. I wasn’t supposed to tell you. That’s for sure. He didn’t tell me explicitly not to, but it was understood. He meant for me to quietly steer you in the right directions. And that ...?”
Erron still had his hand on hers, and he looked across at her reassuringly, squeezing her hand in his.
“It seemed so strange meeting someone so old who was so powerfully misguided. I mean, here he was after seven centuries thinking that he could just pull me aside and that I would agree to manipulate my husband. And I suppose that’s what he’s accustomed to—these people who call each other husband and wife yet are hardly even connected.”
“How do you mean?”
“Marriage is the most sacred relationship a person can have with another person. It’s the one union you can choose that is sanctioned by God, Erron. To think that I would just casually adopt another’s influence so that I could manipulate you behind your back? A total stranger to me would dare propose this? I don’t even understand how he could think to suggest such an arrangement and expect it would work.”
“I expect he’s used to getting what he asks for when he asks for it,” Erron replied.
“But he doesn’t, though, that’s the thing. He gets something like what he thinks he’s asked for, but it’s always poisoned, like the Midas touch. I don’t even think he can see it because he’s trying so hard to claw his way back from that original sin to salvage something of the unsalvageable. And the whole time I was speaking with him I just kept wondering how it could be possible to live for seven hundred years and still not know the first thing about being a human being.”
“And what would that be in your estimation, Tyritha?”
“That we are small, small creatures before the infinite, Erron Aireum. It can’t be any other way.”
“All right,” he said, lifting Tyritha’s hand up until they were holding hands tightly together over the table. “I’ll come to see you after the surgery as soon as I’m allowed. You’ve given me a lot to think about in the meantime.”
In the culture of Alysida, remediation was a private matter. Thus, the clinics were inconspicuous places, especially in Arionidis where the most experienced practitioners had their offices and surgical suites. Tyritha’s surgeon was well known to the Dodonna family. She’d worked on the Archon herself and Shaimi, as well as Dreima and Sirrah, so it seemed natural to her that a future bride of Erron would become a client too. She was reassuring in her brief meeting with Tyritha, expressing that she had little work ahead of her and promising to be sparing in shaving back Tyritha’s chin.
“You’ll hardly notice a thing,” her surgeon declared. “I doubt anyone else will either, you have such a natural look to you.”
That was what Tyritha wanted all along, her own natural face, whether others considered it beautiful or not.
Naomi stayed with her throughout, from the moment they walked into the clinic until the moment she began to get sleepy. Naomi was there holding Tyritha’s hand, and when she registered that she was waking up somewhere else, still Naomi was at her side, comforting her.
Tyritha began to talk about strange things in front of the doctor, and before she could even finish a sentence, Naomi was casually misdirecting her, asking silly questions and singing songs.
“This girl,” Tyritha said to the doctor as she came in to check on her patient in recovery. “I love this girl with all my heart.”
“Don’t we say the strangest and most unbecoming things while under anesthesia?” the surgeon replied.
When they were certain the drugs had worn off and that Tyritha’s pain was under control, they propped her up in bed like a queen, dressed her in a fancy gown, covered her in ornate blankets, set the Arrdh over her face, and allowed Erron in to see her.
“Unusual,” the doctor remarked, “but not unprecedented. He must have inherited Nima’s soft heart.”
They couldn’t say much to each other in front of the doctor, and it was forbidden for him to look upon her without the Arrdh, but Erron stayed for a few minutes and held Tyritha’s hand.
According to tradition, the recovery process was a personal one for each Sepp. Nevertheless, the doctor instructed Tyritha to minimize the time she and Erron were together, even with the mask, to which Naomi interjected that she planned on seeing to it by instruction of the Archon. The surgeon seemed satisfied by that.
The procedure itself had gone exactly to plan.
It was late in the day by the time Erron left the clinic. Krishna sent one of the servants from the Arnur Villa to request that he join his elder brother for dinner at the main house. Erron was told it wasn’t a formal occasion like the previous evening. MeiKasse and Anäas would be out at a formal function, and Krishna’s wife Liandra had returned to Arnur for several days, so the two brothers would be dining alone.
During the meal, Erron didn’t sense anything unusual in Krishna’s manner toward him. He seemed his normal, affable self—friendly, supportive, reassuring. But Erron was learning. So often lately it seemed that the surface was merely a show. What Erron couldn’t ever figure out was who the show was for. If everyone understood it for that, then what purpose did it serve?
