Parsec

Parsec ended up using seventeen cords of necromantic magic to bind the wyvern: ten alone were dedicated to the delicate movements of its wings. Jackal declined to accompany her on its test flight, so she crawled into the freshly-dug cavity alone. Venera was a weak whisper of encouragement at her shoulder.

The necromancy ran smooth through her hands, like white stones tumbled through cool water. Countless pounds of dead flesh cocooned her, but she felt exceptionally clean and free. Seating herself in the congealing belly, she gathered the invisible cords in her hands and teeth. The wyvern staggered to its feet in a slow, careful lurching motion.

When she sent strings of death-sense up its throat and into its eyes and nose, she found the lay of the forest fairly distinct. She would do no scouting from here, but she could interpret enough to avoid crashing into obstacles—theoretically, that was. This was knowledge unpractised; as she made to flap the great pair of wings, she miscalculated and knocked the edge of one into a tree trunk. Scowling to herself, she maneuvered the body to the side and tried again.

This time, the wyvern launched headfirst into the air—clumsy, but aloft.

Windborne! Venera whispered.

The walls of the wyvern’s body flexed with each wingbeat. They were still going nearly straight up. Hissing to herself, Parsec banked it into a gentler trajectory. The necromancy purred through her wings and down the end of every spine as she circled the wyvern downwards. She marveled at how less strenuous it seemed, compared to flying herself. Although it couldn’t hope to match her speed, it would do well to carry them to Glister.

When she landed—a wobbly landing, she admitted, but without any damage to the carcass nor to herself—and poked her head out of the chest-flap, she saw that Jackal had packed his belongings and was waiting at a careful distance.

“That was all you?” he asked. She still didn’t trust her assessment of human expression, but he looked suspicious and perhaps a touch impressed.

“Yes,” she said. “Climb in.”

“If you’re sure you won’t drop us…” He seemed to have accepted that the necromancy was not a very elaborate trick of illusion.

“When have I ever dropped you?” she asked crossly.

“There’s always a first time for everything.” Grimacing, he edged over the lip of the wyvern’s ribs and shuffled into the belly. He seemed to dislike the texture of the walls and floor, even though Parsec had allowed them to dry out over the course of her excavation.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

He gave her a skeptical look and clutched at his pack, seeing as there was nothing else to hold that wasn’t a jutting piece of bone.

The liftoff was much smoother this time, though Jackal looked very tense despite it. Humming with delight, she sent the wyvern flying south. For a time, there was nothing to do but rest and peer out of the chest-hole as they flew.

“Look!” she exclaimed as the wyvern flew right through a flock of small blue birds. They chirped and wheeled about like little pieces cut from the sky. It was so delightful that she almost felt freshly-fledged again. “Jackal, come see—I believe you will find it pleasing.”

He moved cautiously up to the opening and stuck his head out beside her. “Oh. Very pretty.” He grinned brightly, which was a rare enough sight. Then he leaned out a little further and craned his head around, laughing. “Look, they’re using bits of the wyvern as a perch. It’s like what happens on boats, sometimes.”

“Boats? Which kind?” She’d only seen human skyships from a distance and glimpsed one seaship from even further away.

“The ones I saw were from when I worked on a sea boat. Huge flock of starlings came out of nowhere. I think a storm blew ‘em out to sea. Anyway, they found our boat and landed everywhere—and I mean everywhere, on the lines and the mast and all over the deck, couldn’t walk around without worrying about stepping on them. Must’ve been tired little buggers. I picked one up in my hand and it just sat there, panting for its feathery little life. Captain said it was good luck to let ‘em stay, so we put out some dishes of sweetwater and bits of old bait…didn’t much like cleaning up their mess afterwards, though.”

The rhythm of his words was very beautiful, and she could imagine them precisely. She wondered whether he could have been a weaver of histories if he were born to a Hive instead of to humans. His hair blew in the breeze; he had sounded more wistful and relaxed than she could ever recall.

“Did you enjoy riding on these sea boats?” she asked.

“Well, I wouldn’t say enjoy.” The easy edge left his voice, and his expression became a little fixed. “It had its moments.”

