Chapter 12
Twelve
SARAH
“I don’t have much. But what’s mine is mine, and if you try to do it harm, well. You’ll learn why I’ve never needed much, either. A lady can do a lot of damage when she’s looking after everything that matters.”
—Frances Brown
In the home of Fetch and Carry, preparing to absolutely lose my shit
“WHAT.”
I was almost proud of myself for how calm I sounded. My mouth was dust and ashes, my eyes were burning coals, but my words? Oh, my words were calm as anything. If there had been a Miss Johrlar competition, I could have won the Congeniality Award.
Right before I shoved it up somebody’s ass. Okay, maybe I wasn’t that congenial.
Annalist didn’t appear to recognize the danger he was in.
“As the physical proof of your transgressions, this Arthur is entirely able to stand trial in your place,” he said.
“He can be brought before a jury, who will consider him in his totality before passing their judgement against you. Of course, in your absence, they will be unable to take your motivations into consideration; he will be judged in isolation, which may or may not be to his benefit.”
“And what happens if they try him and find me guilty?”
“He will be destroyed, of course. The criminal may not benefit from the crime.”
The thought that the courts of Johrlar would consider Arthur to be me attempting to benefit in some way from what happened, rather than the living, breathing punishment for my actions, was almost hilarious.
But Annalist wasn’t laughing, and it was clear from the grave way he was watching me that none of this was intended as a joke.
“No,” I said, pushing my salad aside untasted. “I won’t let that happen.”
He blinked, bewildered. “But your freedom is more important than his survival.”
“Oh? And why the hell is that?”
“You are a queen. He is not even Johrlac.”
“Species is not superiority.”
“But…” He stopped, clearly frustrated. “I believe this is a place where our upbringing differs sufficiently that there is no point in arguing. Please, however, listen as I tell you that some among us have been waiting for a queen capable of challenging the collective for a very long time. Longer than either you or I have been alive. If we are able to bring you into direct contact with the collective, on their own ground, you will be able to challenge them for supremacy, and if you win…” He paused for a moment, apparently lost in the sweet dreams of what would happen if I defeated the collective.
“If you win, freedom for all who they control. Freedom for our continent. Perhaps, in time, freedom for our world.”
I stared at him, resisting the urge to snarl.
It wouldn’t do any good, I knew; it was a reflex I had learned from Istas, and Sam, and the other therianthropes I had been spending time around.
Their instincts told them that snarling at danger would drive it away, and I had picked up on that, and Annalist wouldn’t even be able to read the expression if I tried, and so I just swallowed it, one more hot coal to burn in the banked fire that was my gut.
“I’m not responsible for your freedom,” I said, keeping my voice as tight and level as I could.
“I’m not responsible for anything to do with this damned dimension.
You threw my ancestors out because they didn’t meld properly with your collective, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s the sort of thing that absolves me of needing to give a damn what you want me to do.
I want Arthur back, and I want to go home. ”
“If you go home before your name is cleared, they’ll simply come to collect you again, and we might not be able to release you a second time,” said Annalist. “It was only a combination of luck and timing that allowed us to remove you from custody; expecting the same sequence of events to occur again would be either arrogant or foolish, depending on how we wanted to address the matter.”
“I don’t care,” I said, coldly. “These people have no authority over me. I didn’t fight this time because they took me by surprise.
They won’t take me by surprise again.” I stood, leaving my salad behind.
“I am not interested in solving all your world’s issues.
I am not interested in saving your people.
I want my people, and I want to go home. ”
“If you want to save your people and return to your home, you will need to face the collective and you will need to win, or you will never know peace again.”
Annalist looked at me levelly. “I am offering you a way out of this. I am offering you an escape. If you have any wisdom left in you after your upbringing, you will take what I am offering, and you will utilize it to win.”
I stared at him until he turned his face away.
“Eat your salad,” he said. “If you’re worried for your friend, eat to protect him. You will need calories to keep your mind operating correctly, and you will need every ounce of strength that you can muster to have a prayer against them.”
“Them who?”
“The collective.”
“What is the collective?”
Annalist sighed heavily. “Queens are rare. Too few survive the final instar. It seems less make it through the transition with every year that passes. At the current time, the collective is five queens, no more. It has not been this weak in centuries. You can overcome it with a well-placed strike. You can become the collective, and then you can abandon Johrlar, and our region will have no collective. If a new collective must arise, it will rise according to the old ways, naturally, without a predetermined queen to guide it, and we will be able to determine how we want our lives to be lived, not how we are to be ordered to live them.”
I paused, trying to order this in my mind. Finally, I said, “So you want me to go up against the central hive mind that controls your culture, destroy them, and leave you without anyone at the top of the food chain? Is that correct?”
“Yes,” said Annalist. “That is what we are asking of you.”
I stared at him for a moment, then finally reached for the salad. I didn’t want to sit and eat. I wanted to rush off and rescue Arthur so we could go back to Earth and resume never looking at or speaking to each other. It was a painful penance. It was the one I’d earned.
But at the same time. Annalist was right: I needed to keep my strength up if I was about to get into a psychic battle with a five-person hive mind. There was only one of me. That meant victory was going to be a narrow thing if it was possible at all, and I really did need to be ready for a fight.
I didn’t like the idea of traveling to another dimension to destabilize their government, but the Johrlac had shown that they could reach me on Earth without difficulty, and the collective had shown they were willing to do it.
Worse, they’d touched Arthur. He wasn’t Artie, was never going to be Artie, but he was all I had left of Artie, and for that, I loved him.
For that, I owed him all the protection and comfort I could possibly offer.
When Dr. Frankenstein’s creation woke up, he ran away and abandoned it to whatever existence it could manage without him.
When my creation woke up, I didn’t do too much better.
I ran, as fast as I could, from the stranger with my Artie’s memories.
It was harder on Elsie and the others: for them, Arthur was a stranger with Artie’s face.
I couldn’t see that part. For me, they looked totally different and always had.
The mind was its own thing. But I understood one thing Dr. Frankenstein never did: I understood that running away didn’t absolve me of my responsibility.
Arthur wouldn’t be in this situation if it weren’t for me.
Arthur wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for me.
I had to fix this, no matter how much I disliked what that involved. And if these people wanted to arrest me for crimes I couldn’t possibly have known I was committing, they started it. Whatever happened next was well and truly on their shoulders.
Annalist winced, putting a hand to his temples. Fortunately for me, that gave me the chance to set my salad—still untouched—aside before the wave he was reacting to could reach me.
I had been hit by Johrlac telepathy before.
It had broken upon and overwhelmed me, leaving me stranded in the caverns of my own mind.
This was something different. It slammed down, and I understood why they were all so afraid of the collective, why they were willing to gamble everything on a stranger from another dimension when it meant that there was a chance this overwhelming force would be removed.
It was the mental equivalent of having a weighted wool blanket dropped on my head while it was being carried to the dryer: hot, wet, and absolutely smothering.
I gasped, struggling to breathe through the bulk of it.
If I tried to stand up, I would fall; I was certain of that much.
All I could do was sit frozen, the presence pressing down harder and harder, heavier and heavier, until I thought I would be crushed under its weight.
Be aware, boomed a voice, and I had just enough presence of mind remaining to wonder how overwhelming it would have been if I hadn’t been in a house with dampening fungus in the walls. Fetch and Carry weren’t here. What was this going to do to them?