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  “That’s a good idea,” the second guard said. “We’ll notice him trying anything that obvious and be able to stop him before he does himself any serious injury.”

  “I say if he dies, so much the better,” the first guard said. “He’s ugly. If these are the aliens everyone’s so desperate to own, I don’t see why.”

  “No one’s asking your opinion,” the Surgeon said. “Take him back and follow my instructions. Don’t try to improve on them, either.”

  “And if Deputy-East asks for him again?” the second guard asked.

  The Emperor tensed.

  “Tell him to come talk to me,” the Surgeon replied. “I don’t think light use will damage the creature, but that was before he became violent. I’ll advise Deputy-East on the situation personally and save you the trouble.”

  “Thank you,” the second guard said, rueful. “He’s a very easy male to get along with until you need to tell him something he doesn’t want to hear.”

  The Surgeon snorted. “That’s every male. Especially around here. Go now. And be careful with this thing. For better or worse, it’s valuable property.”

  They manhandled him off the table and not all his writhing freed him. But he was proud of biting and tearing at what few bits of hide he could reach, even if it seemed to accomplish almost nothing. If he stopped fighting, he would have to live with the situation and he could no longer do that. Particularly having heard the Surgeon’s off-hand comment about the possible permanence of his head injury.

  What if the fog never lifted? If that was preventing him from the Change…

  No. He could not accept this life. He would die first. They might keep him from battering himself to death on a force field, but at some point their vigilance would falter and he would be ready.

  They returned him to the slave annex and marched him down the ramp. His memory of this part of it was hazy, though he knew he should remember being here: the round walls were familiar. Had he been forced to wait here? Was his recall deteriorating? He tried not to panic as they dragged him amidst the pillows. The depressions in the cushioned floor for nests would surely have made an impression, and that second ramp led upward… toward sunlight?

  He thought he remembered sunlight.

  The guards shoved him forward and left him there, in the silence. He immediately turned and tried to follow them, and was repelled at the edge of the room.

  So it was true. They had chipped him like a beast. Had not even bothered to register his unique biosign, which would have required work that a chip didn’t—the chip came trackable and assigned to inventory in some database, needed only implantation. Like… a prized possession in someone’s art collection. Or like materiel in some Naval warehouse, to be processed by Logistics….

  The Emperor made a fist and slammed it against the wall. The pain jarring up the bones shot all the way to his elbow and he shuddered, resting his brow against the stone. From there it was a short distance to the floor, and he stayed there, folded in on himself, hand slowly spreading, digging against the surface of the wall.

  Nothing belonged to him anymore. Even his memories of the Queen and the Ambassador had been sullied with the filth of this shape’s violations. He let his hand fall over his head, and though he refused to weep he felt the tears accumulating along the edges of his lashes. His nose and eyes burned, and the pain in his chest was, he discovered, muscle tension from his refusal to cry.

  Was there no end to this?

  He slept, he thought. When he woke again, the lamps were dimmer and the light coming from the exterior ramp brighter. And his senses were not entirely dulled, because it was a noise that had brought him from unconsciousness. Two people on the interior ramp. His shoulders clenched, but he remained where he was. If they were coming to take him back to Deputy-East….

  But it was not the Chatcaava, but the human and Hinichi slave from the garden. At the sight of him, the human exclaimed, “Oh…!” And reached a hand toward him before she halted herself. She said, softer, “Survivor? Can I approach?”

  How stunning it was to be asked permission. How stunning that he had never expected in his previous life to have to tell people they needed to ask permission. So much he’d taken for granted before. It hurt, realizing it.

  “An… Andrea.” Talking around the need not to cry was hard. It was as if the tears were in his throat first, and pushing words past edged them closer to eruption. “Yes.”

  Her footfalls were deliberate and slow, not at all like the predatory swiftness of the Chatcaava. Crouching alongside him, she set a careful hand on his arm. When he didn’t object, she slowly leaned toward him and turned him to face her. He didn’t want her to do this: to show empathy, to sense his need for shelter. He wanted to stop her and had no heart for it. He had no heart left for anything.

