For the first time since her earliest resurrections, Eseld prayed to something other than God’s empty throne among the ashes of heaven.
She prayed to Telokopolis.
Eseld was alone in the bunk room, with only her own denuded skull for company; Cyneswith had departed some time ago, though Eseld was uncertain how much time had passed. She had been dozing for hours, lingering on the periphery of sleep. The meagre lights were turned down low. Each bunk seemed a vault of shadows, extending off into grey infinity. The confined air was filled with the soft sounds of slow breathing; the saint’s disciples filled the other bunks, doing their best to follow the saint’s commandment of rest before the trial ahead. Beyond their chorus of shared breath, beyond the hull, beyond the tomb, the hurricane still raged on. But Eseld no longer felt as if the storm wept inside her own head.
Her mind felt as empty as the naked skull pressed to her belly, like the world itself would be, once the storm had passed through and scoured clean the rot and the ruin, ready for the green shoots of a spring that would never come.
Eseld lay on her back, staring at the underside of the next bunk up, and filled her empty mind with prayers to Telokopolis.
Her petitions felt weak, no matter how she phrased them: ‘Please protect the saint and her disciples and myself through the flight we must endure’; ‘Armour us with your walls against the devils and demons who seek to hunt us’; ‘Grant this pitiful flesh the protection of your regard’; ‘Please, please, please, please.’
Eseld moved silent lips over the words of a dozen variations, but they all felt wrong, as if the thing to which she prayed did not speak her language. When praying to God, in her mortal life, she had done well enough by copying her parents, her priests, the words of others. But she did not know the proper form for addressing Telokopolis. A great lady? A high queen? A loving mother? None of those? Was it proper for Eseld to call Telokopolis the ‘Mother City’, even though she had not been born there, had never walked those streets, and had only the vaguest notion of what the city even looked like? Pira had told Eseld so much about Elpida’s long-lost city-mother, about what it now meant to be a daughter of Telokopolis, and about where the saint and true first-born of the city was taking them, both physically and spiritually. Pira had said we are all now children of Telokopolis, if we wish it so. Eseld did wish it, very much. The promise of Telokopolis was the promise of an end to the cycle of predation and cannibalism. It was the promise of reunion with her dead friends, with all that had been lost, and with that which she had never known she lacked. Eseld knew she should doubt, and she did, for this was not divinity as she had believed of in life — but the benefits were self-evident. The saint, Pheiri, the warmth in which she now reposed, the abundance of food, the banishing of Lykke, all of it!
But Pira had not spoken about Telokopolis in the way one might speak of a true god, so Eseld did not know the right words.
She could ask the saint herself, but her insides cringed and coiled at the thought.
There was little else she could do but pray. She and Cyneswith were still on the periphery of the group, not quite trusted, not quite with the disciples, not yet — but they had not been kept in the dark. Eseld knew what was coming. She had heard Kagami return to the bunk room some hours earlier, to join Victoria in her bunk; the two of them had shared soft whispers, and Eseld had not needed to overhear the words to recognise that Kagami was terrified. The others were catching what sleep they could, because as soon as the hurricane weakened far enough, this whole mobile fortress would have to move, and quickly, with scant hope of avoiding the coming assault.
A dozen things like Lykke. A dozen or more Necromancers. A score or more of demons, hunting this seed of Telokopolis.
So Eseld prayed — not to God, who was surely dead and gone, but to Telokopolis and her first-born daughter, the saint, the monster, the bloody teeth that had torn Eseld’s own flesh, and had her flesh and blood consumed in return. The Commander, the leader, the pilot Elpida.
“Telokopolis, mother city, shining spire,” Eseld whispered as softly as she could, little more than a breath. She tried to picture Telokopolis as Pira had described it, as the crescent-and-double-line symbol showed it — a needle of steel piercing the heavens. But she couldn’t imagine something so tall and grand, not when she’d spent lifetimes down here in the frigid ashes of the world. “Please protect us, please grant us speed and strength. Please gather us behind your skirts. Deliver us from the demons who are coming to hunt us. Please. Please.”
The prayer didn’t feel like it was going anywhere. Then again, prayers had always felt that way. Did Eseld trust Telokopolis? Better question: had she ever trusted God?
Did she trust the saint, Elpida?