She had misread something, she was sure. Still, it had been very significant of him to offer such a vivid story so freely. Or did humans treat speaking in such ways as a lighter and more frivolous matter, like play-fighting? Regardless, she felt she should tell one in exchange.

“Perihelion showed me a scout’s game when I first came to the Hive,” Parsec said. “We would fly out to the foothills and chase the birds of prey, trying to follow them in their dives. I was the first scout to have caught one in many, many years. I let it go, of course—they don’t make for good eating, and I was so surprised at catching up to one that I dropped it as soon as I caught hold.”

Jackal smiled at her words, but remembering Perihelion and the Hive had brought a sullen ache in chest to life. She fought to keep her spines from drooping.

“I would like to see if sitting on the wyvern’s back is comfortable,” she said, rising from her crouch. “Don’t worry—I will come back soon, and I won’t let it fall.” She flew out hastily.

“Are you sure? Be careful,” Jackal called after her.

Parsec looped up to land on the ridge of the wyvern’s spine. This startled a dozen of the little blue birds, which departed in a great fuss, chirruping shrilly. There, she let her spines sink into a dejected posture as the wyvern flew onwards. Below them, the treetops met the horizon in a vast expanse of green.

Unflightful of you, Venera chided, after some time. Too lost in self. And you are hungry, now?

“I was only remembering,” Parsec said crossly. “Only a little. Alright, then.”

She dropped off the wyvern’s back and flew back into its chest. Jackal was tearing into a strip of dried meat with his teeth. There was nothing inherently worrying about that, she thought, keeping watch on his shadow. He offered her a piece from the packet. She accepted it with a nod and curled up against the flexing wall of ribcage.

Syrup, Venera reminded her, and she took a drop. She was most of the way through her second vial by now, and she would have to arrange tedious matters for more once they reached Glister…

“Are you alright?” Jackal asked abruptly.

“Yes,” she said.

“You sure?” He hesitated. “Because you seemed…are you homesick?”

She sat up with a jolt. “I don’t have a home anymore.”

Neither I.

“You can miss something that’s gone,” he said. “I didn’t even like my birthplace all too much, but I understand.”

Parsec said nothing. It was not silent. The wyvern creaked faintly as it flew, and breezes whistled through the little gaps in its body.

“This wind’s got me thinking about sea days again,” Jackal said suddenly. “I remember one time, really beautiful—the sea was all shimmery green and a bit choppy, and it was full of flying cod. Not the sort of thing our nets were after, but it was a good sight.”

“Are the flying cod different from skyfish?” Parsec asked. It was gratifying that he was being friendly enough to offer another piece of story, but now she felt a stab of guilt for being so silent, and for departing so abruptly earlier.

“They’re much smaller and they swim in water, but they’ve got like, fin-wings on the sides. Looking at one in a bucket, you’d think that they’re only called that because of folklore, but the wind actually takes them gliding. And speaking of skyfish, I did see a lot of those in my birthplace. Some of them are as big as this wyvern, and they’ve got patterns like a painter went over the scales. There’s other stuff out there too. One time, Laila—my sister—hassled me about skimming out west for the sand-ray migration, so I took a day off and we saw hundreds of them flapping over the dunes. I’m glad we went. I miss stuff like that, even if I don’t miss everything.”

Exceptional moments were not always easy to come by, and there were only so many you would receive in a lifetime. Jackal had just handed her three in as many minutes; for a moment, Parsec simply pictured the foreign scenes with admiration. It was understood that one’s stories were to be done with what one wished, but generally a few were shared as acts of generosity. Be it between close connections or through the nodes of an entire Hive, they distributed feelings of peace and wonder, or even fear and knowledge. That unspoken ritual of peering out from behind another’s eyes…it was an odd sensation to be communicating like this with a human.

Human or Hiver, it is all qualia.

Parsec drew her wings close to her body. “Do you know of the shattered lands?” she asked slowly.

“A little.” He frowned, brow furrowing. “Whole different continent, right? Died a long time ago, because of…magic, or wars, or something? Couldn’t pay much attention to those lessons.”

“It is still dying,” she said, and found herself telling him about Almucantar Hive. “We must have been one of the last, I am sure. There were sometimes travelers from many miles away, come to join us because their Titanias had died. We lasted quite long, longer than the humans, but we burned in the end. And then I came here, and I stayed with Glister for a long time. I gave them all my service and now they think me a traitor, a Titania-killer, and I have nothing.”