  “Do you know… do you know anything about head injuries? In humans?” he asked.

  Her smile was sad. “A little.”

  “A little,” the Hinichi behind her growled, low. “A little?”

  “Why?” Andrea said, ignoring the other alien.

  “The Surgeon… he said sometimes such head injuries are permanent.” Just saying it made the terror mount. His chest leaped. “Is he correct?”

  “Sometimes,” she said. “Usually, if they don’t kill you right away, they resolve. It might take months, though, for the worst cases. Years.”

  “Years,” he whispered, beginning to tremble. “Do you think… do I….”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t have any instruments that would let me have a closer look. I don’t even know if it works the same for you—is your biology an exact mimicry of your donor’s when you’re in their shape?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, and now the tears were too close to the surface. They were starting to well. “I can’t Change while I’m like this. When I try, I fail….”

  “Oh,” Andrea whispered. “Oh, Survivor. I’m so sorry.”

  He would have been able to handle anything except her compassion. He would never have expected compassion for a Chatcaavan from a Chatcaavan slave. But there was no mistaking the crimp of her brows and lower eyelids, the twist of her lips, the way she met his eyes so fearlessly so he could see that his situation hurt her on his behalf. It was her compassion, too, that guided his head to her shoulder so that when he broke down his face was hidden. The shame of it was so overwhelming he couldn’t bear it, and yet he wasn’t dying. How had the Slave Queen borne it, before she became the Queen Ransomed? How had the Ambassador survived—not only survived, but managed to plan the Emperor’s downfall throughout his own degradation?

  The Eldritch would have said that the Queen had succored him. That the Queen had been help unsought, and unexpected. Wiping his eyes, the Emperor looked up at the alien holding him and felt utterly unworthy of the unanticipated aid he was receiving now in the auspices of the aliens being held captive by one of his own system lords. There was no irony in it. There was, however, a brutal justice in his situation, one that implied that the Dying Air was very much not dead at all, but Living… and like a hurricane, could condemn as well as lift with its winds.

  Over Andrea’s shoulder, the Hinichi was staring at him, wide-eyed, close enough to smell: like evergreens, or something else that made him think of snow-flecked mountains. It was this male who had a hand on the Emperor’s back, because both of Andrea’s were around his waist, holding him fast.

  “I didn’t believe you when you said he was different,” the Hinichi said to her. He had a name, didn’t he? The Harat-Shar had said it.

  “Would it have mattered?” Andrea said. “Our religion tells us to turn the other cheek to our enemies.”

  The Hinichi shook his head, ears drooping. “Jesus-Martyr did, yes. Jesus-Cleanser of the Temple tells us to send the moneylenders from the sacred spaces.”

  “Context is everything,” Andrea said with a faint smile. She looked down at the Emperor. “A little better?”

  “No,” he s
aid. “But yes. I don’t know.” He sat up hesitantly, their hands falling from him. “My head hurts all the time. Crying did not make it feel better.”

  “It doesn’t, usually,” the Hinichi said, rueful. “And the longer the nose, the worse it feels.”

  “Tell me more about the headache,” Andrea said. “Do you have any other symptoms? Spots in your vision? Dizziness? Clumsiness? Slurred speech?”

  He folded his arms over his chest to hide the unwelcome ornamentation, feeling his nakedness in a way he had never in his true shape. “I… lose time, sometimes.”

  “That could be emotional trauma,” the Hinichi said.

  “Maybe,” Andrea murmured. She shook her head. “It’s hard to tell. Every variable on Earth, no diagnostic tools, and an alien biology out of some kind of crazy 3deo film on top of it.” She sighed. “Are you willing to lie down, Survivor? If you could rest quietly, that would help.”

  Could he? “If I lie down, I might…”

  He couldn’t finish the sentence, but he didn’t have to. They had their own memories to guard against. The two of them looked at one another. “We could talk to him?” the Hinichi said. “Does talking interfere?”