She thought about that for a while, and found, oddly enough, that she did. Despite everything. Or perhaps because of everything? After committing the fundamentally necessary central sin that all zombies were bound to, Elpida had found Eseld again. She had found her, and apologised, and fought for forgiveness — or at least for redemption. Had any zombie ever before dared to dream of such a feat?
It was that realisation — not the promises of Telokopolis — which had lifted Eseld from her black pit.
Eseld rolled onto her side to face the back of the bunk, the metal wall touched with scraps of peeling paint. She lifted her own skull and stared into the shadows behind the eye sockets. Should she pray to herself, instead? To this relic of her previous body? Her fingers strayed to the other three skulls lined up at the rear of her bunk, touching the fleshless brows of Andasina, Su, and Mala. Should she pray to her old friends and her lost lover?
Eseld knew she was being ridiculous. If Telokopolis really did exist, then it was a machine-city, thousands of miles away, with a machine-mind that could not hear her praying in silence on her bunk. Or else it was a machine-ghost, lost yet found once again, hidden in the underside of reality forged by the tiny machines that made up the ashes of the world. If it was listening at all, then surely it listened first to its own flesh and blood.
But praying felt right regardless. Eseld closed her eyes and tried one more time.
She prayed to the saint directly, to Elpida, to intercede with her mother. She touched the wall and prayed for the departed. She prayed for Pheiri’s safety, and the safety of everyone within. Finally, she prayed for herself.
Good enough.
Eseld tried to sleep again, but she had slept too much already. She leaned forward to kiss Andasina’s skull, then wriggled out of bed and stood up in the narrow open space in the centre of the bunk room. She carried her own skull with her; she did not want to leave herself behind.
The bunk room was an unimaginable luxury that Eseld still could not quite believe was real — the mattresses, the blankets, the warmth, the security. It was small and cramped, two of the lowest bunks were crammed with equipment and body armour, and there was no question of privacy, but Eseld could not bring herself to care about any of that. She had not slept in true security for so many lifetimes. She had not experienced such abundance of resources since true life, since sunlight and grass and open skies. Here, within Pheiri, for the first time since her first resurrection, she was safe.
She was safe, among zombies who had once eaten her flesh.
The contradiction was impossible to resolve. She did not feel afraid when she looked at the others asleep in their bunks — Pira had made sure of that, had explained in detail — but she could not help seeing their teeth filled with her own meat.
They had killed her and eaten her, and now she was one of them.
Eseld crept the short length of the bunk room, peering at the other zombies. Victoria and Kagami were sleeping together, curtains tugged tight for privacy. Ilyusha and Amina were also snuggled up together, on one of the highest bunks; Ilyusha’s massive bionic tail hung over the side, out in the open, dangling in the air, red tip retracted inside the black bio-polymers. Atyle lay flat on her back on one of the lower bunks, sleeping in all her clothes. Melyn — the little robot with the massive eyes and grey-white artificial skin — was tucked up in a bunk of her own, covers to her chin, surrounded by spare pillows. Eseld had watched Victoria tuck Melyn in, coaxing the machine-girl to much-needed sleep. Those same gentle hands had once peeled Eseld’s former flesh from her abandoned bones, and stuffed morsels of Eseld into Victoria’s hungry mouth.
She looked at Victoria again, through a crack in the flimsy blue privacy curtains. She struggled to imagine that soft, kind, warm face, with blood down the chin from a mouthful of Eseld.
Her skull echoed, empty of hate or pain. The storm inside her had raged itself out.
Eseld didn’t feel the need to put on more clothes before she left the bunk room. She was perfectly comfortable in the tomb-grown grey t-shirt and shorts. Pheiri’s insides were warm as a hearth, the warmest she’d felt in all her afterlives. But she did grab a weapon — a combat knife in a black sheath. She stuffed it into her waistband. She didn’t stop to reason or question why she did that; she did not feel threatened, she simply wanted a knife close to hand.
She cracked the hatch to the crew compartment and slipped through the gap, then eased the door shut behind her.
The lights in the crew compartment were deep and dim, blood-red illumination for Pheiri’s internal night cycle. An irregular black lump was sprawled across one of the bench-seats, between the various pieces of armour and equipment and boxes of ammunition looted from the tomb armoury. The lump was topped by a sliver of pale flesh and a hard metal half-mask painted with jagged teeth.
The sniper — Serin? Eseld was doing her best to learn everyone’s names. She suspected her long-term survival might depend on it. But some of the crew were elusive, hard to know, or short with words. Serin especially.