After dinner, Erron was prepared to return to his Great Aunt Anra’s estate mid-cylinder, but when he got up from the table, Krishna put his hand over his shoulder and instructed Erron to follow him. They walked up two floors to a balcony in MeiKasse and Anäas’s residence within the villa. Krishna gave a vocal command for the nanosheet to block outside light and buffer sound. He and Krishna could only see an icon illuminated above the railing indicating the active privacy barrier, where from the outside, an observer could hear nothing of the conversation and see only a looped recording of the empty balcony. Krishna waved the inner door shut and sat, inviting Erron to do the same across from him.
Krishna looked at him a way he’d never experienced before—seriously—almost like it was finally the moment he was considering Erron an adult if not a peer, no longer the young but promising brother.
“The Archon sent me to watch over you in the capitol, Erron. So what do you suppose I could tell her if she asked me what you and that intriguing future bride of yours were up to?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Do you have a guess as to what I’d say? Or perhaps a more revealing question would be to ask you what I could say truthfully? Do you know?”
“No,” Erron replied. “I don’t know.”
“That’s quite a problem, wouldn’t you say, considering what you two have been up to?”
“How do you mean, Krishna?”
“In this city, politics is the game, and if you’re going to play that game, the first thing you should know about yourself is what makes you vulnerable. That is how people will attack you. If you display any such vulnerability, people could hold that over your head and manipulate you in ways you might not be able to imagine. Not yet anyway. Stick around Arionidis and keep your eyes open long enough and you’ll see all sorts of things.”
“I wasn’t aware I needed to hide things from my brother, Krishna.”
“No? What about the Terrintines, Erron? You didn’t tell me you were associating with them, and not just any one of them if my information is correct?”
“What of it?”
“That’s what I’d like to know, Erron. I do know you’ve been sneaking around trying to conceal something, and I have some idea—a pretty good idea, I think—but I’d like to hear from you first. To give you the opportunity to trust your brother to help.”
“We were talking about just that actually, Tyritha and I.”
“Were you?”
“We’d come to that point, yes.”
“Interesting. I only wonder why you didn’t come to me first instead of the Terrintines. There are also other people involved, no?”
“There are.”
“I’m going to tell you what I think is going on, and I’d like you to tell me if I’m wrong, Erron.”
“All right.”
“This future wife of yours has different sensibilities to ours, I think it would be fair to say. Some of these are admirable qualities even though they’re different to our own ways. She’s concerned for her family. My belief is that she’s asked you to find a way to send a message to her people, to let them know that she is alive and safe. I suspect that is behind your meetings with these shady people associated with the contact crews. It is a very risky and misguided thing to do. It puts Alysida at risk of exposure. There would be serious penalties if this was discovered by someone other than your brother.”
“What would you say if I told you I’d already done it, already made this connection you suspect, already sent word to Tyritha’s family? What would you do about it, Krishna?”
He shook his head, looking equal parts confused and offended by the question. “Brother, I would help you, of course. I would do anything I could to protect you. Have I ever given you cause to think otherwise?”
Erron shook his head. “I don’t think so Krishna. But sometimes ... I don’t know if this has ever happened to you, but I think it’s possible to see something or to learn something that makes you question everything you thought you knew. One day you think the world works a certain way, and then you see something and suddenly nothing makes sense anymore. And then you’re not sure what you can trust, who you can trust, what you can believe. Does that make sense, Krishna?”
Krishna smiled. “Welcome to Arionidis, brother.” He gestured to the city just over the railing. “I’ve seldom heard our capitol described with a more elegant fidelity than you have just now.”
“Nice to know it’s not just me.”
“Yes. It’s a common experience as you prepare for your rites, as you begin to take up your roles in the house, as you learn about the politics of the chain. In childhood you are presented the world in simple terms because you have a simple mind and that’s all you can comprehend. Nothing in this world comes without very real costs, and some of those costs are ugly. It can be shocking at first to see. But that is why our mother sent me here with you and Tyritha, not just to keep an eye on you, but for you to come to me with your questions and problems. Preparing to take the rites is not an easy time, even if both of you were from Alysida. I know Tyritha has deeper concerns than the usual Sepp preparing to become and Odai. Everything is foreign to her. If she didn’t miss her old life, she wouldn’t be the warm-hearted and compassionate young lady she so clearly is. You should have sought help from me in this, not some Terrintine, Erron. You cannot trust anyone outside the family. Not in this city.”
“It’s so much more difficult than that, Krishna.”
Krishna’s face grew serious. “Oh? How so?”
“You are only partially correct in your assumptions. I fear what I have to tell you will change your perceptions of me, but I do need your help.”
Erron paused and took a deep breath. Krishna saw how hesitant he was to reveal the truth. Erron looked up and shook his head.
“Brother, now is the time. I will help you in any way I know how, you and your betrothed.”
Erron did his best to smile, took another deep breath, and began to explain. “Tyritha does not wish to be here, brother. She wishes to go home, and I have promised to help return her to where she belongs so she can continue her life with her own people.”