  “It can. If it’s a real concussion, he shouldn’t be doing anything mentally strenuous. Under the circumstances, I don’t know if we could keep him from it. Particularly if he’s going to start developing post-traumatic symptoms.”

  “Start?” the Hinichi said, arch.

  Andrea sighed again and touched the Emperor’s head, hand gliding down his hair. He would ordinarily have found the caress insolent but he found he wanted a soothing touch. How had he failed to understand the power of gentleness? “You said you’d help.”

  “I did not! I said I wouldn’t make it worse. But he is the enemy!”

  Andrea shook her head. “Don’t make the mistake of turning them into a monolith, arii. I know how angry you are. I am too. But if we make them into a singular faceless mass, we’ll never learn enough about them to get out of this.”

  “Andrea,” the Hinichi said, his voice low, “We are never getting out of this.”

  “You giving up on your faith already?”

  “No. I’m admitting to the fact that God doesn’t always save our bodies. Our spirits, yes. But these?” The Hinichi plucked at his ribs, pinching the skin so that the dark gray fur rippled. “These are perishable. They’re meant to be discarded. And in some cases, Andrea, it’s better to die for God than it is to live in the Hell other people make for one another.”

  “I’m sorry,” Andrea said to the Emperor. “Here, lie down, head on this pillow.” She fluffed it for him and guided his head to it. “Emlyn and I have been debating religion since we ended up here together. He’s Post-Rapprochement Epiphanic and I’m Second Space Reformation. It’s amazing how many things two Christians can find to disagree on.”

  “Gently and with utmost respect,” Emlyn said, mouth quirking upward.

  “Oh, absolutely.” Andrea nodded. Her smile was a little sadder then. “It gives us something to do.”

  “You believe me to be your enemy,” the Emperor said to the Hinichi.

  “Aren’t you?”

  Was he? “I don’t know.”

  “Do you keep Pelted slaves?”

  “No,” he said. Was he lying by omitting that he had once done so? But he had ceased to keep slaves before the Ambassador’s departure, and he found... he found he did not want to lose the esteem of these aliens.

  “See?” Andrea said.

  “Not a pass.” Emlyn’s ears flicked back. “He might not have been wealthy or important enough to have them.”

  “Were you?” Andrea asked.

  “If I tell you, you may be at risk,” he said. This choice at least was easy. “I will not do that.”

  Emlyn’s ears sagged.

  “You see?” Andrea sounded satisfied. “He really is unusual.”

  “Is the Worldlord your enemy?” the Emperor asked. “Do you know… they are saving me for him. The Harat-Shar… she said one of your number was frequently away, and unwell. Is that his doing? What…” He hated to ask, but: “What should I expect?”

  The two exchanged glances. Andrea sighed. “Get me the brush, arii?”

  Emlyn shook his head and pushed himself upright. There was a basket of grooming tools in the corner; there had been similar ones in the imperial harem which the Emperor had never paid attention to. At least, not until the Ambassador had demonstrated there was a pleasure in brushing the Queen’s hair. He had thought of it as taking particular care of his Treasure… it had not occurred to him to think of it as something done to strangers until the males here had subjected him to it. Now he tried not to cringe as Andrea took the brush from the Hinichi and started using it on him.

  Except her strokes were gentle. It was novel to have a mane that was not interrupted by horns. Less fraught, the care of it. Like so much about being an alien, it was gentler. He tried to hate it, and didn’t have the energy. He wanted only to exist in this moment, where he was not being hurt.

  “The Worldlord is… weird,” Andrea said finally.

  Emlyn coughed.

  “That’s the best way I can think of putting it,” she said. “Dominika must have told you about Simone. Simone’s his personal pet. She really is sick, but I’m pretty sure she was always sick. Maybe with one of the genetic disorders that are holdovers from the Pelted’s engineered origins. If so, she’s never going to get better, and as an alien trophy she’s… not very convincing.”

  “She’s frail and sick and she’s going to die in a few years,” Emlyn said frankly. “Nothing’s going to change that.”