Serin was either asleep or pretending. Eseld did not fancy waking her, not alone.
Eseld padded across the crew compartment and peeked through the open door to the infirmary, where the lights were harsh and bright. The wounded zombie — Sanzhima? — was still unconscious, perhaps in a coma. At the far end of the infirmary Ooni lay on the other slab bed, fast asleep. Pira sat beside her, holding Ooni’s hand, eyes closed, breathing softly.
An infirmary, here in the ash-choked afterlife. If Eseld needed more proof that this was the way, that Telokopolis was the way, then she could not think of any better sign.
But for now she retreated back into the crew compartment. Where was Cyneswith?
She and Cyn had not been confined to the bunk room, not formally. They had not been kept out of any part of Pheiri they wished to visit. But Eseld had not yet found any reason to explore further than these few chambers. Pira had described Pheiri’s layout, the central spinal corridor which led to a control cockpit, but surely Cyneswith would not have wandered off on her own, purely to explore? Then again, Cyn didn’t understand where she was. Her world-view seemed incompatible with the reality of the nanomachine afterlife. She attributed everything to fairies and magic. She didn’t get it. She was vulnerable.
Eseld ran through a short mental list of who was not present in this rear section of the mobile fortress, and felt a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach.
Eseld had not forgotten the way that Sky had treated Cyneswith, after their shared resurrection. She had not forgotten the possessive aggression, the strange sense of dominance, or the implicit threat that Sky had made so clear.
Perhaps Cyneswith was with the saint and Shilu, and that would be okay. But maybe she was alone in some tiny chamber with Sky, and that was not good.
Eseld fought against the urge to plunge into the darkness of the spinal corridor. She barely knew Cyneswith. Just another tomb-mate, thrown together by chance; if not for the saint and her disciples and the storm, Cyn would not have lasted fifteen minutes out there in the corpse-city. Perhaps Eseld would have killed and eaten her. Another victim, another bottom-feeder, another nobody who would be insane and naked and starving within days.
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But the world was different now. It contained the saint and her chariot, and the possibility of more than mere survival.
Eseld pulled the sheathed knife from her waistband and stepped into Pheiri’s spinal corridor.
The passage between the crew compartment and the control cockpit was an overgrown forest path of dangling wires, ancient computers, broken seats, and jutting remnants of removed machinery, as if Pheiri possessed a hundred internal scars of organ replacement and bionic enhancement. Eseld clambered over a great hump in the decking, and beneath a ladder that led upward into the darkness of a gun emplacement. She passed open hatches that led into tiny compartments — some of which had seen recent occupancy — and other hatches firmly closed and bolted. Her only company on the short journey was the tick and hum of Pheiri’s body, the distant static of the weakening storm beyond the tomb, and her own empty skull hugged tight to her chest.
Eseld wriggled past a kink in the corridor formed by a bank of old computer terminals; sickly green light struggled through thick gloom from just ahead. Was that the control cockpit — this cavern of flickering shadows?
She slowed her footsteps and slipped sideways, into concealment, at the sound of a voice.
“—nothing strange about her body.” That was Shilu, with her flat affect. “I’ve examined her half a dozen times with everything I’ve got. She’s clean. Just another revenant.”
“Uh huh.” A grunt — Sky. “And she did come forward with this. Why tell you if she was trying to hide it?”
“True,” said a third voice, soft and knowing, full of steel. Elpida, the saint, the Commander. “But not until Shilu overheard her first. Cyneswith, can you explain why you didn’t tell us this before?”
Cyneswith replied, voice light and airy as petals on a breeze. “I didn’t think it was important. I don’t know your ways, it’s so hard to tell what matters and what doesn’t. I feel as if I barely know what is happening, even now.”
Eseld peered around the corner of a dead computer console, peeking into the green-washed glow of the control cockpit.
Cyneswith stood, delicate hands folded before her, wearing only tomb-grown greys. Her head was slightly bowed, as if in supplication. She was surrounded, a waif ringed by ogres. Shilu stood at her rear, blocking her exit. Elpida and Sky occupied two seats, haloed and flanked by tangled machinery, by dozens of screens, many glowing with faint green text or flicking through camera views of other places, scrolling and flowing with information from beyond Pheiri’s hull. The space was lit like a cavern in hell, a cold dark place full of unseen terrors.
