Chapter 57
In Which a Star Is Falling from the Sky.
The round, foreign structure descended from the heavens like an instrument of God.
It landed in a wash of light and flame, turning the night briefly into day. Four legs unfolded from the pod, sinking into the sand, and straightening the ramp that unfurled like a tongue.
A construct. But no—this was metal, not wood. This was . . . actually, I didn’t know what this was.
Feeling like I walked through a dream, I lifted the limp weight of Merulo and mounted the ramp, flinching at the hollow clang of my footsteps.
Inside: a ring of seats, harnesses falling from their shoulders. Lights blinked on, blinding me. When I could bear to open my eyes, I saw illustrations lining the walls of small figures finagling themselves into the seat-straps.
“You first,” I said to Merulo—though, being unconscious, he neglected to respond.
My hands came away wet from securing him into his partitions.
I’d barely strapped myself in when the hatch snapped shut, and with it, my last view of Larnia. Before I could shout at this, acceleration struck. A terrible weight pressed on my shoulders, sinking my eye-jellies deep into my skull. Every breath took a struggle.
Then, it stopped.
I was still gasping in recovery when the hatch slid open to reveal, not peeping Martian visages, but Hydna.
“Hy—”
“Shit.” Hydna ducked into the pod, filling it with her bulk, and beelined to her brother.
Her calloused hands fluttered over the crushed prosthetics that dangled like windchimes from his shoulder and hip.
Clamping her jaw tight enough to spasm, she dropped into an adjacent seat, nearly tearing the harness in her haste to secure it.
“GO!” she roared to the pod, and it did.
Once more, force peeled back the skin of my face.
It grew, and grew until it was too much to bear—then, in an instant, it abated.
Replacing it was a sense of weightlessness.
Not just a sense; I floated in my seat, with only the harness keeping me in place.
“AUGH!” I cried, and watched as saliva drifted from me in tiny, pretty bubbles.
It distracted me so thoroughly that I nearly missed Merulo’s last breaths.
Those last gasping intakes—like he sucked air around some hidden obstacle. I could tell, even as Hydna freed herself of the straps and pounded at his chest. I knew the finality of it.
Merulo was dead.
It barely breached my awareness when the door slid open again, and a glittering horde of metal floated in to snatch away his corpse. Dimly, I heard my own voice, painful in its volume, overlaying a second, far calmer voice that issued nonsense words.
There was a wrench, as weight re-established and my feet slammed into metal flooring. Then I was following Hydna, without the memory of having unstrapped myself from the transport wall.
We passed into a corridor, and I sat. From that vantage, I watched Hydna seize a hovering contraption, her greed for information overcoming any sense of loss.
She hooked her pointed nails into a crevice, tearing through its shiny surface.
Small metal parts tinkled to the floor around us.
I leaned back against a cool, smooth wall and realized that I was waiting to feel something. Really, anything at all.
Using the organs of the machine she’d taken apart, Hydna assembled something like a small, heated knife. With a cry of triumph, she brought it to sizzle against the wall of our prison.
The burn of a spark against my cheek woke me.
“You can reverse time,” I said. “Merulo did it for me. Go back to . . . to before she hurt him.” I choked on the words. My voice felt hoarse. Had I been shouting?
“My idiot brother is fine. Have you not been paying attention?” She paused.
“Oh, the ship was speaking in Mandarin, wasn’t it?
Damn it, I forgot. Well, if it’ll get you smiling again, I’m sure the ship’ll let you peek at him.
We’ve been getting along great.” She patted the metal hull she’d been eviscerating, and from somewhere overhead came a distinctly pleased beeping.
There was whirring, like that of a horribly fattened fly, as another metal construct flew down the hallway.
It opened its gut and shit four small beans into Hydna’s outstretched hand.
To my disbelief, she inserted two of these in her ears, then held the other two out to me.
I didn’t have the energy to protest, instead cramming the cold objects into my ears in self-violation.
“There,” came a bouncy voice of indeterminate sex.
“It took me a few minutes to break down your language, but now we can talk properly. I’m the standard mining ship you’re aboard, SMS Lunatic Freak.
No need to respond aloud, you can vocalize in your throat without letting the sound escape.
Sound just clutters the air, don’t you think?
When you meet the crew, I’ll play your translations in their ears, and vice versa.
With no delay! Isn’t that amazing? Hey, do you happen to know any other languages?
Even scraps. I can use them to fill gaps when referring to technology.
Hydna knows historical Mandarin, what a clever and beautiful dragon she is, but you haven’t shown any signs of comprehension. ”
“English.” Hydna’s lips moved silently as her voice sounded in my ear. “We’ve been teaching him the English names for things. You can use that to plug the gaps.”
“I want to see Merulo.” I attempted to line my voice with steel, but it still quivered.
There was a pause, in which Hydna resumed her excavation of the wall, peeling back a frightening bulk of metal to expose nested wires.
On the opposite wall, a door slid open. I walked through it on unsteady feet, into a sunny wash of light. My ears vibrated with the droning of machines.
Merulo lay on a slab in the midst of them.
They’d disposed of his robes—which made fury surge in me, unexpectedly—and had draped him in a girlish shift that tied at his neck.
Merulo’s colouring had improved, a trace of pink returning to his lips, and even his hair looked . . . had the ship styled it?
The machines buzzed around his stumps, fixing them with what looked to be metallic attachment points. I smelled burnt skin, and the fresh rust of blood.
More blood entered him, snaking red through tubes that speared his arm. “Is that human? He’s a dragon, you’ll . . . dilute him! Or something.” I spoke out loud, refusing to play the ship’s game.
“I can’t suck it back out,” came the voice at my ear. “But if the other dragon would like to offer herself as a blood-bag, that’s easily done.”
I shoved a floating machine aside to reach Merulo. My hand grasped his. He felt warm, and further heat emanated from the legless table he lay on.
The ship had done a better job of caring for him than I had, with my collapsing and self-pity. Abruptly, the anger left me. “Thank you. Nothing made you help us. But you still . . . Thank you.” With a free hand, I rubbed at my constricting throat. “Can I stay with him, please?”
One of the machines bumped against my rear. “Sit,” the voice instructed, and I did. Only the frantic increase in buzzing betrayed that it now held a man’s weight.
The door must have closed, for I no longer heard Hydna’s banging. “What’s that?” I pointed at thin rectangles of red, leaking through the sorcerer’s shift above his abdomen.
“His guts were a mess. I fixed them, just a touch. It should help him process nutrients.”
I tried to envision a non-bony sorcerer, and failed. “You can do anything at all, huh. You’re . . . you’re a super-computer, aren’t you?” The machines in the room purred, which I took as assent. “Back in our world, you’d have been a dragon. Like Merulo and Hydna. No wonder you’re so capable.”
“I may as well be a dragon,” said the voice. “I fly! My hide is near impenetrable! And did you know, I can even breathe fire when I like?”
“You’re wonderful.” I yawned, the table’s warmth rising through my arms. “All dragons are. I haven’t met a single one who isn’t brave and brilliant, even . . .” Even Domitia, who had put my sorcerer in his current state. Who had burned herself alive to deny Merulo his dreams.
The room’s light dimmed, as if sensing my exhaustion. “Rest now, if you like,” said the ship. “You, and your sorcerer. We still have a way to go before we reach the moon.”