  “But she wasn’t getting worse as fast as she should have been. The way she should have been if he was brutalizing her. I don’t know what they did together up in his room, and she wouldn’t talk about it. Except to say that she slept a lot.” Andrea pushed the brush through his hair again. “That was before she stopped coming down to the kennel. Now I don’t know how she is or what he’s doing with her. So... there’s that.”

  “But he’s raped you and Dominika,” Emlyn growled.

  “Yes,” Andrea said. “But not Emlyn. And he didn’t kill Emlyn, which I guess is unusual. I hear most Chatcaava don’t keep male slaves.”

  “No,” the Emperor murmured, frowning a little.

  “So the truth is I don’t know what he’s going to do with you,” Andrea said.

  “But I wouldn’t expect indulgence,” Emlyn said. “He hasn’t raped me but I get beaten regularly if I make a single misstep. And missteps here are things like ‘you didn’t respond quickly enough to a command’ or ‘you let your anger show in your eyes’.”

  “Balanced against that,” Andrea said, still brushing the Emperor’s mane, “he lets us have the run of the garden. And this room. We sleep in the kennels, but they don’t lock the doors on ours the way they do yours.”

  “They think you’re going to run away again.” The Hinichi had sat, was rubbing his hands on his knees. “And don’t think the garden is any great gift.” He lifted his hands, palm out, and showed them to the Emperor. “You see these? I used to have claws.” He strained and the Emperor could see the tendons in the fingers moving. “Gone. They ripped them all out, feet and hands.”

  Andrea nodded. “I’m not going to say they’re good people. What they’ve done to us is evil. But compared to what Manufactory-East does to his slaves….”

  “The kitchen and cleaning staff talk about him all the time,” Emlyn agreed, baring his teeth. “He’s bad even to his menials.”

  That was peculiar. The Emperor curled tighter, twitched as Andrea reached past him and brought a blanket up around his shoulders. That made some tension in him ease. He’d been cold, then.

  “And what he does to his slaves is unspeakable,” Andrea said. “The staff say he uses them up.”

  “Which is a fancy way of saying he kills them for fun and replaces them with more,” Emlyn snarled.

  The Empero
r found himself in sympathy with Emlyn’s anger. Oddly, however, he liked Andrea as well. He could not choose his companions anymore, so he found it strange that he might find both of them worthy.

  Or maybe he had simply been too arrogant in the past to realize that most people were worthy. He cringed.

  “Deputy-East,” he said, low.

  “Isn’t cruel on purpose, the way Manufactory-East is,” Andrea said. “But he’s rough. I’m surprised he was interested in you, actually… he usually prefers his slaves harder and meaner-looking. He probably won’t bother you again if you didn’t fight him.”

  And he hadn’t, but he’d fought the guards afterwards. Would stories of his sudden rebellion reach Deputy-East’s ears? The Emperor shuddered and lowered his head.

  “I’d say we’d protect you, but we can’t,” Andrea said sadly. “Except maybe through prayer. Which works.” She eyed the Hinichi.

  Emlyn snorted. “Of course it works. But God doesn’t give you what you ask for, Andrea. He gives you what you need. And sometimes what you need is to be martyred so that you can hearten the people who bury your corpse. If you don’t particularly want to be a martyr that’s not very encouraging.”

  “You have to trust in His plan.”

  “How’s that working out for us so far? You’ve been here how many years? I’ve been here just as long.”

  “I trust His plan,” Andrea repeated firmly. “He hears us cry out from our bondage, Emlyn. You have to believe that.”

  “Or?” Emlyn said, tired.

  “Or you go crazy. And what good is that, when what He needs is for us to meet Him halfway when He arrives?”

  Emlyn bared his teeth. “Too late for that. For me anyway. If I wasn’t crazy, I wouldn’t be able to wake up here, day after day, without having a nuclear meltdown.” He looked at the Emperor. “What about you? Do you have a religion?”

  “I think.”

  “You think!” Emlyn snorted. “There you go, Andrea. That’s your problem. The dragons don’t have religion.”

  “We do,” the Emperor said, low. “We have abandoned its tenets in favor of expediencies that please ourselves better.”