Krishna sat back in his chair. His wide eyes and the way he stroked his chin made it apparent to Erron that he wasn’t expecting that revelation in the least.
“I don’t understand,” Krishna finally replied. “How can she go back? That’s impossible.”
“I’ve been assured that it’s difficult, yes, but not impossible. After all, Dreima succeeded in bringing her here against her wishes.”
Krishna closed his eyes, clearly deep in thought.
“Which of the Terrintines are you dealing with, Erron?”
“Giras Terrintine, and a man who was once exiled from the contact missions for improper behavior on deployment in the Battery.”
“And you’ve promised Tyritha to return her? You’ve said as much to her?”
“I’ve told her I would do everything in my power. I did not promise we would succeed, only that I would try.”
“I don’t understand,” Krishna repeated, opening his eyes and glaring into Erron’s. “I mean, I understand that she could get you to do anything. That you are madly in love with this girl is evident to all who but look at you two together. What I don’t understand is that she is just as taken with you, Erron. Why would she want to leave you?”
“I don’t ... We’re not ...”
Erron shook his head, unsure of what to say.
Krishna laughed. “Oh! Brother, really? Have you not told her? Has she not told you?”
“What? That we love each other?”
“Granted it’s rare enough among us, and it’s certainly hard to tell when you’re under the spell of it yourself. Over the centuries it happens. We drift in and out, sometimes for years, sometimes for decades even, and sometimes it’s even your wife. Liandra and I have had our moments. But you two? Tell me what it feels like when you think of succeeding—if you managed to send Tyritha back? What does that feel like to you?”
Erron didn’t answer.
“Do you even wish to succeed in sending her home, Erron?”
“I don’t want to let her down, if that’s what you mean, Krishna.”
“Different question. What does it feel like in your gut? The thought of Tyritha back on her homeworld and you here? Do you imagine yourself content in the knowledge that you didn’t let her down? That you successfully sent her away? How does that feel to you, honestly?”
“I feel sick.”
“The thought of never seeing her again?”
“Sick. Sad beyond words.”
Krishna nodded. “That is love, brother. That’s what it feels like. It feels like she is a part of you and to part with her would almost feel worse than death itself. I do know the feeling. I have felt it before.”
“But you don’t have to part with Liandra.”
“I did not say it was with Liandra. I said we had our moments. I do know love, though. But I don’t know how you would promise such a thing to Tyritha if you loved her. She tells you she does not wish to be here with you?”
“No. She has never said that.”
“Then what does she say?”
“She cannot take the rites. It conflicts with her religious beliefs.”
“Really?”
“She is deeply convicted in this. She would prefer to die than to go through with apotheosis. She believes it is a sin against God.”
“She prefers to return home and die than to stay here with you, the one she loves?”
“It’s not as simple as that, Krishna. She believes it is not a choice for her to make. Her people are Purists, deeply convicted. And she doesn’t truly believe in death, not in the sense that we do. She believes that there is an afterlife, and she believes that the kingdom of God awaits her after she dies. To try to convince her otherwise, I can tell you, would be a lost cause. She has very strong convictions.”
“I should say so. We offer her immortality, a place in a high house, comfort, wealth—love even—the love of our brightest son, and she would rebuke all of this on a religious principle?”
“I don’t think principle is quite the word for it, Krishna. But she is willing to risk death to return home, and the cost of getting her there is ...” Erron paused and shook his head. “That’s why we discussed bringing the matter to you. I could not manage this without some help.”
“No. I don’t suppose you could. You would have to be an Odai to have access to the house’s resources. And to hide an expense that large? That might be difficult for the Archon herself.”
“It’s not just currency. There is more.”
“I’m sure there is. You probably don’t know the half of it yet, Erron. I don’t see how you could.”
“They are still trying to work through the details, Terrintine and Onager. The starting place is that Onager will receive Tyritha’s gene serum.”
Krishna’s eyes got wide. “You’re not even dealing with an Odai, Erron? A commoner? Are you mad?”
“Terrintine is, yes. He’s taken the rites. It’s Onager. He was sanctioned. He’s an old man now, approaching death.”
“Sickly?”
“I don’t think so, just old.”
Krishna shook his head. “Oh, Erron. They say this, though, about love. It makes people do crazy things. This is beyond anything I’d have imagined.”
“This isn’t about love, Krishna. It’s about doing what’s right. I don’t want her to go. You said it yourself. Why would I send her away to never see her again if it was about love?”
“If you didn’t love her, you wouldn’t be entertaining this insane notion of sending her back, brother. You’d put her in her proper place here. You’re only listening to her ridiculous ideas about gods and afterlives and sins because your mind is clouded by the way you feel about her. So, yes, it is about love.”