Not nothing, said Venera.

“I have no more belonging,” Parsec corrected. “Why General Eltanin betrayed us, I do not know and cannot prove in the first place…I will try to convince them with Venera, since the rhythms have turned too far on me. He intends the Hive harm, I know it.” Her spines twitched with unwanted emotion. “You might call me foolish for returning, but they are all I have, even if they will not have me. It is still my responsibility to warn them, even if I should not dare to hope they will welcome me back.”

“I don’t think it’s foolish,” he said. “It sounds pretty noble of you, actually.”

“Hmph,” she muttered. “Not ‘noble’. Only duty.”

“We’re all just out here trying to survive,” he said. “There’s nothing forcing you to go back except yourself, right? You found Venera on your own? I don’t know about you faeries, but to most humans, that kind of loyalty is noble.”

And so I am not wholly gone.

Parsec flattened her spines and changed the topic to a tale of the star-falling season, nights sleeked full of lights as she flew north, following a lonely chain of islands over icy seas before she reached what she now knew to be a small city far north of Ironport. The memories were easier to dwell on when they featured her alone.

She described blue-green and ultraviolet rays fanning across the night instead of her slowing thoughts and faltering wings. She did not mention almost falling into the sea before finding her next half-barren island and hunting scrawny seabirds for sustenance, sucking scraps of meat off the feathers. All that had mattered at the time was the momentum of fleeing. She had needed to get as far away as possible. It had felt like instinct. Survival, not betrayal, for there was nothing she could have done. She succeeded, too: she had found the other side of the world, where green things grew and only dead things rotted. The original rhythms which she had been attuned to could no longer touch her. They’d died alongside everything else. If she sometimes thought Almucantar Hive haunted her like Venera did, only beyond the edge of hearing, then it was only a trick of her mind.

Jackal, perhaps sensing her disquiet, told her beautiful-sounding stories as they landed and made camp: crystal-clear water and still nights coasting through a blackness like void, encountering blooms of glowing jellyfish as they entered a harbour. He too, seemed to be avoiding vast tracts of context.

Parsec felt a pang of sympathy and worse yet, recognition. These were moments like beads of amber, picked from the skins of burnt and fallen trees. He must have his own sizeable field of blackened logs, the way he hesitated at times, carefully threading through his history. She listened to the words gratefully, holding the impressions in her mind and committing them to memory.

===

Jackal asked to stop at a floating township. Parsec almost mistook its distant speck as the top of a hillock, until they drew close enough to see it was an island that hovered well above the treetops. A warren of browned buildings sprawled over its surface, and thin streams of smoke arose from what must be chimneys.

“Is this truly necessary?” she asked, though she landed the wyvern some distance away at his request.

“You’re going to have people chasing you in Glister, right?” he countered. “You should sort out your disguise situation before you get there.”

“Will you find anything useful in such a remote settlement?” she asked dubiously.

“Maybe, maybe not. But I’d like to trade for some fresh food anyway.”

“What’s wrong with rabbit meat?” Parsec asked, feeling a little stung. She’d caught several of the animals and dried their meat by slicing it thinly, then salting and skewering the pieces to the wyvern’s back as they flew. Many of the strips had been nibbled at by passing birds before she chose to sit guard, but overall, she felt it was a rewarding effort that would keep Jackal from growing too magic-hungry and gnawing at his own hands.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just gets tiring after a while. Don’t you faeries ever get sick of eating the same thing over and over again?”

Often, Venera said.

“I am less picky than you,” Parsec said stiffly. “Very well. Go and buy your meats, and seek an illusion if you can.”

He returned at dusk with an armful of paper-wrapped parcels. One contained half a dozen sausages, which they charred over the campfire.

“You need to eat meat more than I do,” she protested, when Jackal offered her half.

“Yeah, but I’d rather share,” he said. “Go on, have some. You can’t enjoy just eating rabbit and random bits of shrubs for days.”