The cockpit was a technological marvel, proof of the grand and bizarre machine in which the saint held her court. But Eseld could not spare a thought for awe, not when Cyneswith was being interrogated.
Sky spoke again, full of scorn. “I understand this place well enough, it’s not that fucking hard. Stop being obstinate, get your head around it already. We’re dead. We were dragged back from hard-copy engrams somehow. Zombies, Necromancers, so on. And in your case apparently, a direct line to the cunt in charge of this pyramid—”
Shilu interrupted. “That is not what she said.”
“Oh yeah?” Sky snorted. “She said she fucking woke it up. Didn’t she?”
“That could imply anything. Or nothing. We need more information.”
“I’ll imply your information, you big metal cock,” Sky said to Shilu. “Shouldn’t you be able to explain this, being one of their bloodhounds and all? Or are you holding back on us too, rust-head? I bet you fucking are, you—”
Elpida made a chopping motion with her left hand. “Stop.”
Sky gestured at Shilu. “I was just—”
Elpida turned to Sky and was not Elpida anymore, not the saint. Her expression was different. It was the other woman who lived inside the saint, the demon-grinning maniac miracle-worker who had beaten Lykke with nothing but Elpida’s fists, the one the others called ‘Howl’.
“You’re not impressing Elps with this act, you thirsty bitch,” Howl said. “Down, girl. Don’t make me muzzle you. Not yet, anyway.”
Sky eased back in her chair. She looked away, silent.
Elpida straightened back up. The grin vanished, along with Howl. When she spoke, she was Elpida again: “Besides, I think Cyneswith here has another advocate. You can come out, if you want. There’s no need to eavesdrop here, Eseld.”
At the sound of her own name, Eseld froze. She stopped breathing. She fought against the urge to burrow or flee. It was a hard won instinct; in every resurrection before this, to be noticed by well-armed, well-fed, well-augmented revenants was to invite the strong to cannibalise one’s flesh. Elpida’s purple eyes pierced the shadows, digging Eseld from her hiding place. Sky looked up and around, alert and predatory. Shilu just tilted her head, without bothering to look.
Eseld almost turned and ran; but then Cyneswith looked over her narrow shoulder, freckled face framed by feathery blonde hair, eyes wide and wet and very scared.
Eseld shot to her feet and stomped into the cockpit; it was like plunging into the ocean, surrounded by greenish glow from flickering screens. She jammed her knife back into her waistband, stalked past Shilu, and grabbed Cyneswith by the hand.
“Huh!” Sky grunted. “You. Maybe you’re the traitor here. Skulking about like a weasel. How much’d you hear, huh?”
Eseld showed Sky her teeth, nice and sharp. “I’ll bite your cheeks off. Gimme an excuse. Come on. Give me one!”
Cyneswith tugged on Eseld’s hand. She murmured, lips close to Eseld’s ear, “It’s okay, it’s okay, please don’t, please.”
Shilu and Elpida both said nothing. Sky held Eseld’s gaze for a moment, then smirked and made a vague gesture, as if parting cobwebs, looking away. That’s right, Eseld thought, avert your eyes. Sky might be big and strong, but Eseld’s teeth were many and sharp.
“Welcome to the cockpit, Eseld,” said Elpida. “I don’t think you’ve been up front yet, have you?”
Eseld had thought she might struggle to look at the saint, but she didn’t.
Bright purple eyes, long white hair, missing right arm, muscular body still partially encased in armour. Just a woman, a zombie, not glowing with divine power, not haloed by a light from beyond sight. The woman who had killed her, who had killed her friends, who had killed Andasina. The monster who had eaten her flesh and the flesh of her lover. The saint who had saved her, and banished a demon.
Pira had made it clear to Eseld that any attempt on Elpida’s life would not be tolerated. But now, standing before the soiled saint, Eseld felt nothing as clean as anger or the need for revenge. As the storm was dying outside, the storm inside her was already gone.
She had more concrete concerns.
Could Elpida be trusted to understand what was happening here, with Cyneswith and Sky? What would that even mean, to trust a saint with affairs of heart and flesh? To trust the avatar and instrument of Telokopolis, a goddess who Eseld did not yet know?
Elpida smiled. “I would say there’s to be no fighting between any of us, but that would be hypocritical of me. If you must fight, if you and Sky have a problem with each other, then — no teeth, no weapons, no permanent injuries. Understand? And you won’t need that knife, Eseld. I promise.”