“That’s possible.”
“No. It is so. If this were Kira instead—the Sepp the committee would’ve chosen for you—and Dreima had wronged Kira, as you say she’s done to Tyritha, how far would you go to set it right, little brother? Would you risk your life and your position to help Kira?”
Erron took the question as rhetorical, merely shaking his head.
“I figured as much. So we need to proceed with the understanding that your judgement is not clear when it comes to Tyritha. I’m not saying that she’s being deceptive or manipulating you. I don’t know how much she even has that in her. I think she’s being earnest by telling you what she believes and expressing her true desire to go home. But I’d like for you to think this through.”
“I’ve been trying.”
“And what have you thought about afterward, Erron? If you succeed, what happens next? If you fail, what then?”
“It’s hard to say. If something like this had happened before, I’d have a point of reference for what the consequences might be.”
“Not good. I can tell you that much,” Krishna’s eyes were wide, his arms open, his entire bearing animated as though to accentuate the point. “Do you suppose Dreima would take this well?”
“I believe she will be furious.”
“Brother, they don’t have a word yet for what Dreima will be. Wrath and fury don’t even begin to cover it.”
“Tyritha suggested as much.”
“She’s a fair bit more aware than you, I’d say. And that is only the beginning. The peoples in the Battery aren’t even supposed to know of our existence. If you send a girl we’d taken back to them, what do you suppose the reaction will be in the governing board here in the capitol?”
“I suppose they might treat it like a threat.”
“Yes, an existential one. Do you suppose they’d leave Tyritha alone? Just let her go back to Heinan to live out her days happily? Take the chance that she’ll keep our secret? Or do you suppose they’d spin up a contact mission for the explicit purpose of tying up that loose end? How exactly do you assess our people’s sense of self-preservation, Erron?”
“Now that you put it that way, I’d expect something approaching the latter option.”
“Yes. I would as well. So you see, brother, what she asks of you is a childish thing, every bit as much a fantasy as her talk of gods and heaven. Tyritha cannot go home. She would be in danger every minute of every day until she was dead, as would her family there.”
“I suppose that’s true.”
“And that is to say nothing of what happens here. To you. To our family—the shame of it. This man you are associating with—the one from the contact group—perhaps you should ask him how it’s been living with the mistakes he made along these lines. These are the most serious crimes against Alysida I could even contemplate.”
“There is truth in your words, brother. You’ve given me much to consider.” Erron sat quietly with his hand on his chin before continuing. “Even with all of that being true, Krishna, there are still some truths that cannot be changed or erased. A grave wrong has been done to Tyritha and her family by our family. And it remains true that she would prefer to die than to be altered by apotheosis. To her that means existing in a state of sin against God indefinitely. She will not allow it. And she is very much afraid of how our family will react to that. She is afraid of how Dreima will react.”
“She is right to be afraid.”
“So perhaps love did play a role in my ability to see these truths, but it is not merely out of love that I am trying to rectify the wrongs Dreima has done to Tyritha. I act as much to prevent any further wrongs against her.”
“Brother ...” Krishna replied before shaking his head and going quiet. He leaned back and put his palm over his forehead.
“I don’t know exactly what I’m going to have to do, Krishna, or the cost, but I know something must be done. To force Tyritha to stay and undergo the rites would crush everything beautiful about her. I think I too would rather die than do that. What sort of life would mine be then?”
“I shall have to think on it, little brother. This is too much. There are countless angles to consider. Dreima and her damned schemes. I just ... Do not ...!” Krishna turned back toward Erron and pointed a finger directly at his face. “Under no circumstances are you to meet with those Terrintine scoundrels again until I’ve thought this through fully, Erron! Your word.”
“You have it, brother.”
“I mean it.”
“I do as well. I’ll never break your trust.”
Krishna looked genuinely troubled. He was deep in thought.
“Speak to no one outside this space. I’ll try to make sure we have the opportunity to talk again while MeiKasse is out. Do not trust anyone.”
“Just Tyritha alone. This has been our secret until now.”
Krishna exhaled. “Go and get some sleep. I shall sleep on it too. Never a hint of trouble your whole life, Erron, and now this? I guess it’s safe to say you’ve been holding it all in reserve.”
“Thank you, brother,” Erron said to Krishna as he stood. “I’m grateful for your trust and guidance.”
Erron began to walk toward the house again, thinking that Krishna had merely nodded back to him in the dim light of the capitol evening. As he was nearing the door, though, he heard Krishna snapping his fingers at him, so Erron stopped and looked back.
“I am happy to give both to you, Erron. Never forget that.”
Erron nodded and stepped back into the Villa Arnur.