Parsec accepted the plate warily. He seemed ever-eager to offer her food, even expecting her to take cupfuls of soup from his campfire pot without asking first. She was unsure whether going to such lengths of generosity was a human trait, or merely a Jackal one. She still hunted for herself, despite this behaviour. It was never a politeness to lay claim to someone else’s catch.

She sat across the fire and bit into her portion, discerning a mix of pork and finely-ground poultry scraps, chased with hints of sage and fennel and other human-grown spices she didn’t know the names for. It was a nice change from all the rabbit, she admitted begrudgingly. Well, this wouldn’t do—she was no synthesiser, so she must make better use of her scouting skills if she wanted to compete with human cookery. It was important she demonstrate her usefulness if she wished to keep Jackal as a friend and ally. They spoke very amicably now but he still seemed to find the dead wyvern a little distasteful, asking questions about when it was going to start rotting despite her assurances of her power prevent it.

Jackal unwrapped one of the largest parcels after their dinner. It held several curious objects she had never seen before. They were large discs of unpainted wood, carved in crude approximation of a human face.

“They’re masks,” he explained. “Bought them off the dodgiest looking fellow you can imagine. Anyway, you tie them over your face. They’ve only got weak charms on ‘em though, so one of these’ll only last for a couple of days or thereabouts. They also won’t disguise the rest of your body, so I bought these too.” He passed her a long, thick cloak, a pair of woollen gloves, and two mismatched boots.

She recalled a point of human custom. “Will it not seem strange for me to wear such items under a blue and sun-filled sky?”

“There’s all kinds that go to Glister. I don’t think anyone’ll care.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “Actually, we should get you a hairpiece the next time we pass another township. Maybe something like a witch’s hat, too. Witches wear whatever they like, and often discourage being stared at.”

They journeyed on, making swift progress. Parsec’s initial assessment had been correct: keeping the wyvern aloft was only half as tiring as carrying Jackal with her own two wings. Venera’s voice grew stronger as the days passed, recovering from her efforts in that mirrored, in-between place.

Jackal would not speak about his affliction without prompting. Parsec had been content to leave him be, until Venera began placing insistent questions into her head in the form of folding diagrams, marbled with incomprehensible numbers. Parsec began hinting at her curiousity during their evening dice games.

“I went some places I shouldn’t have gone,” he said at last. He stared into the light of their fire, scarcely blinking. “I’ll tell you, if you’ll try to believe me.”

She thought of Venera, of traitors and necromancy. “I find myself believing a great many things these days.”

Jackal took a deep breath and began. He spoke of an unstable realm cradled within the stones of a castle that was a wonder in of itself. The shelves of his so-called Library held an odd resemblance to Orion’s Archival stacks. He lingered on a garden of thorns and a fetid labyrinth seen from afar. He was hesitant to conclude what had specifically invited the source of his affliction, but Parsec was more intrigued by the places he described in a general sense.

Realm-like, Venera murmured confidently.

“It sounds to me like a half-tamed Archive,” Parsec said. “I wasn’t aware humans had such things.”

“Not many do. I think the kingdom’s the only one with anything close to the Higher Library…and they only let the highborn types in.” He paused and met her gaze defiantly. “I didn’t go jaunting just for laughs, you know. But I—if I had to do it all over again, I would.”

Theft was a rare and bewildering activity in a Hive, but Parsec was accustomed to the concept. Her Lieutenants had often muttered about the human affinity for it when describing their duties in the city. Her fellow Hivers mediated many a dispute over mere metal tokens—she was growing more accustomed to understanding their value, though. She’d watched Jackal count his remaining tokens after their township visit. Something about his attentiveness had struck her in its similarity to Elder Pluteum counting parcels of grain as Almucantar had weakened, then later burned.

“Why would you ever wish to endure such a thing?” she asked. “Do you think hardship makes you stronger?” She still believed in the idea herself, though not as strongly as she once did.

“No, it’s nothing like that.” He looked back at the fire. When he spoke, his voice was fierce. “The kingdom wasn’t kind to people like us. After da passed, I could see my ma going the same way. My sister was working so hard and my brother was…going a bad way. Doing stupid things just for the rush of it. Losing his self-preservation. So I lifted a few things here and there, nothing that’d be missed. Sold it for enough coin to bribe us permission to leave, and passage on a skyship. Better they be safe and comfortable in a cottage with a garden and good neighbours, even if it’s without me.”

