Chapter 26
Twenty-Six
ANTIMONY
“I do my best work in the encores.”
—Frances Brown
In the queens’ hive on Johrlar
ARTIE WAS STILL SHAKING SARAH when she opened her eyes and started to scream.
The whiteness overwhelmed her irises and sclera rapidly, getting brighter by the second.
She sat up, clutching her head. Artie didn’t let go of her.
Instead, he pulled her close, holding her against his chest. He wasn’t touching her skin, but it was still a risky thing to do.
Then the other four bodies of the collective started screaming. The one who’d been already awake and conducting the scene clutched the sides of her head, doubling over, but managed not to join the cacophony.
“What’s happening?” I yelled, trying to be heard above everything else.
“I’m helping,” Mark yelled back, the glow in his eyes dying back down to normal levels of frosted white. He shot a sidelong look at the shrieking queens. “Maybe a little more than I intended to!”
“Mark!” I yelled.
He shrugged. “You said you wanted her back!”
One of the queens stopped screaming and started to sob.
The Kairos guards moved toward her, helping her out of her bed, and she latched on to one of them, wrapping herself around him and babbling, “Collate, civic assistant, service. Allow me to perform my function, please. Please, I just want to perform my function. Let me do what I was made for. Let me go home.”
Another of the queens stopped screaming. She looked frantically around. “You’re not my sisters,” she said. “Where are my sisters?”
The queen who’d been clutching her head straightened. “We are your sisters!” she said, loudly. “We are! Give up this nonsense!”
“Imposter,” snarled the other queen. Her eyes flashed, and the first queen flew across the room to hit the wall.
“I think their collective is collapsing,” said Sam.
Sarah stopped screaming and clutching her head, wrapping her arms around Artie instead, burying her face against his chest. I couldn’t see whether she was crying.
But I could feel the moment when her static resumed, as loud as ever, audible even through the muting effect of my anti-telepathy charm.
I didn’t take it off. Hearing a queen through the charm was like feeling lava through heat shielding; the fact that it wasn’t knocking me over meant I was still getting enough of the benefit to be worth it.
A third queen stopped screaming and sat up, looking around the room with wide, clear eyes. One of the Kairos guards moved to her side.
“Engineer?” he asked.
She looked up at him and nodded. He extended a hand to help her up.
“My Eldest Living would like to speak with you about the establishment of a new treaty, and a new collective.”
She took his hand, allowing herself to be pulled to her feet. She looked around at the rest of us, frowning when she reached Collate and Sarah. “Yes,” she said faintly. “A new collective would be … kinder. I will speak with your Eldest.”
The last remaining queen in her bed stopped screaming, but didn’t open her eyes. She didn’t breathe, either. The queen who had taken the guard’s hand looked at her and sighed.
“Singularity is a burden,” she said. “Death can be a gift.”
Sarah took her face away from Artie’s chest and leaned back, looking up at him with wide eyes, dark eyelashes clumped together by tears. “Artie?” she whispered, and it was such a fragile question that I feared any answer but the truth might break her.
“Yes,” he said, and leaned down, and kissed her.
For him, it had been less than a day since their first kiss.
For her, it had been eight years since their last one.
She clung to him as tightly as she could, and for once she didn’t shy away from skin contact with another person.
Watching her wrap herself around him really drove home how much she normally held back with the rest of us, how tightly she kept herself inside her self-imposed boundaries.
Engineer turned to look at Mark. “You are … something new,” she said. “I was unaware a male could survive the adult instar.”
“I wouldn’t have if Sarah hadn’t insisted on getting me proper medical care,” he said, gesturing toward my entwined cousins. “I owed her this. Now we’re taking her home.”
“One of the two originals of this collective is dead. The second may soon join her.” Her eyes flicked to the queen who had been flung into the wall.
“Another is unstable, and should never have been assumed into this collective. She survived the deaths of her sisters. She should not have. I will not have her. Only two of us will remain, if you take your Sarah. Two is not a collective.”
“I have…” Collate coughed. “I have two others I lived with before my apotheosis. I am sure they would welcome my return.”
Sarah finally stopped kissing Artie and turned toward Collate. “Fetch and Carry,” she said, her voice thin but carrying. “They’re in custody at the administration building, for helping me.”
Collate frowned. “That will need correction.” She looked to Engineer. “If we offer, and they accept, I would lead them through apotheosis. I would bring them home to me.”
“Four is a sufficient base for a collective,” agreed Engineer. She looked to the Kairos. “We will negotiate with your Eldest Living.”
“And me?” asked Sarah. “Am I free to go? Are we … are we all free to go?”
“There is no cause to keep you any longer,” she said. “Your crimes, such as they are, are forgiven. Leave us, and do not return.”
“So that’s it?” asked Mark. “We can just leave?”
Engineer looked at him. “Would you prefer something more complicated?”
“Well, no, but I—”
“You are a unique and impossible thing, a cuckoo king. Be grateful we do not choose to keep you for greater examination. The mathematics which make you must be incredible.”
Mark visibly backed down, even taking a step away.
Arthur, who was no longer clinging to me but had yet to let go of my arm, matched Mark’s movement with his own, moving toward the queen they called Engineer. “What about me?” he asked.
“What about you?” she replied.
“Am I—do I get to exist? Is this body stolen? Are we going to have to do all this over again when its original owner comes looking for it?”
“Ah,” she said, understanding. “The Kairos boy who was born to that body drowned in the sea. He sank so far that he was washed away, and we found the empty vessel in the tide. It was taken then, and kept against future needs. Why? Do you not like it? We have others.”
“It’s all right,” said one of the Kairos guards. “The timing would not have taken him if he were not meant to go, and an empty house prefers an occupant. We will not demand your skin’s return.”
“Way to make this sound even creepier,” muttered Arthur.
“Thank you,” I said hurriedly. “Thank you for giving back my cousins. All three of them.” Uncle Ted was definitely going to be surprised when we got home and he found out he had two sons now, but that was a problem for later.
“I’m not even the right species,” said Arthur.
“Complain later, look grateful and leave now,” I advised, catching his arm.
Sarah was still holding on to Artie—I wasn’t sure she’d ever really let him go again.
Sam had dropped down from whatever chaos he was causing and was now planted firmly behind Mark, ready to whisk him out of danger if needed.
“You can go now,” said Engineer.
She looked at us all, and her eyes flashed white, and the whiteness was all there was, and we were no longer there.
We were somewhere else.