Eseld tightened her grip on Cyneswith’s hand. “Of what does she stand accused?”
Elpida raised her eyebrows. “Cyneswith? Nothing. This isn’t a court or an interrogation. She was telling us about something that happened in the gravekeeper’s chamber, while you were first confronting Lykke, just before we arrived. Shilu and Sky didn’t notice it, but apparently you may have been close enough to see it happen. Perhaps you can tell us about it too.”
Eseld frowned. “What?”
Cyneswith tugged on her hand, eyes bright and shining. “Eseld?” she said. “Do you remember, just before Lykke summoned all those other people, when I touched the lady inside the coffin?”
“The gravekeeper’s interface,” Shilu supplied softly. “Just a corpse, wired up to the gravekeeper, so it can speak with a human mouth.”
Cyneswith smiled, almost a giggle. “She looked like a lady to me! Eseld, do you remember what happened?”
Eseld frowned harder, trying to cast her mind back. The fight in the gravekeeper’s chamber had been rendered into a nightmare by the work of remembering, between the stress and the panic and the terrible dark revelation of the saint.
Shilu said, “The gravekeeper would not respond to me. The interface wouldn’t even open its eyes.”
“But it did for me!” Cyneswith chirped like a little bird. “When I saw her face, she looked so lonely, like she was crying with her eyes closed! She looked like a girl I knew, somehow. A girl I’d seen in a dream. So I reached out and touched her! Eseld, don’t you remember?”
Eseld did remember.
Lykke had been gloating and boasting about how she was going to kill them all in such painful and humiliating ways. But Cyneswith had been distracted by the gravekeeper’s interface — that half-corpse of a zombie, plugged into the exposed guts of an upright resurrection coffin. Cyneswith had reached out and cupped the cheek of the interface.
“I … yes,” Eseld said. “I saw it too. Cyn touched the face. The eyes snapped open. It spoke. It said … ”
Cyneswith opened her mouth to echo the words, but Elpida clicked her fingers. “Cyneswith, let Eseld remember. Eseld, what did it say? From memory is fine, even if you don’t get it entirely correct.”
Could Elpida be trusted with this? Could the saint truly be a saint? Eseld saw no other path.
“Crowned and veiled,” Eseld said, dredging the words from memory. “Once again revealed. Do you wish this?”
The words floated upward, to join the lingering static of the hurricane beyond the walls, beyond Pheiri, beyond the world. The cockpit was silent for a long moment. Eseld glanced at the other zombies, clutching her own skull to her chest, and Cyn’s hand in her own.
“At least their stories match,” Sky grunted. “What the fuck does it mean?”
Elpida leaned forward in her chair. “Are you certain that’s what it said?”
Eseld nodded. She held Elpida’s eyes in her own; the saint looked tired, worn out, in need of a dream. “What does it mean?”
Elpida sighed and ran her left hand through her long white hair, like pale seaweed beneath the cockpit screens. “We don’t know. Cyneswith is just an ordinary zombie, like the rest of us. She’s not a hidden Necromancer, or anything else in disguise. Shilu and Pheiri have both attested to that. Why did the gravekeeper respond to her?” Elpida shrugged, then briefly waved the bandaged stump of her right arm, as if she had forgotten it was not there. “We don’t have enough intel.”
“More like why did she do it,” Sky grunted, nodding at Cyneswith.
“Cyn?” Eseld said. “Why did you feel you had to … touch it?”
Cyneswith shrugged. “The masters of time and space, I assume.”
“ … what?”
Shilu said, “Religious culture from her time period. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Cyneswith continued, her brightness undimmed by Shilu’s dismissal. “The masters of time and space! They stand above and beyond the world, and they watch over us, though most of the time they don’t really care. They just watch. I thought they had reached into the world and made me recognise the girl in the coffin. But … ” Cyneswith’s smile turned strange and sad. “I keep trying to remember who she is, and I can’t.”
Elpida opened her left hand toward Eseld. “It could be a meaningless coincidence. It could be that Cyneswith merely triggered the gravekeeper to speak by touching the interface, and the message was not meant for her. Or, Shilu, your suggestion, from earlier? Please repeat it, for Eseld.”
“Mm,” Shilu grunted. “It’s not impossible that the body for that interface was taken from somebody who Cyneswith knew in life, either before or after Cyneswith’s own death. A coincidence, but possible.”
Sky let out a low grumble. “I don’t like coincidences. They rarely are.”