Humans lived in miniature units of their own, she knew. Was that not like having a Hive, in a way? Very inefficient and very many of them, but as she listened carefully to the tone of Jackal’s words, she assumed the rhythms and connectedness must be similar. Perhaps they had even more in common than she’d thought.

“We will uproot the aponeurosis from your head,” she vowed. “You will return to them.”

He smiled a guarded smile, but it wasn’t without hope. “Thank you, Parsec. And Venera.”

Venera piped a pleased and pure tone. Parsec was glad, even if Jackal could not hear it.

“She says you are welcome,” Parsec said. “She is…singing, a little. It is a shame I cannot imitate it for our ears. But I will try an old battle verse, if you would like to stoke your courage. I learned it long ago, when I helped hunt the Hival centipede.”

“Go for your life,” Jackal said. “I haven’t heard a song in a long time.”

“May we both succeed in our wishes and return to that which we most long for,” Parsec said. She tipped her head to the stars and sang.

“In the shadow of the rains, we begin…”

She beat a rhythm out with her tail and Venera crooned the lower notes over her shoulder. Behind them, the body of the wyvern lay as still as stone.

Jackal leaned forward from across the fire, his gaze attentive. When she finished, he laced his hands together and brought them under his chin.

“That’s a good song. Sweeter than I expected—not weak-sounding, I mean, but for a battle song the tune seemed very…auspicious. Maybe I’m just used to gloomier sounds.”

Parsec rustled her spines, pleased. “Yes! You understand it even without knowing our words. It is meant to be encouraging. Do you sing too? You have mentioned that your old home has a great tradition of songs and musics.”

“No,” he said hastily, looking flustered. “Got no skill for it at all. I wasn’t…well, the scribing and weather magic never did stick with me and I couldn’t carry a good tune to save my life, so that’s how I ended up a salt-kiter.”

“You say that word sometimes—kiter—but you have not explained it to me,” Parsec said curiously. “Apologies if this is a common knowledge. The Titania’s honey weaves a language-magic for us, but I am living off the schismatist Sylvan’s syrup and perhaps his brew is not as good.”

“Not common, sorry,” Jackal said. “Not outside Shadowsong, anyway. A kiter’s a kite-flyer, a person who takes little sand-boats out to the mists. Mostly, we carried spell-packets up into the clouds and loosed them where the Weathermancers and Magicians wanted. Sometimes, we recorded the wind, the lifts and drags—oh you’d know what that’s all about, wouldn’t you? The court folks always wanted to know the changing currents for omens and fortunes, but they’re too scared to risk themselves and no one’s sending Magicians on such little errands. And we did skyfish-fishing when it was the season for it. That’s where the money was, but it’s dangerous stuff.”

“So you are a type of scout,” Parsec said. “I had guessed so. You run so quickly.”

“Have to be able to, in that trade.” He grimaced. “Lots of people fall off fast boats, breathe in the bad mists, latch onto the wrong skyfish. Da died when one of the tether lines twisted ‘round and—erm, that’s what they told me at least.” He looked down at the leaf litter by his feet.

“I am sorry,” Parsec said. It was difficult for her to imagine exuding such discomfort over the death of her makers, whoever they were, but then she tried imagining Perihelion or even Nephele dying and felt a jolt of sympathetic hurt. “It is never easy to lose a close…relation. It is good, then, that you left your needlessly dangerous position and your unjust kingdom. Your own courage has ensured you are safe and alive to return to the rest of your Hive—I mean, your familial unit.”

“Yes…” he said. His voice sounded as if it caught on something halfway out his throat. “That’s nice of you to say.”

“It is merely the truth,” she said, noticing as he blinked a glimmer of water from his eyes.

Venera leaned in, showing her a pattern of furled wings and trembling spines to compare it to. She felt her tail twitch uneasily in response; she would not like Perihelion or any of the other Generals noticing or making remarks if she were in such a state. And indeed, she had borne the discomfort of being visibly upset for several days after Venera’s death.

“I remember another song,” she continued. “Would you like to hear it?”

Jackal nodded silently. Parsec gazed into the fire and sang the kindest song she knew.