Shilu looked at her. “In a system on this scale, it does happen. Wrinkles are inevitable.”
Sky snorted and looked away, folding meaty arms over her chest.
Eseld returned her attention to the saint, the only one who mattered. “Cyn isn’t under any suspicion, then?”
Elpida shook her head. “No. None at all. Shilu has checked, more than once. Cyneswith, Sky, and yourself, I’m satisfied you’re all just like us.”
“Good.” Eseld pointed at Sky with her own naked skull. “I don’t trust her.”
Sky sat up straight. “Fuck you! Alright then, I don’t trust you either, you little shit. Carting around a fucking skull. This is all a bit convenient for you, isn’t it? You two are already thick as thieves with each other. Now you cover for each other’s bullshit too?”
Eseld ignored Sky, spoke to Elpida. “She’s a killer. And more. She wants Cyneswith for herself.”
Cyneswith squeaked. “Don’t say that … ”
Elpida said, “We’re all killers here.”
Eseld stopped. Her insides went cold. At least the saint was honest.
“But,” Elpida added, “point taken.” She gestured at Sky, then at Eseld. “If you two have a developing personal problem with each other, you either steer clear, or you bring it to me. Understand?” She waited for nods and grunts of acknowledgement, then gestured at Cyneswith. “And Cyn, I’ll talk to you after this, alone.”
“Okay … ”
Eseld tugged on Cyneswith’s hand, drawing her a step away from Sky.
Sky sighed and rolled her eyes. “Why can’t we put these two in front of this ‘gravekeeper’ again? Have her touch it, see if it responds?”
Elpida shook her head. “Out of the question. We’re too close to our departure window to risk another expedition into the tomb. I will not run the risk of leaving people behind. Not again.”
Sky gestured at Shilu. “What if it’s just her. Maybe the blob thing out there too—”
“Iriko,” Elpida said.
“Yeah. Shilu and Iriko. They can take Cyn, have her touch this thing’s face again, then come straight back.” Sky looked at Cyneswith, but not at Eseld. She spread her hands in her lap. “No objections, right?” She looked back at Elpida before Cyn could answer. “Commander? You still opposed to that?”
Elpida did not answer right away, watching Sky’s face.
Hesitation? Or suspicion? Eseld couldn’t tell.
Cyneswith opened her mouth with a quiet click of her lips. Eseld knew exactly what she was about to say — she was about to volunteer. So easily swayed, so easily led. So easily eaten up by the big bad monsters who lurked in the dark, or the ones who sat in warm rooms and didn’t seem like monsters at first.
Eseld squeezed Cyneswith’s hand, hard and tight and sudden, to grind the bones of her fingers against each other. Cyneswith’s words died in her throat, strangled by a muffled gasp of pain. Eseld was careful not to look at her, not to give away what had happened. Sky and Elpida were too focused on each other. Shilu saw, but Shilu was wise and kind, Shilu had fought Lykke first, without the power of the saint to ensure victory. Shilu would understand. Shilu would say nothing.
Cyneswith glanced at Eseld with a sheen of tears in her eyes, a confused question on her lips. Eseld ignored her, loosened her grip, and prayed to Telokopolis that Cyn had gotten the message — or at least that she had been delayed for long enough for the saint to make the right decision.
“No,” Elpida said to Sky. “Once again, it’s too close to our departure window. We have under two hours, and that’s including the time to distribute surplus supplies and reach the gates of the tomb. No more expeditions.”
Sky raised her hands in easy, lazy, mock surrender. Cyneswith gently pulled her fingers from Eseld’s grip, rubbing them with her other hand. Eseld let her go.
“Now,” Elpida was saying, “you all need to go back to sleep. Get some more rest. It might be a long time until we can rest again, understand?”
Sky waved a lazy, two-fingered salute. Cyneswith nodded her fluffy head up and down, smiling at the Commander.
Eseld turned away from the saint, wondering why she had helped Cyneswith at all, wondering why she cared so much. She barely knew the girl — and Cyn wasn’t a girl, anyway. She was a grown woman, a few years older than Eseld by the lines of her face and around her eyes.
But something compelled Eseld, something she had not experienced in too many resurrections, too many pointless deaths in the churn of god’s leftovers.
She wanted to protect Cyn from Sky, from that predatory gaze and those grasping hands.
Eseld had to, because the saint seemed blind to it.